this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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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] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Unless unions work differently where you live, they are a democracy that will pursue whatever issues its members vote on. If members don't think pay is a problem, why would they try to change it?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Had to explain this to my dad when he told me about the carpenters unions not allowing his brother to work after he retired.

1: Unions are the democratization of workplaces; for better or for worse.

2: Should you really be working when you’re claiming retirement checks from your union?

3: People are often falsely confident on their views about things. People love to complain about the government while hardly understanding anything about it. The same happens everywhere, including unions. Just because some dude is miffed doesn’t mean they have any right to be. They can be misinformed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Should you really be working when you’re claiming retirement checks from your union?

As a carpenter? Yes and no. It shouldn't compete with what union people are by and large doing for their steady bread and butter but completely outlawing earning any money is cruel to the type of busy-bees that many tradespeople are. Hand-craft chessboards or something, anything where skill and mastery is eclipsing the industrial aspect. Also teaching, training, and consulting. Retirement should be a role-change (if desired), not a kick to the curb. Also, accommodate for half-retirement: Half the cheque, half the jobs kind of situation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Absolutely. I guess I just consider those things more in the realm of “hobby” rather than a job that might come to the union. No reason someone shouldn’t be able to make wood-whatever and sell it in their retirement. That was actually one of the things my dad argued, it’s sad to see someone work their whole lives to become a tradesman, only to have that same ability kneecapped because you’ve retired. And I agree. That’s why I also made point 3, because usually when things don’t make sense there’s a reason. Whether it’s a lack of information or just misinformation. We both had a lot of questions neither of us could answer, ya know?

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