Maybe the New York Times will end up both with a unionized tech workforce, and a lower-paid one. Personally, I would never want to join a union or work as management at a company with a union, but I am still kind of curious to see what the result of a tech workforce unionizing would be.
Have the mass layoffs every single year taught people nothing? Newsflash, every company treats every single one of their employees as another replaceable cog in the machine. Even if you're the supreme grand wizard of space time and SQL at your FAANG job, you are still fully replaceable and will be if the business sees it as profitable to do so.
For now SWEs have it good, but this is quickly changing and techies are letting them do it because many of them have superiority complexes and naively think of themselves as indispensable to the business, as if there isn't an ocean of Eastern Europeans who'd happily take their place in the rat race to the botto.
And if you don't like treating employees with a modicum of respect, then you deserve a union to put you in your place. Good luck with the business when people refuse to be taken advantage of.
It's a two-way street, and the companies spend a lot of money and resources to make sure people don't realize it is.
Tech salaries have ALREADY fallen and tech workers have already been largely treated as cogs. Yes it could get even worse but I get why they’re taking their chances
It would codify this even further. Salaries have fallen but under a union any raises will be slow and require strikes and other job action and not be based on individual performance but on time served. Once time served is in play it doesn't make sense to switch jobs because you start the bottom.
It's true playing companies off each other isn't possible anymore. Switching jobs use to be a formula for a high rate.
But switching roles allowed people to grow and work on new and different tech. Leaving toxic situations was possible. Under the New York times union model you need to suck up the toxic environment.
The other issue is skills rot. The longer you stay in the same role the more the rot grows. At some point you can't find another role so you have to setup silos and protect the system you are working under from change. If someone tries to move your crystal report to power bi you've got to out politically muscle the request or you will be fired. The union may step in and protect you but can't forever.
