this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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"Would U.S. tech workers join a union?" survey average: 67% likely (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/25996640

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-how-american-tech-workers-feel-about-joining-a-union/

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (19 children)

When I think of a tech worker union my thoughts first go to standardizing everyone's pay and limiting what I can earn myself. I've probably fallen to anti-union propaganda.

A tech worker union that says nothing about pay could still do so much.

A union could ensure that the company's incentives are aligned with worker's incentives around things like on-call.

I'd love a union that forced a company to give all on-call workers compensation. Something like:

  1. If you're woken up in the middle of the night, you automatically get 8 hours comp time (time off), plus 2x the time you spend on-call during off hours.
  2. Accrued comp time over 20 hours must be payed at 10x normal pay if the employee leaves the company for any reason. The idea here isn't for employees to accrue comp time, but to give the company a strong incentive to ensure employees use their comp time.

Basically, if a company is having lots of on-call alerts, or the company is preventing employees from using their comp time, you want this to be directly painful to the company. Incentives should be aligned, what is painful for the worker should be painful for the company.

Or, regarding "unlimited PTO". I'd love to see a union force companies to:

  1. "Unlimited PTO" policies are fine, but they must have a guaranteed minimum amount of PTO specified in writing. So none of this "yeah, we heave 'unlimited PTO'; oh, we're really busy this quarter, so can you wait to take PTO until next quarter?".

Tech workers have it good compared to a lot of workers, but there are still plenty of abuses a union could help with, even if the union never even mentions pay.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Those compensation requirements would basically make it financially impossible to have someone on-call or they'd just have to hire people for those hours and say they are normal working hours.

How would you force someone to take time off?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Those compensation requirements would basically make it financially impossible to have someone on-call or they’d just have to hire people for those hours and say they are normal working hours

These are not the only options. Here are some others:

  1. Ensuring the on-call load is shared more evenly so that everyone is woken up under the painful limit
  2. Fixing the broken shit that keeps waking people up, which they keep ignoring because "it's low priority"
  3. Hiring people for a night shift, appropriately compensated for their diminished health and other life impacts. The union can ensure such positions aren't paid the same as normal work hours while not being prohibitively expensive. Night shifts are a standard thing in some occupations

Something's telling me most orgs where 2 is an option would go with that. Related to that - increases in labor compensation is what forces companies to spend money on capital investment that increases productivity - read new equipment, automation, fixing broken shit, etc. If there are cheap enough slaves to wake up during the night, doing this investment is "low priority" (more expensive) and isn't done.

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