Would software engineers ever unionise in future, if the industry keeps getting shit every year due to AI and layoffs?
CAIT: Collective Action in Tech and the Tech Workers Coalition are both trying. Support them as best you can.
I used to be in one
Tech workers are more than software engineers.
This must be US centric yeah? I am in a union in Denmark as an engineer, and was when I was specifically a software engineer too.
I hope it can happen everywhere, it’s been great for us in the few years I’ve been part of it.
I’m in one right now. There’s a ton of guilds too in the US.
Got me a raise and fought a RTO sillyness.
Can you share the name of your union
Should we? Yes. Will we? Software Engineers are overall too prideful for that
Some already have. It’s illegal to stop it.
If it was possible to create a union without interacting with each other, it would already be done.
LOL
Just do the organising online
As their jobs keep getting devalued, by AI (whether appropriate or not), and they are increasingly treated as unskilled labor, there will be more pressure to organize in order to mitigate losses in pay and benefits.
Am tech worker. Where do I sign?
I remember an old coworker said he was anti union. “I’d just find another job if I didn’t like the one I had”, he said. Bold claim.
Bold claim
For me it was true all my life.
That’s the point where Usa (and probably China) are different than the other parts of the world.
My personal bet would be no. They’ll automate themselves away and slovenly play the corporate game before unionising. As a collective that is. Perhaps there’s lots to say about the culture of the profession, but I suspect it’s just too childish and spoilt.
I was going to say, the Silicon Valley corporate game feels too individualistic for its players to consider unionisation
No.
Unionize mostly occurs for working class folks, esp those working in the public sector or for a utility/infrastructure type of service.
Software Engineers are not working class people, they don’t do public or utility types of work. There also is no point of collective bargaining for them as they don’t have centralized skills or a centralized set of employers like most union jobs do.
Software Engineers are not working class people
You’re regurgitating propaganda designed to divide us.
“Working class” mean you work for a living. If your primary source of income is selling your labor, you’re working class. If you punch a clock or if you own a business where the main product is provided by your labor (electrician, plumber, small business owner), you’re working class. Income doesn’t matter. If you’re retired, that still counts.
If your primary source of income is dividends, interest, passive income from investments or assets, or businesses where the main product is provided by the labor of others, you’re not working class because you don’t have to get up and go to work every day to make a living; other people have to get up and go to work every day to make your living for you.
There also is no point of collective bargaining for them as they don’t have centralized skills or a centralized set of employers like most union jobs do.
If you think “software engineers” don’t have skills as comparably fungible as carpenters or factory works either you’re not a programmer or your code is hot garbage.
It’s also irrelevant with regards to unionization. Actors,.writers, lawyers, and doctors all have unions, and the last two are so old and so pervasive that it’s easy to mistake them for something else.
they don’t do public or utility types of work.
Never heard of digital infrastructure or the internet, huh?
the internet is owned by private companies. including all the infrastructure.
the only thing that is public is ICANN and the standards.
Nope. They’re too economically right wing self-absorbed to unionize.
Speak for yourself. I don’t feel that way. Nobody I know or work with feels that way.
Problem isn’t the bunch of us, it’s the one’s who’re getting well compensated for their work. Tech has a very uneven pay, plus it’s susceptible to outsourcing. If anything Tech would require super globalized union, something that I don’t think has a precent.
So you’re now saying California is mostly right wing…?
