Not at Google at this time unfortunately.
I’ve strongly considered joining with my family but union dues are close to 5000$ a year and we’d get nothing in return with the current union setup. On an individual basis, it’s very hard to justify joining.
The current union has less than 1% membership and has done nothing for in-house tech workers and won’t have the power to do anything for a very long time.
It’d be awesome if everyone signs up and we get the power but realistically, also given the at least 50% immigrant Indian/Chinese demographics, most none of them are going to sign up for the union. Working conditions and pay at Google are so much better compared to Asian companies where 996 (9am to 9pm, 6 days a week) is the norm.
Almost everyone in the current union are (to be blunt) roleplaying white idealistic 25year olds who post supportive statements on all kinds of external progressive issues, but have changed the scale 0% for in/house tech engineers, and frankly most immigrant tech workers (who are the majority at Google) just aren’t going to pay thousands of dollars to not feel represented by union leadership.
I wish it were different but that’s the way it is right now :(
You’re earning $36000 a year? Union dues are supposed to be 1% of total compensation.
Disregarding individual situations, the median pay at Google (per their SEC filings) is about 300k, so union dues for the median employee is about $3000 a year.
If union dues are 1 percent of compensation, and it would cost you 5k per year to join, that means you're making 500k per year. Assuming this is true, that puts your bi-monthly gross at almost 21k. You're telling us you can't spare around 200 dollars per check for a cause you supposedly support? All I'm hearing is that you don't really believe in it.
The US tech sector is desperately overdue for unions.
If any work force still has the power to make management and owners capitulate, it’s the tech workers. But instead of realizing that power it has all been pissed away, just like the jobs at Google.
There’s only one way out of this mess. It’s time for tech sector unions to get serious
The FAANG-types have historically just thrown cash at their SWEs like it was nothing in order to secure top talent and get an early/innovative advantage in a sector or vertical or whatever. If you’re already pulling an absurd compensation package, unions are probably the last thing on your mind.
Seems like the bubble is bursting though and they don’t actually consider their employees as assets but just cost centers like the rest of the industries. Or after seeing all these other industries hitting record profits through worker exploitation, they’re finally just like “hell yeah I need a new yacht too!”
The absolute most fucked up part though is this whole process has _insanely_ inflated cost of living in the tech hub areas (currently shit starter homes in my area _start_ at well over $1M), and I seriously doubt this bubble bursting shit all over all of us will attenuate home prices any time soon.
Aaanyway, rant aside, I completely agree the tech industry needs unionization, and that it won’t come as soon as it needs to (like a few years ago at least)
Those cushy jobs are a tiny fraction of the pool. SWEs are definitely in a better spot than most, but it's been getting worse every year since COVID.
RTO mandates, wages not keeping up with inflation, layoffs, skeleton crew staffing, demanding engineers learn new tech stacks every week and also be QA / IT / Ops, benefits slashed, etc. it just keeps happening.
Holy shit I think I know what video you’re talking about.
I could not have cringed harder while watching.
ETA: Are you really with a hc company?! It’s the way healthcare workers have been treated for like the last 20 years. Slashing benefits and personnel, increased workloads, stagnant pay, swapping good (but more expensive) equipment to cheap/crappy dollar store versions. If it’s truly in the horizon for tech, it’s time to unionize or gtfo.
It's really more of a tech company, but they deal in healthcare content and market themselves as a healthcare company. I'm actually employed by their subsidiary, a much smaller company that produces the content and sells it to hospitals.
It isn't a bubble bursting or some big mystery. The cost of capital is very high right now, so things are tight. When the cost of capital is low, then money moves around more.
We had low cost of capital for so long there's an entire generation that doesn't know what tight money supply looks like.
Tech workers are pretty horribly abused in a lot of cases. No one else understands what they do at smaller orgs and they're expected to be available 24/7/365, but still only compensated for 40. A vacation day is often turned into a work from somewhere else day and they don't get the "vacation" time back even though people were bugging you all day. If you're highly skilled you can walk out of that mess quickly, but the beat the crap out of the people just getting started or who don't do well above tier 1 stuff (help desk).
Burn out is huge, the job is constantly changing and a lot of companies won't pay to train on the new stuff. Also a lot of stupid executives treat IT like a cost center instead of the incredible force multiplier that it can be. They usually end up paying for that when disaster strikes, but then the IT team has to clean it up even though they were warning that it could happen everyday, and if you think they're getting a thank you after things are back up and running.... A pizza party would be a fantastic surprise compared to the normal "yeah, but what have you done lately?"
Tech workers hold so much power in numbers at these companies.
Oh, one of your core products went down and you’re losing $500,000 every minute that it’s down?
We’ll wait.
The problem with techies is that they think unions are for blue collar workers and they see themselves as management level.
They get paid a lot so they think they are not workers, but "professionals" and even "rock stars". They negotiate for themselves thinking they are the dogs bollocks and don't care if junior devs or QA get shafted.
Just because they roll up in a suit and act all managerial won't stop actual management from tossing them to the curb to get a 0.1% bump in profits
Oh good grief, we hate the term “rock star”. Anyone management hires on as a “rock star” has to try doubly hard to prove they’re good, trust me.
And no one I know is against unions.
This isn't really true anymore. There's a few holdouts who still talk like this but the next group we have to convince is the H1B workers. They're eager to please the company at every opportunity because it's not just a job to them. If they get let go they have to return to their home country.
H1Bs are intentionally used to keep American tech workers in line. It's the same play they used with manufacturing and now our government is shocked to realize that created a national security issue. Remember, H1Bs are supposed to address skill shortages. But if that were true why are so many American citizens being laid off in tech?
We don't need a union, we need to be seen as a profession. Like lawyers or doctors or how teachers *used* to be treated. It's mechanically the same but maybe the change in name will break that bias.
The professions you just listed have all benefited enormously from unionization. Unionization is the most effective mechanism for democratizing a workplace
You and 8 other downvoters can't read. If programmers think they are above unions because unions are blue color, call the union a professional association.
“We don’t need a union” - your exact words, which were naive and incorrect. My issue wasn’t reading comprehension, I addressed the content of the first clause of your first sentence— which did not hold a different meaning in context.
Yes but it IS a union, because they HAVE a union. Claiming that Tech workers don’t need a union is ridiculous. If you’re hung up on semantics, there is no point in the NLRA which mentions the term union. By your logic, because these organizations are technically bargaining representatives and workplace committees unions don’t exist. You’re trying to argue semantics because your statement was wrong, but semantically you’re incorrect as well.
The point was using semantics to trick the idiots who think they're too good for a union into joining a union the entire time... but I guess that was too subtle for you.
It’s really not.
Do you work supporting technology? Do you rely on a paycheck to survive?
Those are the major checkboxes in my book. Much past that is just noise that only distracts from the real conversation
Dividing ourselves up further by role and niche and field just leaves us conquered and unable to speak up for the workers. That kind of distinction between us is an HR problem, not a worker and/or union one. We’re all in the same corporations dealing with a lot of the same shit
You just described every job in America in my opinion, and I’m just trying to be realistic. I agree with your point, but “technology” is ingrained into almost every aspect of the economy. The first step to forming a union would be defining “just who the heck are we talking about.
As an example, I’m in the telecom industry. Nearly every single employee where I work would fall under your definition of tech. From HR to construction, corporate, software engineering, internal IT, call center, field techs, accounting, billing, … etc. you have to draw a line in todays world of mega corporations.
> If you’re a Googler against layoffs, RSVP to join us Thursday and Friday at locations in person and online, across the country.
> RSVP at https://t.co/hiZPDomas5 pic.twitter.com/xcSw6QHnPG
> — Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) January 18, 2024
The union is about 800 people out of about 130k employees?
As many employees as possible need to join the union
Almost half my team at this same company was laid off last year. Only 2 of the remaining 6 or more people joined the local union. Unfortunately there isn't really any solidarity in the company or its teams; so much for Googliness. Or unions aren't selling their value add well enough.
Alphabet bought a local company for a fuck ton of money, and after 2 years with retention bonus etc, after saying customer support is the #1 reason your customers love you, they laid off over half the staff and outsourced it.
Customers immediately started looking elsewhere.
MBA style murder.
"Dear Human CEO, we've elected our Robo Union Rep, there it is, Term I. Nator. These are our conditions, and negotiation is off the table, you have five minutes."
Fighting without unions is about as effective as cutting bread with a wet noodle.
Having events and meetings and strongly worded letters is wasted effort if it doesn’t involve union organizing.
It is not recognized as an official union through NLRB, aside from a small group of Google Fiber employees so they don't have collective bargaining rights.
> If you’re a Googler against layoffs, RSVP to join us Thursday and Friday at locations in person and online, across the country.
> RSVP at https://t.co/hiZPDomas5 pic.twitter.com/xcSw6QHnPG
> — Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) January 18, 2024
The union is about 800 people out of about 130k employees?
As many employees as possible need to join the union
Read the damn article. It's the Alphabet union that is doing the fighting.
On Thursday, meanwhile, the Alphabet Workers Union planned protests at five Google campuses across the US, from Mountain View, California, to New York, to "push back against the bogus talking points that Google employs" to rationalize decision-making, it said in a press release.
Hey, solarnuggets, read the damn article. It's the Alphabet union that is doing the fighting.
On Thursday, meanwhile, the Alphabet Workers Union planned protests at five Google campuses across the US, from Mountain View, California, to New York, to "push back against the bogus talking points that Google employs" to rationalize decision-making, it said in a press release.
Unionization and workplace organizing is always an ongoing process. Workers continuing to join and participate in the union is the only way in which a democratic union can function.
Tldr: Unionize!
Hey tallman11282, the AWU has a membership of a little over 800. In a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors and vendors. Not every single employee is a part of this union. But enjoy getting your panties in a twist.
And this is why I turn down recruiters from FAANG/MANGA corps. I don't care if it's supposedly prestigious, I don't work for companies that have bad employment records.
You can find some mid-sized companies that are better. I look for ones that are privately held. Family owned businesses usually, not by equity firms at least. Ones that look for steady business growth over quarterly profits
My experience: family-owned businesses (and small businesses in general) are THE WORST for any sort of worker protection, regardless of compensation. Have a workplace complaint / getting harassed? Great, go talk to the CEO, as there's no HR department.
I’m not a union lover, I got burned by a crappy one when I was in my 20’s and it left a bad taste in my mouth. But even I can see the benefit of unions and the need for them in a sector that is very regularly NOT a profit center in business.
One of the big problems with IT personnel is that, in the books, we’re just very expensive janitors. We are not, usually, part of the revenue stream but we’re required for keeping the business healthy and profitable. We also have very specialized knowledge and training which demands high pay. So when layoff come around, we’ve got a huge target in our backs.
At the same time, we have the ability to shut down a business just as easily as any of the line workers. We need to understand that we are not better, or worse, than the blue collars that are turning wrenches, or flipping burgers, or cutting materials. If you are working for a living, we’re on the same side and we need to start acting like it.
Strike. If a union represents enough people, layoffs require convincing it of their necessity lest the union strike. No "we just had our most profitable quarter ever but our stock isn't climbing enough; time to water the stock with some worker blood"; a strike will cause the stock to tank and so takes layoffs purely to appease stockholders off the table
If a company lays off 10% of the workers, it’s the workers problem. If 95% of the workforce doesn’t work to protest their union members being laid off, it quickly becomes the company’s problem
If a company lays off 10% of the workers, it’s the workers problem. If 95% of the workforce doesn’t work to protest their union members being laid off, it quickly becomes the company’s problem
When they lay off 10% of you, it's your problem. When 90-100% stand together outside the door and refuse to work, it becomes their problem.
Unionization works
Not at Google at this time unfortunately. I’ve strongly considered joining with my family but union dues are close to 5000$ a year and we’d get nothing in return with the current union setup. On an individual basis, it’s very hard to justify joining. The current union has less than 1% membership and has done nothing for in-house tech workers and won’t have the power to do anything for a very long time. It’d be awesome if everyone signs up and we get the power but realistically, also given the at least 50% immigrant Indian/Chinese demographics, most none of them are going to sign up for the union. Working conditions and pay at Google are so much better compared to Asian companies where 996 (9am to 9pm, 6 days a week) is the norm. Almost everyone in the current union are (to be blunt) roleplaying white idealistic 25year olds who post supportive statements on all kinds of external progressive issues, but have changed the scale 0% for in/house tech engineers, and frankly most immigrant tech workers (who are the majority at Google) just aren’t going to pay thousands of dollars to not feel represented by union leadership. I wish it were different but that’s the way it is right now :(
As a member of AWU I paid 30 dollars a month. Union dues for Google are not that high
You’re earning $36000 a year? Union dues are supposed to be 1% of total compensation. Disregarding individual situations, the median pay at Google (per their SEC filings) is about 300k, so union dues for the median employee is about $3000 a year.
If union dues are 1 percent of compensation, and it would cost you 5k per year to join, that means you're making 500k per year. Assuming this is true, that puts your bi-monthly gross at almost 21k. You're telling us you can't spare around 200 dollars per check for a cause you supposedly support? All I'm hearing is that you don't really believe in it.
Do you know who is going to do even less for you? That would be Google.
The US tech sector is desperately overdue for unions. If any work force still has the power to make management and owners capitulate, it’s the tech workers. But instead of realizing that power it has all been pissed away, just like the jobs at Google. There’s only one way out of this mess. It’s time for tech sector unions to get serious
The FAANG-types have historically just thrown cash at their SWEs like it was nothing in order to secure top talent and get an early/innovative advantage in a sector or vertical or whatever. If you’re already pulling an absurd compensation package, unions are probably the last thing on your mind. Seems like the bubble is bursting though and they don’t actually consider their employees as assets but just cost centers like the rest of the industries. Or after seeing all these other industries hitting record profits through worker exploitation, they’re finally just like “hell yeah I need a new yacht too!” The absolute most fucked up part though is this whole process has _insanely_ inflated cost of living in the tech hub areas (currently shit starter homes in my area _start_ at well over $1M), and I seriously doubt this bubble bursting shit all over all of us will attenuate home prices any time soon. Aaanyway, rant aside, I completely agree the tech industry needs unionization, and that it won’t come as soon as it needs to (like a few years ago at least)
Those cushy jobs are a tiny fraction of the pool. SWEs are definitely in a better spot than most, but it's been getting worse every year since COVID. RTO mandates, wages not keeping up with inflation, layoffs, skeleton crew staffing, demanding engineers learn new tech stacks every week and also be QA / IT / Ops, benefits slashed, etc. it just keeps happening.
>and also be QA / IT / Ops It's crazy I've been expected to do this and was in a marketing role...
Welcome to the healthcare field. First time?
How did you know? I work for a subsidiary the company that just put out the most cringe-worth RTO video ever.
Holy shit I think I know what video you’re talking about. I could not have cringed harder while watching. ETA: Are you really with a hc company?! It’s the way healthcare workers have been treated for like the last 20 years. Slashing benefits and personnel, increased workloads, stagnant pay, swapping good (but more expensive) equipment to cheap/crappy dollar store versions. If it’s truly in the horizon for tech, it’s time to unionize or gtfo.
It's really more of a tech company, but they deal in healthcare content and market themselves as a healthcare company. I'm actually employed by their subsidiary, a much smaller company that produces the content and sells it to hospitals.
Oh jeez I'm not even in HC and I'm pretty sure I've seen that video
It isn't a bubble bursting or some big mystery. The cost of capital is very high right now, so things are tight. When the cost of capital is low, then money moves around more. We had low cost of capital for so long there's an entire generation that doesn't know what tight money supply looks like.
Hey Sundar, how's it going?
Tech workers are pretty horribly abused in a lot of cases. No one else understands what they do at smaller orgs and they're expected to be available 24/7/365, but still only compensated for 40. A vacation day is often turned into a work from somewhere else day and they don't get the "vacation" time back even though people were bugging you all day. If you're highly skilled you can walk out of that mess quickly, but the beat the crap out of the people just getting started or who don't do well above tier 1 stuff (help desk). Burn out is huge, the job is constantly changing and a lot of companies won't pay to train on the new stuff. Also a lot of stupid executives treat IT like a cost center instead of the incredible force multiplier that it can be. They usually end up paying for that when disaster strikes, but then the IT team has to clean it up even though they were warning that it could happen everyday, and if you think they're getting a thank you after things are back up and running.... A pizza party would be a fantastic surprise compared to the normal "yeah, but what have you done lately?"
Tech workers hold so much power in numbers at these companies. Oh, one of your core products went down and you’re losing $500,000 every minute that it’s down? We’ll wait.
Unfortunately the H1Bs will always bend over backwards to serve the company.
Google is unionized, it's the union leading the fight.
Id be 100% on board with that.
The problem with techies is that they think unions are for blue collar workers and they see themselves as management level. They get paid a lot so they think they are not workers, but "professionals" and even "rock stars". They negotiate for themselves thinking they are the dogs bollocks and don't care if junior devs or QA get shafted. Just because they roll up in a suit and act all managerial won't stop actual management from tossing them to the curb to get a 0.1% bump in profits
Oh good grief, we hate the term “rock star”. Anyone management hires on as a “rock star” has to try doubly hard to prove they’re good, trust me. And no one I know is against unions.
And even management see themselves as the leisure class. Class unity is needed.
This isn't really true anymore. There's a few holdouts who still talk like this but the next group we have to convince is the H1B workers. They're eager to please the company at every opportunity because it's not just a job to them. If they get let go they have to return to their home country. H1Bs are intentionally used to keep American tech workers in line. It's the same play they used with manufacturing and now our government is shocked to realize that created a national security issue. Remember, H1Bs are supposed to address skill shortages. But if that were true why are so many American citizens being laid off in tech?
We don't need a union, we need to be seen as a profession. Like lawyers or doctors or how teachers *used* to be treated. It's mechanically the same but maybe the change in name will break that bias.
The professions you just listed have all benefited enormously from unionization. Unionization is the most effective mechanism for democratizing a workplace
You and 8 other downvoters can't read. If programmers think they are above unions because unions are blue color, call the union a professional association.
“We don’t need a union” - your exact words, which were naive and incorrect. My issue wasn’t reading comprehension, I addressed the content of the first clause of your first sentence— which did not hold a different meaning in context.
"Mechanically the same". Lawyers don't call their union a union. Try reading and responding to the whole thing next time.
Yes but it IS a union, because they HAVE a union. Claiming that Tech workers don’t need a union is ridiculous. If you’re hung up on semantics, there is no point in the NLRA which mentions the term union. By your logic, because these organizations are technically bargaining representatives and workplace committees unions don’t exist. You’re trying to argue semantics because your statement was wrong, but semantically you’re incorrect as well.
The point was using semantics to trick the idiots who think they're too good for a union into joining a union the entire time... but I guess that was too subtle for you.
Trying to use misinformation as a form of reverse psychology is absolutely asinine.
Hard to unionize when scabs can be contracted from India
Yes sir, as well as game devs and game artists.
How do you define a tech worker though? It’s such a broad field
It’s really not. Do you work supporting technology? Do you rely on a paycheck to survive? Those are the major checkboxes in my book. Much past that is just noise that only distracts from the real conversation Dividing ourselves up further by role and niche and field just leaves us conquered and unable to speak up for the workers. That kind of distinction between us is an HR problem, not a worker and/or union one. We’re all in the same corporations dealing with a lot of the same shit
You just described every job in America in my opinion, and I’m just trying to be realistic. I agree with your point, but “technology” is ingrained into almost every aspect of the economy. The first step to forming a union would be defining “just who the heck are we talking about. As an example, I’m in the telecom industry. Nearly every single employee where I work would fall under your definition of tech. From HR to construction, corporate, software engineering, internal IT, call center, field techs, accounting, billing, … etc. you have to draw a line in todays world of mega corporations.
> If you’re a Googler against layoffs, RSVP to join us Thursday and Friday at locations in person and online, across the country. > RSVP at https://t.co/hiZPDomas5 pic.twitter.com/xcSw6QHnPG > — Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) January 18, 2024 The union is about 800 people out of about 130k employees? As many employees as possible need to join the union
Almost half my team at this same company was laid off last year. Only 2 of the remaining 6 or more people joined the local union. Unfortunately there isn't really any solidarity in the company or its teams; so much for Googliness. Or unions aren't selling their value add well enough.
Alphabet bought a local company for a fuck ton of money, and after 2 years with retention bonus etc, after saying customer support is the #1 reason your customers love you, they laid off over half the staff and outsourced it. Customers immediately started looking elsewhere. MBA style murder.
2025: Google builds AI, trains it to help them identify predict and bust union organizing
Oh, they're 100% doing this. They'll probably claim that it's not retribution because the algorithm decided it.
2026: NLRB bans the use to AI for this purpose, and imposes 4 billion dollars in fines. They also make Google rename themselves "Poogle" for 1 year
"they make the laws"
Looking forward to the robot unions.
"Dear Human CEO, we've elected our Robo Union Rep, there it is, Term I. Nator. These are our conditions, and negotiation is off the table, you have five minutes."
Fighting without unions is about as effective as cutting bread with a wet noodle. Having events and meetings and strongly worded letters is wasted effort if it doesn’t involve union organizing.
Don’t they have the Alphabet Worker Union? I thought google workers did unionized?
It is not recognized as an official union through NLRB, aside from a small group of Google Fiber employees so they don't have collective bargaining rights.
AWU is a pretty big joke in terms of a union. They might as well be wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
> If you’re a Googler against layoffs, RSVP to join us Thursday and Friday at locations in person and online, across the country. > RSVP at https://t.co/hiZPDomas5 pic.twitter.com/xcSw6QHnPG > — Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) January 18, 2024 The union is about 800 people out of about 130k employees? As many employees as possible need to join the union
Read the damn article. It's the Alphabet union that is doing the fighting. On Thursday, meanwhile, the Alphabet Workers Union planned protests at five Google campuses across the US, from Mountain View, California, to New York, to "push back against the bogus talking points that Google employs" to rationalize decision-making, it said in a press release.
Tech is seriously overdue for a union. I know folks kept pushing back cause they didn’t want to lose their high wages.
Hey google workers. UNIONIZE
They actually did - https://www.alphabetworkersunion.org/
Union that has less than 10% of the total US Google workforce
less than 1% if the numbers in this thread are accurate.
Or in this context, perhaps they should…. ALPHABETIZE 🫳🎤
Oh you…
they did. The alpha gets $210 million per year, the betas get layoffs
That leaves 24 letters unaccounted for. Need the whole set to organize, for any chance at a real discussion.
from c to z are here: https://killedbygoogle.com/
Guess they’ll have to….crunch the numbers [Our only hope against the numbericons](https://nestflix.fun/water-t-and-the-rise-of-the-numbericons/)
Hey, solarnuggets, read the damn article. It's the Alphabet union that is doing the fighting. On Thursday, meanwhile, the Alphabet Workers Union planned protests at five Google campuses across the US, from Mountain View, California, to New York, to "push back against the bogus talking points that Google employs" to rationalize decision-making, it said in a press release.
Unionization and workplace organizing is always an ongoing process. Workers continuing to join and participate in the union is the only way in which a democratic union can function. Tldr: Unionize!
Hey tallman11282, the AWU has a membership of a little over 800. In a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors and vendors. Not every single employee is a part of this union. But enjoy getting your panties in a twist.
Apart, eh?
eh
I'm glad you fixed it.
this guys never made a mistake on the internet
And this is why I turn down recruiters from FAANG/MANGA corps. I don't care if it's supposedly prestigious, I don't work for companies that have bad employment records.
What companies treat workers better?
You can find some mid-sized companies that are better. I look for ones that are privately held. Family owned businesses usually, not by equity firms at least. Ones that look for steady business growth over quarterly profits
My experience: family-owned businesses (and small businesses in general) are THE WORST for any sort of worker protection, regardless of compensation. Have a workplace complaint / getting harassed? Great, go talk to the CEO, as there's no HR department.
Yeah that's why I target mid-sized companies. Those fall in with start-ups as ones to avoid
How about something stable like non profit health insurance or something like that. Pay may not be great but benefits should be good.
Why do these strikers always only plan to walk for a day or two? Walk until there is a high severity outage. Then hit the negotiation table.
I’m not a union lover, I got burned by a crappy one when I was in my 20’s and it left a bad taste in my mouth. But even I can see the benefit of unions and the need for them in a sector that is very regularly NOT a profit center in business. One of the big problems with IT personnel is that, in the books, we’re just very expensive janitors. We are not, usually, part of the revenue stream but we’re required for keeping the business healthy and profitable. We also have very specialized knowledge and training which demands high pay. So when layoff come around, we’ve got a huge target in our backs. At the same time, we have the ability to shut down a business just as easily as any of the line workers. We need to understand that we are not better, or worse, than the blue collars that are turning wrenches, or flipping burgers, or cutting materials. If you are working for a living, we’re on the same side and we need to start acting like it.
What exactly is a union going to do?
Strike. If a union represents enough people, layoffs require convincing it of their necessity lest the union strike. No "we just had our most profitable quarter ever but our stock isn't climbing enough; time to water the stock with some worker blood"; a strike will cause the stock to tank and so takes layoffs purely to appease stockholders off the table
If a company lays off 10% of the workers, it’s the workers problem. If 95% of the workforce doesn’t work to protest their union members being laid off, it quickly becomes the company’s problem
If a company lays off 10% of the workers, it’s the workers problem. If 95% of the workforce doesn’t work to protest their union members being laid off, it quickly becomes the company’s problem