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Are you a member of a trade union? Why? Why not? If you are, and don't mind mentioning it, which one?

Do you know of any programmers who were helped by being in a union, or would have been helped by being in a union? Do you know of any programmers who were hindered or would have been hindered by being in a union?

Scott
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    This is a controversial political topic. We are to avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered! http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ – davidhaskins Mar 10 '11 at 14:57
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    @davidhaskins - Maybe controversial a bit, but very rational question otherwise. I don't see any part of it which cannot be answered; he is asking the opinions of users here, and if they are members of an union, what has been their experience with it. I see nothing wrong with that. That attitude is more suitable for SO. – Rook Mar 10 '11 at 15:03
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    Actually, I think that @Scott is asking questions that are definitely answerable: "are you a member of a trade union? which one?" Also, if we are able to keep our political leanings out of the matter, the follow-up questions about being helped or hindered can also be answered with a fair degree of objectivity. – Adam Crossland Mar 10 '11 at 15:06
  • @Adam he's also asking "If you aren't part of one, why aren't you?" That's a can of worms. – George Stocker Mar 10 '11 at 15:15
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    I am a member of a union because it keeps lobbying to keep Turbo Pascal jobs alive. Woot! – Job Mar 10 '11 at 15:15
  • @George, I would agree with you except for the fact that I know that 90% of us will answer that there are no unions for what we do. I would invite @Scott to edit his question to remove the whay and why not parts, as they are small blemishes on a perfectly valid question. – Adam Crossland Mar 10 '11 at 15:19
  • @George Stocker The "why not?" was not meant in a judgemental tone any more than the "why?" was. Yes or no on its own would be boring - what I (and I presume others) would really like to know is the reasoning behind people's decisions. – Scott Mar 10 '11 at 15:23
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    @davidhaskins - It is also a poll question. – JohnFx Mar 10 '11 at 15:25
  • Since this applies specifically to members of this site (as opposed to another), this question should probably be moved to meta. – Neil Mar 10 '11 at 17:09
  • @Neil No. Whether this question belongs on Programmers itself is questionable, but it certainly does not belong on meta. That's where questions about the site go. – Adam Lear Mar 10 '11 at 19:17
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    Possible duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46791/do-programmers-need-a-union. – Adam Lear Mar 10 '11 at 19:19
  • Possible duplicates: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=union – Job Mar 10 '11 at 20:36

8 Answers8

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No. First of all, like JohnFX, I'm not aware of unions for programmers in the US (they may exist, but I've not heard of them, and I have no colleagues or friends who are or were ever in one). And on a more personal note, I work for a small business (a literary magazine, actually), and I'm treated well and have no use for one.

On a more general note, I don't think they're particularly necessary for programmers. Unions exist primarily to protect the rights of workers when the employee-employer relationship is tipped unfairly in the direction of the employer. This may occur if work is inherently unsafe; when jobs are not mobile and/or the employer has a monopoly on work in an area (e.g., police, firefighters, and teachers); or when there is not a clear-cut way to distinguish between good and bad workers (think someone on an assembly line). None of those apply to developers: developers needn't lobby for safer working conditions, development jobs are fairly fluid (maybe not as much in this economy as in recent years, though), and there's a clear difference between a good programmer and a bad one. I think unions have failed to spring up because they aren't really necessary in our line of work.

mipadi
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  • Sensible, moderate position that reflects my own personal experiences. – Adam Crossland Mar 10 '11 at 15:41
  • I once was in a county government where there was a move to unionize that would include the programmers. It failed. That's the closest I've been. – David Thornley Mar 10 '11 at 16:04
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    The difference between a good programmer and bad one is not as clear as it may seem on the surface. What defines good and bad is based on the hiring manager's experience. If he/she has only worked in shops with mediocre to poor talent (most corporate IT gigs fit this description), then he/she is not a good judge of software practitioner quality. I spent the bulk of my career working hardcore engineering-oriented shops before joining my current organization. I cannot believe what passes for "highly skilled" in our IT department. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 16:15
  • While most programmers can tell who are good or bad, the people that really matter, the managers, have a far more challenging time in that endeavor. Also, I worked an assembly line one summer and believe me, the good and bad workers are far more obvious than the good or bad programmers. The problem is, that the good and bad assembly workers get treated exactly the same. There's nothing the good workers can do about it. At least as programmers we can benefit from being better at our jobs than others. – Dunk Mar 15 '11 at 20:03
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No. Primarily because I'm not aware of any union that applies to my job and secondarily because I'm not a big fan of unions in general.

JohnFx
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    If it's anything like college group work, one guy does all the work while a lot of others coast by doing very little. I worked hard in college so I could get away from that scenario. – davidhaskins Mar 10 '11 at 14:57
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    Also, I feel like the point of unions is to give labor bargaining power in jobs where employees are largely undifferentiated and thus don't have a lot of bargaining power. The fact that programmers make really good money, especially for the amount of education required, without the benefit of a union implies to me that we don't need one. – JohnFx Mar 10 '11 at 15:25
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    Worker conditions are not the same in every country, even for programmers. Is there a case to be made for developer unions areas that are typically outsource providers?. – TGnat Mar 10 '11 at 16:27
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    actually, the compensation curve for software practitioners who do not move into management is bell shaped. After age forty, the average software practitioner's earning power declines at a fairly steady clip until he/she reaches age fifty. At fifty, it is darn near impossible for a non-managerial software practitioner to find permanent employment, regardless of his/her skill set. About the only organizations that hire older non-managerial software practitioners are governments, government contractors, and universities, all of which tend to offer less competitive compensation packages. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 20:11
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    @bit-twiddler: The compensation curve for professional athletes has the a more pronounced version of that curve and you don't see them forming unions. Hey, wait....hrmmmm. – JohnFx Mar 11 '11 at 15:51
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Unions force two things:

  • Members to use the unions for negoitation
  • Higher cost of having employees.

Both things are bad for me as a developer. Programming, like other 'white collar' professions, is as much about the person as it is about the discipline. You can send two people to identical schools, learning identical things, and performing the same task, but you will have two different outcomes. Unions treat every 'worker' as interchangeable; and bargain as if they are all interchangable.

They are not. Without a union, I have the opportunity to negotiate my own wage and my own benefits. If I want to work for lower pay but get more vacation, I have that option.

Secondly, Unions traditionally want what anyone else in power wants: More. They want more money for their workers, more vacation, more benefits. This is a problem when they ask for too much and send the business into a tailspin (see: US Auto Industry; the current union debates in Wisconsin).

Unions are not good for business, and without business we would not have jobs.

George Stocker
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    You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I think that this is a poor answer to the questions that were asked. – Adam Crossland Mar 10 '11 at 15:16
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ7JbP6HJ6U – Job Mar 10 '11 at 15:17
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    @Adam Crossland I disagree. This is exactly the sort of explanation of the reasoning behind a decision I was hoping to see. – Scott Mar 10 '11 at 15:32
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    @Scott, I'm sorry to hear it. I actually don't see very much reasoning in this answer as much as assertions and broad generalizations. @George makes a valid point about being able to negotiate his own salary, but the rest of the answer seems to me to be a highly-subjective and one-sided view of unions. – Adam Crossland Mar 10 '11 at 15:40
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    @Adam He didn't ask me to defend unions, he asked me why I wasn't a member of a union. If it weren't 'one-sided', then I'd be a confused individual -- believing contradictory ideas! – George Stocker Mar 10 '11 at 15:54
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    @Adam, if George had strictly answered the question, he would have answered no, and nothing else. What follows "no" is the reasoning behind it, and it can't be helped that it's subjective. If you disagree, that's not reason enough to vote it down as it is merely another side of the coin of this discussion. – Neil Mar 10 '11 at 17:13
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    Programming is a skill, not a profession. Programming was treated as a skill when I first entered the field back in the seventies. Someone got the bright idea that companies could get away without paying overtime if they classified programmers as "exempt" professionals. Up until the 1980s, the "exempt" classification was mostly limited to management positions. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 18:01
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    @George Stocker: Lew Rockwell's thesis is flawed. It assumes a closed labor market; therefore, it does not take into account the wage diluting power of global labor arbitrage. Wage demands can and have been suppressed by the threat of moving jobs offshore and/or the displacement of domestic labor with imported "bound" labor via work visa programs. The Iron Law of Wages still holds true today. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 20:26
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    @George: I found Prof. Block's hypothesis absurd. He states, "Where will this process end? Ultimately, in equilibrium, there are zero profits and the wage will thus rise to $15." The rest of his argument is predicated on that being true (if you raise wages above $15, the company is in the red,) which contradicts known facts. If this was in any way true, it would be flat-out impossible for any company to make billions of dollars per year in profits, as commonly occurs today. – Mason Wheeler Mar 10 '11 at 23:01
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    Also, your assertion that "without business we would not have jobs" is a further absurdity, especially considering that the large businesses that tend to attract unionization are responsible for less than 40% of jobs in the USA. A publicly-traded corporation is required by law to maximize profits and increase value for shareholders by any means possible, including reducing labor costs. Large businesses are not in the business of creating jobs; they're in the business of treating jobs as a necessary evil and keeping as few of them around as possible while still producing a product or service. – Mason Wheeler Mar 10 '11 at 23:05
  • @Mason Wheeler The reason companies generate profits is that they get more effecient at what they do as they get better at what they do. They also respond to market demands by people buying or not buying their products. This is the essence of the free market -- and if it didn't work then you and I would have found this out years ago, as opposed to us sitting in the proof. – George Stocker Mar 11 '11 at 13:45
  • @George: We *did* find this out years ago. We haven't had anything remotely resembling a free market as described by Adam Smith in decades. Free market economic principles are wonderful, but *they only apply when freedom exists in the marketplace,* which requires healthy competition. Otherwise, you end up with a system running under monopoly economic principles, which have a *very* different set of rules, and they're the rules we've been playing by more often than not since the 70s at least. – Mason Wheeler Mar 11 '11 at 13:57
  • @Mason In an actual free market (and no, we haven't had one since 1913, at least), monopolies aren't sustainable. What you've seen as a monopoly is usually the government giving partiality to a company. Heck, even Microsoft, labelled as a monopoly (although justice never did anything to them) couldn't sustain their monopoly: Apple and Linux are still growing. – George Stocker Mar 11 '11 at 14:51
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If you're programming in a 19th century soot-filled factory for sixteen hours a day, then yes, you should probably unionise.

Otherwise, talk to your manager directly about workplace problems. You'll be surprised how much more reasonable management can be in the 21st century. You probably won't ever actually need the blunt and disruptive negotiation tools that unions impose.

smithco
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    The modern-day cube is the 21st century equivalent of the soot-filled factory. Most organizations pay only lip service to workstation ergonomics. Believe it or not, working in front of computer in a poorly-designed workstation leads to carpal tunnel syndrome and back and foot problems over time. In my case, thirty years of banging on a keyboard in non-ergonomically designed work environments led to carpal tunnel releases on both hands and a nerve release in my right foot. The specialists who performed these surgeries said that software development is one of their largest sources of patients. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 16:27
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    Firstly, it's hard to equate carpel-tunnel with the chronic lung diseases that took 30 to 40 years off factory workers' lifespans. Secondly, have you taken up your concerns about your cubicle with your manager? If you ask, you actually get a proper chair and keyboard. I doubt you'll need to go on strike to get an ergonomically well-adjusted cubicle. – smithco Mar 10 '11 at 16:43
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    I beg to differ. Carpal tunnel syndrome is serious problem when one earns one's living using one's hands. It seems like such a minor problem until one cannot feel the keys on a keyboard or drive oneself to work. Left untreated, carpal tunnel syndrome can render a person unemployable because just about every job requires one to be able use one's hands. The only reason why employers even play lip service to the problem is because it is listed as an occupational hazard with OSHA. Most employers treat their software development staff like chattel. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 17:23
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    I'm not claiming carpal tunnel is not serious, but it isn't something so severe and endemic that it would require the disruptive intervention of a union to deal with. The simple action of asking nicely for a new keyboard and chair often works quite well. Employers do care about these things: it's not about paying lip service to OSHA. You seem to have a very dim view of the software industry. Maybe you've worked at a bad company. In general, my experience is the exact opposite, employers want to keep employees healthy: it saves them money in the long run. – smithco Mar 11 '11 at 04:03
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    I have been working in software development since the late seventies. The cold hard truth is that the software development industry is addicted to uncompensated overtime. Most software organizations are little more than hi-tech sweatshops. That's why companies prefer to hire young software developers. Young developers are so enamored with technology that they fail to realize that they are being exploited by their employers. Software developers who dare to to develop a life outside of work or make time for their children are "managed out" of most software organizations. – bit-twiddler Mar 11 '11 at 19:24
  • @bit-twiddler Sounds like you've had some really bad experiences. I've worked at a number of places in my career and none of them required uncompensated overtime (or overtime at all). They've all been great to work for. I hear the high-tech sweatshop thing from sysadmins that I know, but not from any programmers. Are you in the gaming industry? I have read articles about how abusive that one particular industry is to programmers. – Brian Knoblauch May 01 '13 at 14:09
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I'm not a member of any union because I don't see the need for it in my particular situation. I have good working conditions and I'm making more than I'm spending by a comfortable margin, and that's good enough for me. Paying dues to a union for representation that I have no need of would not be a rational decision.

If conditions were different, though, I would be amenable to joining one, because I'm aware of the good that they do in situations where they are necessary.

However, I believe that such membership needs to be voluntary. If you believe that the benefits of union membership make the cost worthwhile, then you join, otherwise you don't, and you don't get the same benefits that the union members get. The concept of a "union shop," where all workers are required to join the union and pay dues as a condition of employment, is simply a protection racket by a different name, and needs to be recognized as such and made illegal.

Mason Wheeler
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Unions are a necessary evil. We may not like them at times, but they are our only check against unchecked corporate greed.

Anyone who believes that professionals do not join unions is misinformed. The two best compensated practitioner-oriented professions in America are both unionized. The American Medial Association (AMA) and the American Bar Association (ABA) are little more than unions by another name. They serve as gatekeepers for their respect professions and provide a voice for practitioners in politics, which are the most important activities in which most labor unions are engaged.

Furthermore, you can bet you rear-end that hi-tech employers are unionized. Their union is called the Information Technology Association of American (ITAA). The ITAA uses its substantial political clout to suppress wage demands through workforce dilution. Even the libertarian economist Milton Friedman noted that the H-1B program is yet another form of corporate welfare. That labor subsidy would not be in place if it were not for a union composed entirely of hi-tech employers.

In closing, I am not a member of labor union, but I would be willing to join a union structured like the AMA or ABA. I also support the professional licensure of software practitioners. The barriers to entry are far too low in this field. This situation leads to poorly-quality software and a revolving door career model where most of the practitioners in the field have less ten years of experience.

bit-twiddler
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    There is a big difference between professional organizations like the AMA and the ABA and unions. Those originations provide certifications, whereas a union provides a barrier between employees and employers. – smithco Mar 10 '11 at 16:46
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    To quote a friend of mine, "Unions are pretty good at helping the worker until they become powerful enough to be pretty good at helping themselves." I'm all for keeping corporate greed in check, though it's not a battle of good vs evil. It's a careful balance in which it's ultimately in everyone's best interest if it remains, in fact, balanced. Unemployment would be a lot higher if unions had their way with businesses. – Neil Mar 10 '11 at 17:19
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    No, the major reason the AMA and ABA exist is to provide a barriers to entry, which, in turn, protects earning power. Doctors and lawyers control their professions, not their employers (if they are not self-employed). No one can practice medicine without meeting the educational requirements set forth by the AMA, nor can they practice medicine without passing specialized board exams created by the AMA. No one can practice law without graduating from an ABA-accredited program and passing the BAR exam. The AMA and ABA both lobby congress to keep corporate interests out of their professions. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 17:37
  • @Neil, unemployment is a actually as high as it is because a lack of organization within the working ranks. The rise of global labor arbitrage parallels the fall in organized labor. Global labor arbitrage did not increase because of unionization. The use of global labor increased because union busting efforts left it unchecked in Washington! The industries that have been impacted the greatest by global labor arbitrage over the last thirty years are non-union. Lack of representation in Washington is the reason why we have programs like H-1B that have no private right of action. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 17:47
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    Republican politicians in Wisconsin received death threats from union thugs today. As much as worker rights must be improved, I couldn't possibly advocate support for such mentality. – Neil Mar 10 '11 at 18:12
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    I do not support strong-arm tactics. However, what is going on in Wisconsin is really an attempt by one party to cut off a major source of funding for its opposition through union busting. The only time people pay attention to state worker compensation is when times are tough. When times are good, no one wants to be a state employee because the overall compensation package is much lower than what one can earn in the private sector. State employees are not getting rich off of tax payers. Government contractors are a completely different story. – bit-twiddler Mar 10 '11 at 18:25
  • @bit-twiddler AMA/ABA also helps defer and minimize direct regulation on the practice of medicine and law respectively (unlike making drugs, making devices, and administration), since they self regulate; but I also have to credit @Neil, unions generally shouldn't be a permananent fixture, but rather only exist sparingly to affect specific problems. As a matter of efficiency regulation and inspection by the government should have all but eliminated gross misconduct and mistreatment. Some annoyance and inconvenience is just par for the course, no matter who you are, nor where or what you do. – JustinC Mar 10 '11 at 21:31
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    @Neil: I find "union thugs" and similar two-word perjorative phrases interesting, because they're so often spoken as if they were a redundancy. Do you know that the death threat were made at all, and not simply reported? Do you know that the people making them were union-affiliated and not pranksters or even anonymous Republican provocateurs? In today's political climate, I wouldn't put such dirty tricks past either party. – Mason Wheeler Mar 10 '11 at 23:21
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If you work in government you might not have a choice. Programmers here aren't 'professional' employees because there is no accredition body for programmers.

Interestingly there also isn't for physicists, you can be working on a satelite with a physics PhD but you are in the same union as the janitor. While your boss who just managed to scrape through an environmental engineering (?) degree is a professional.

And before you start thinking of an AMA/ABA type organisation - they have been proposed regularly, normally by large software companies. If you have to be a professional to produce software then there is no open source, no Linux or Apache. But you could still have all those wonderful Access and VB apps as long as the programmer had been on the accredited MS-Access training course.

Actually that's not quite true - software is rather more portable than legal or medical services - everyone else in the world would have Linux and Apache but the US would be forced to buy MSFT server or Oracle and only employ MSFT certified devs.

Martin Beckett
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Are you a member of a trade union? Why? Why not? If you are, and don't mind mentioning it, which one?

Do you know of any programmers who were helped by being in a union, or would have been helped by being in a union? Do you know of any programmers who were hindered or would have been hindered by being in a union?

LOL, there is no need for one. Programmers can pick up their bag and leave whenever they want and get another employee. There are lots of businesses in different sectors that need programmers.

The reason why say teachers need union is because where the hell else they're going to find another employer? There is really only 1, the government. Yes there are charter and private and what not. But really man, that is rare. So yeah... ^_^ (<-- teachers union sympathizer). The problem with public sector too is they tend to suck you in with pension so if you leave the pension is going to cash out so you can't move your pension around like 401k unless it's another gov job (once again 1 boss). So most of those teachers are stuck unless they want to forfeit and cash their pension.

mythicalprogrammer
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    One can just pack one's bags and look for another position if one is twenty-five. However, that tactic does not work once one passes the age of forty. A forty-plus-year-old who pulls that trick will more than likely never find full-time employment, regardless of his/her skill set. Older software practitioners are held to a different standard than their younger colleagues. For those who in their twenties, take a long hard look at your peers. Four out of five of you will out the industry by the age of forty-five. Software development is not a profession in which one can grow old gracefully. – bit-twiddler Mar 11 '11 at 02:32
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    It is very true that it's easy for programmers to move around. I think this is especially true for senior-level programmers with tons of experience. It can be near impossible to find top-tier programmers with 20+ years experience and many companies will pay top dollar to get them. – smithco Mar 11 '11 at 04:39
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    @ bit-twiddler I've just went to a Ruby Convention in LA (yesterday), and most of them are 35+ and they seems fine. If you mean it's harder to pick your bag and leave cause you're tie down by families and other social stuff than I can understand. But I don't believe aging ungracefully is true if you are active in your field and actively learning new things. – mythicalprogrammer Mar 11 '11 at 17:23
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    Companies do not want forty-plus-year-old software engineers. Fifty-plus-year-old software engineers have a greater chance of being hit by a freight train than they do of landing a full-time technical position. That's why most of the software developers over forty are contractors (all of my friends are contractors out of necessity). I am over fifty, hold undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science, work daily in Java, C/C++, Object Pascal, and PL/SQL, and have over thirty years of hardcore experience, which includes the design of several commercial products. I am not lacking skills. – bit-twiddler Mar 11 '11 at 19:47
  • @smithco, software development is one of the few careers in which one is not compensated for accumulated experience. Most companies compensate based on N years of experience in technology X. There are only a handful of software development technologies currently in use that have been used for more than twenty years. Almost all of the technologies that are being used in modern system development are less than fifteen years old. The organizations that value people with more than twenty years of experience are working with legacy technologies. – bit-twiddler Mar 11 '11 at 20:01
  • @bit-twiddler It sounds like you've been burned by some bad workplaces. My experience is quite the opposite. Experience is valued and senior programmers do get paid more. – smithco Mar 11 '11 at 20:15
  • I have worked for good and bad organizations. Few of them paid for more than ten years of experience or offered technical career tracks. As I have stated before, the compensation curve for non-managerial software practitioners is bell shaped. Companies exploit at the top and bottom of the experience curve. Young practitioners are exploited because they are not business savvy. Older (>40) practitioners are exploited because their employers know that finding a new full-time position is very difficult due to the fact that most hiring managers and software teams are younger than 40. – bit-twiddler Mar 11 '11 at 20:39
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    @smithco, I just noticed that you are in California. You are the beneficiary of some of the strictest labor laws in the country. California is the only state that I know of that places bounds on classifying software developers as "exempt" employees. I live in a state in which software development personnel are classified as "exempt," regardless of income level. – bit-twiddler Mar 11 '11 at 21:00
  • @bit-twiddler No, I work on an salary basis here. I don't get extra protection on overtime. – smithco Mar 12 '11 at 03:09
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    That's because your salary is above the threshold for being classified as exempt (the threshold for 2010 was $79,050.00). However, in most states there is no such threshold. A programmer earning as little as $20K/year can be classified as exempt in my state, and I live in one of the most expensive areas of the country. – bit-twiddler Mar 13 '11 at 00:53