While I don't go out of my way to avoid buying from them, some unions in particular produce objectively shitty products, such as UAW. Go look at their own published list of makes and models, then look at their reliability ratings on consumer reports.

And then there's Boeing... Definitely leadership problems there, but what's the point of a union if they don't even do anything about retaliation? Feels like the union is only there to ensure people get longer breaks and more pay.

There is no such thing as unskilled labor.

Dig deeper and you'll find that every bit of union red tape and 'arbitrary rule' is a patch against some kooky attempt by management to cheat on the previous agreement. Unions wouldn't watch the stove controls so closely if management would quit trying to boil the frog.

As for "overpaid by a large margin" that's easy to say if you're not the one doing that work. They probably think you're overpaid by a large margin considering all you do is sit on your ass and poke at a keyboard all day.

But consider, if the

Unions should be avoided from my view. The few unions we have to deal with in a right to work state show that they just collect part of your income, and drive up costs of things that need to be done.

Installing a shelf on a wall in a closet was quoted at $8,000 by the union we are required to use for "construction". That does not include the shelf costs. They said they needed 4 people to do the job. We bought a free standing shelf for a heck of a lot less than that.

You also have to look at what a union s

If unskilled labor is just something machines can't do yet, then a lot of programmers are about to find out they are unskilled labor.

because they grew up during the pre-India labor shortages. Survivor bias is a hell of a drug and every boomer and older Gen Xer I know that made it this far through layoffs thinks they're Richard Stallman by way of Albert Einstein (or vice versa).

The kids know better. They go to meetings and see a see of cheap labor they're forced to compete with. They get laid off ever 2-5 years to bump the stock price for another round of buy backs no matter how productive they are. And every year price gouging eats u

Higher value employees generally don't favour unions. They'd rather be paid their above average worth. Lower value employees would rather their pay be brought up to the average worth of all the employees.

Because programming is more or less a trade now and without unions trades get paid like shit because you can train somebody up on it in about a year maybe two at the most.

People with advanced mathematics are the ones getting treated well. Typically people who have a specific niche skill that's needed. And the unemployment line is littered with people who developed those niche skills and technology moved on and they didn't have three or four years to spend obsessively building up a new niche skill set. O

This comes across to me as, "fuck you, I got mine." Maybe you're not like that in person, but that's the impression you're giving. And I think most of that deals with this assumption on your part:

> Then the word spread. A job in software is the key to riches. A flood of people with no talent or passion poured into schools and then into industry

Now, I don't know much about your life, and maybe you've been lucky to avoid the boom and bust cycles of our economy, and maybe you just chalk that up to being a

I mostly agree with you, but quibble on a couple of points.

These "tools and frameworks" don't just make mediocre programmers able to churn out mediocre code, they also enable skilled programmers to churn out excellent code faster. What the frameworks have really done, is move the center of difficulty. It used to be that the most difficult part of programming, was correctly telling the computer what to do. Those days are long gone. These days, the hardest part of programming, is *deciding* what you want the

Oh... boy, yet another programmer that says he is the one. I hear that annoyingly often these days. Usually it means trouble. Trump style trouble.

Union employees get far, far, more back than they pay in dues.

> my employer was more than happy to pay me due to my skills and experience anyway.

Assuming this story is true, what you don't seem to realize is that you were being underpaid. If you didn't get any push-back, that means you're still underpaid.

There's a reason companies universally try to illegally keep their employees from discussing compensation with one another. A friend of mine once got a $30,000 raise. He was thrilled until he found out that one of people he supervises was making more than he was! He was being dramat

Unions pay for themselves by several multiples. People who have unions make more money than people who don't and even people who don't have unions make more money if unions are in a good position because obviously.

Now what you can't do if you want unions to be effective is vote with your gut. You can't vote with your feelings. Because unions ultimately need support from the government in order to counteract the almost unimaginable power of a modern international corporation. So yeah if you keep voting

Growing up in 70s Britain, my experience of unions was extremely negative; they nearly ran the country into the ground until Margaret Thatcher beat them down.

Turns out Thatcher had a good crack at running the country into the ground. The conservative way is is to flog off the country cheap either to their mates or to buy votes. Right to buy has eviscerated public housing causing a crisis. We now pay over the odds for water companies which sold off critical infrastructure (reservoirs) while literally dumping

>> 67% of American Tech Workers Interested In Joining a Union

> Then those workers have a good metric for their voting this year as one political party is pro-union and the other is not.

Yeah, well, the supposedly pro-union bunch increased the prices of pretty much everything you buy by about 20%, and the PRO-WORKER guy increased the median family income from $62K to $68K / yr the last time he was President. Choose carefully.