this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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By "IT" do you mean tech? Because as a software engineer, I've seen turnover rates of 1-2 years for some of my favorite people I've worked with. If they actually had bargaining power, we know via studies done on unions and turnover rates that these engineers likely wouldn't dip as quickly and take institutional knowledge and their smart brains with them. Tech is so allergic to unions that it is literally inflicting damage onto itself - managers will tell you how expensive it is to hire new people because it takes months for them to catch up to your codebase, but the higher-up leadership is completely unwilling to listen to the data on how to actually retain people. They don't care if unions increase productivity or that the elasticity between productivity and salary is >1.0 as the unionisation rate grows (per studies done in Norway), because they don't want to lose their complete control over companies to collective bargaining.
You're making good arguments why a company employing IT staff (software devs, engineers, architects), but where is the argument to the benefit of the worker themselves in this case?
This is a benefit to the worker. They're leaving because they got a better paying gig or less work/fewer hours for the same amount of money.
nah they're just part of the last layoff
Unions can't really prevent layoffs unfortunately, but can guarantee severances. However most tech employees already receive generous severance packages.
Software engineers also still sit at half the unemployment rate of the rest of the US despite the layoffs throughout this past year.
I'm very pro-union, I just don't think they belong in tech given how much power engineers already have, and that power being entirely dictated by the ability to jump ship yesterday.