As someone on the employee side (not games), I too want my company to be able to fire bad employees at will. Having been at companies that do and don't, I very much prefer the ones that do lest the workplace become bloated with low quality.
> It is also the case that unions serve the interests of those who are not "rock star developers" more than those who are.
I'm not convinced in the current market that those interests need serving to the detriment of the better devs. Were the employers in a more favorable position I could see a different view. But right now any half-way capable dev (i.e. not "rock star") has plenty of current advantages sans union.
A union is ultimately just labor doing collective bargaining, which is certainly something capital+management does. What is bargained for isn't set in stone; while lots of people are interested in making sure firing isn't arbitrary, labor doesn't have to bargain over making people unfire-able, or even on specific compensation. A well-run union bargains for what its membership wants. If a union of software developers wants competent productive co-workers, then it can leave at-will firings on the table and instead push for limits on hours worked per week, or bonuses based on revenue (with access to the books to double check), or employment agreements that vigorously protect individual IP rights to anything made on their own time, or sane office layouts instead of open plan, or a generous severance package with at-will firing, or provisions for no confidence votes for some management positions, or, well, any number of things.
What else can you imagine beyond compensation or job security that could be improved in the lot of a software developer? Maybe even some things could yield productivity benefits that management would like if they could see their way through it? And if some of these things are more likely with collective bargaining, why would you rule it out as a tool?
In the current market, I'd rather bargain for myself. We shouldn't pretend what a union wants is what every one of its members wants. Leaving at-will firings on the table for instance is unlikely to garner popular support. I personally don't want specific severance requirements for those fired, otherwise you end up with defacto unfire-able situations because you've artificially increased the cost to remove a bad employee. I don't want to force them to run their company a certain way by rule, I'll just voice displeasure and leave if necessary. Due to the vast differences in employer packages and the freedom of choice given to the employee in the current demand-heavy market, I find individual bargaining to currently be more beneficial than collective bargaining.
> if some of these things are more likely with collective bargaining, why would you rule it out as a tool?
Because of all the negative externalities that happen to some employees and employers. If it was all upside there would be no reason. It's not ruled out as a tool, just its use in the current dev (general, maybe not game specific) market.
> We shouldn't pretend what a union wants is what every one of its members wants.
We shouldn't pretend that what a union wants is arbitrarily disjointed from the individual interests of its members, either.
Every collective has the potential to depart from individual preferences in some way. How much that happens varies in practice.
And it's pretty likely that your employment agreements are not an exception, even if you've arrived at them without any collective work on your side.
> Leaving at-will firings on the table for instance is unlikely to garner popular support.
This assumes the only incentive for joining a union is ultimate job security. That's a popular anti-union conception, but that doesn't make it correct. Any popular benefit that is not commonly conferred could provide a cohesion point for collective bargaining.
> I personally don't want specific severance requirements for those fired, otherwise you end up with defacto unfire-able situations because you've artificially increased the cost to remove a bad employee.
Increasing the cost of something is very different from making it defacto impossible. Though it is one way of providing an incentive against doing something arbitrarily. And it's not clear a negotiated price for firing would be any more "artificial" than any other negotiated price, up to and including your salary.
> I don't want to force them to run their company a certain way by rule, I'll just voice displeasure and leave if necessary.
That's pretty much how unions work. It just turns out to have more leverage if you multiply it by the size of the participating workforce.
> Due to the vast differences in employer packages and the freedom of choice given to the employee in the current demand-heavy market
Again, the freedom of individually negotiated compensation can co-exist with collective bargaining. A sibling comment even points out examples.
Doesn't make much sense. Collective bargaining is just that. If you trust the company to do what is best you should have no problem because the company will bargain for what it finds important. Also you seemingly care a lot about what would happen with a union, but essentially nothing about how you are treated by the company. That isn't really a very strong position to make an argument from. If your whole idea is that you don't mind taking other opportunities, presumably it would be worth it for you to move to a company that isn't unionized in the same way you would if you didn't agree with what he company was doing.
"A well-run union bargains for what its membership wants."
how? if it's via democracy then no thanks, as that comes with so many issues it's not even funny.
I think making these arguments at this point shows just how effective the decades long campaign of anti-union propaganda has been.
How great did those rockstar employees do when google and other massive companies engaged in anti-poaching agreements to drive salaries down? How good do they do when they end up divorced and miserable after putting in yet another 2 months of 100 hour work weeks?
I think not recognizing the arguments as built instead of propaganda-fed shows how effective the anti-corporate narrative has become.
Unionization doesn't stop illegal collusion, prosecution stops illegal collusion. What is with all the appeal to emotion with divorced, miserable, 100 hour work weeks, etc? Most employees did just fine anyways. Every single job would get value out of a union if the justification is simply saying "but tell that to the employee that was divorced, overworked, blah blah emotional language". At a macro level there are practical concerns.
There are many different types of unions, ranging from the destructive (i.e., Teamsters) to the cooperative (Hollywood guild-unions).
The anti-union propaganda did an amazing job at making most people think that all unions were like the corrupt Teamsters unions of NYC and Chicago, when most of them are nothing at all like that.
Most employees did just fine anyways.
Categorically false. Most employees did fine because unions negotiated the labor rules that led to those "fine" working conditions. Those conditions have worsened as unions have lost their leverage.
You could make that same argument against the concept of defense lawyers. How would you feel if you had to defend yourself against criminal charges without a lawyer? Do you think justice would be served if you had to go it alone against a well-funded, experienced team of prosecutors who want to convict?
Yes, defense lawyers aren't perfect and can't stop all prosecutorial misconduct, but they still help a lot. Ditto with unions.
And unions have labor lawyers. Wouldn't it help the prosecution to add positions whose job would be to identify such issues, and which have visibility across employers?
Today, without a union, how would you as an individual ever know if companies are colluding against you and other workers? What would you do to cause this offense to be prosecuted?
> Every single job would get value out of a union if the justification is simply saying ...
I agree with this sentence, but I draw from it the opposite conclusion. I think most jobs would get value out of a union.
I don't understand your logic here. If something is desirable for everyone, then everyone should do it. We shouldn't assume it's not possible for everyone, and therefore conclude that it must not have been desirable in the first place.
If they unionize, game developers are most likely to copy the union/guild format of Hollywood unions, which provide salary and health protections but otherwise let the members determine employment terms on their own (i.e., contracts for days, weeks, full projects, long-term, or open-ended are all acceptable).
Protecting bad employees is not really what game industry unionization is all about. Its more about standardizing job titles and accreditation, like film industry unions.
Admittedly I assumed this thread had devolved to general development unionization. If game industry employees are valuable, not easily replaceable, limited to only a few companies, and can't easily repurpose themselves then unionization has value.
Unions in Hollywood place a useful role of insuring proper credit and arbitrating when there is a dispute. Some game publishers have tried to avoid credits, partly to make it more difficult to know which employees to poach. But I have seen credits sorely abused in some instances.
That's the beauty of the current over-abundance of demand for devs. You fire bad bosses by quitting. Simply put, if you want to pick your best company, you have to be willing to find it. Similarly, if an employer wants to pick their best devs, they have to be willing to do things like not have bad bosses. In markets where demand is constrained, mobility may not apply, but neither do the benefits of cross-company unions.
> It is also the case that unions serve the interests of those who are not "rock star developers" more than those who are.
I'm not convinced in the current market that those interests need serving to the detriment of the better devs. Were the employers in a more favorable position I could see a different view. But right now any half-way capable dev (i.e. not "rock star") has plenty of current advantages sans union.