Comment by OGEnthusiast 2 days ago
It's unfortunate there wasn't more resistance by tech employees to RTO post-covid. It seemed like one of the very, very rare solutions to the systemic problems of housing and commuting in the US. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that WFH effectively doubles or even triples your total compensation when it means (a) actually affordable housing and (b) no time/money lost to commuting, especially if you have kids.
even though biden's already left I am still quite surprised how little views his pro union videos got https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZpUD9KgYc4 this video was on whitehouse's youtube channel
no one wants to work at shops that actually have unions compared to other places. it's just silly to actually suggest it makes things better.
> no one
I recently took a union software job after I was laid off due to the CEO having a tummy ache one morning. Many of my new co-workers were explicitly interested in the company _because_ there was a union.
It's very imperfect but such is life. It's all new to me but here's what I've seen so far:
a) Employees have a voice. That doesn't mean that management is forced to do anything, but at least it's possible to be vocally opposed to eating a shit sandwich.
b) We are protected by a contract. If you are called into a police station, you ask for a lawyer for protection according to the law. If an employee finds themselves in an adverse meeting/situation with management, they can call in a steward to protect them according to the contract.
c) The union is us, the workers. We self-organize. It simply gives us a structural framework to work within. An entity for my employer to recognize. It's not ran by an authoritarian who waves a magic wand to make things happen.
That's it. There seems to be this weird idea that I can screw around for 40 hours a week and have the union protect my job. The union told us that we very much still have to do our jobs (duh).
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To go on a little side tangent. Some countries, such as Finland or Norway, have no minimum wage because unions are (a) everywhere and (b) (allowed to be) powerful enough to protect workers. Honestly it's the best of both worlds. Less government intervention but at the same time workers hugely benefit from collectivization. They don't need to beg their politicians to raise wages - they do it themselves because they are given the power to do so. In the US, we instead rely on the lizards in DC to protect our wages because unions have been so stripped of power.
I dunno where you live but in my part of the country getting into union work is the best way to prosper and succeed as just an average person. Maybe that isn't true for tech work at the moment, but union carpenters, plumbers, HVAC, pipe fitters, arborists, linemen, auto and factory workers, all make significantly more doing union work with better and safer work conditions.
Yeah, speak for yourself. I'd love to work at a place where I can't be fired because my manager had a bad day and I didn't move the right Jira tickets around to his satisfaction, where I'm treated like a human being in stead of fungible cattle. I also don't want to go back into an office. Ever. But if people actually want to affect change at their workplace, instead of just kvetching, that's basically the only way to do it, short of praying to Money Jesus for another ZIRP boom like the 2010s (I'm not a praying man, but I wouldn't hold my breath).
I'm just saying, if workers want control over their working conditions, they have to recognize the power they have. It's up to them if they decide to wield it. You don't have to, and that's fine! Enjoy your long Bay Area commute.
There are companies in the US that have engineering unions. Boeing is one. You're going to tell me you'd rather work at Boeing over Apple or Google?
"coincided" is understating it; it is precisely the bad job market that leads to this sort of mandate, because employees have little choice but to go along. in a good job market companies are very willing to offer remote work as an incentive to join them rather than the competition.
Yes, it would require a lot more coordinated organizing and some level of pain, though I think the payoff would be worth it.
Because there's a five-letter scare word you're not allowed to say that would be required for tech workers to have any power over their managers, but that sort of collective action is dead on arrival in the current milieu. If you don't want to go back into the office, you have the power to enforce that, but you have to like... work together.