> creating more opportunities for young new grads to break in
Just going to point out, everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in, not easier, by increasing the commitment an employer is expected to make to an employee, and by making it harder to remove employees that need to be removed but can't because of their seniority with the union.
Just going to point out, everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in, not easier
My observation has been the opposite. I believe because the unions have an interest in increasing their membership, not letting it atrophy and decrease due to time and deaths. A union that doesn't have a growing membership is a union that will disappear.
In fact, some unions I've seen have teams of people (including lawyers) whose sole purpose is taking illegal immigrants working in their industry and getting them properly documented and teaching them English for free so that they will eventually join the union.
Where I have seen this is in carpenters, bartenders, maids, food service, stagehands, and a few others. The industries you've seen may be different.
Worth noting that if they didn't do this, then those same people would be easily exploitable competition in their profession, so it's probably self-interest even for the individual existing union members, as well as the union itself to bring them inside the system.
With the huge decline of unions there's no way the old ways are set in stone. A freshly unionized field should take care to make sure new members don't loose the politics and enthusiasm, leading to decline a generation later.
Unions lost for a couple of reasons: their feet were cut out from under them via outsourcing/globalization. They didn’t/couldn’t picket moving factories overseas and both political parties were complicit in this.
Similarly the economy moved toward services and unions didn’t prepare for that.
Three unions ossified, became political and self-serving (not looking after their workers solely but looking after the org for its own sake and its bosses.)
Yes this is all true to some degree. Check out the first article of https://libcom.org/files/Rad%20America%20V10%20I5.pdf for discussion of the changes to union structure at their peak which may helped along the 3rd.
My original point is the old unions have no leverage not to acknowledge this and accommodate the concerns of a newly union members in a freshly industry.
The only union I know much about is IBEW. My dad's family is huge, and everyone in it is an electrician basically.
The way it seems to work is that a contractor wants N number of electricians for a contract, so the first N electricians in the queue are laid off get dequeued and sent to work.
This is a really interesting system, and I think if there were subgroups of software engineers it would pretty much work fine. I think at the end of the day, SWEs tend to be picky about where they work, and employers tend to want SWEs with backgrounds that perfectly match their needs.
I dunno, I think if someone could figure out how to make a queueing system work, it could work for a lot of people and businesses.
It seems close to the agency model already. Only problem is, I don't see how you're going to get top engineers to join. Most of them are already making bananas money, and I don't see how highly compensated engineers would fit into this model at all.
> Only problem is, I don't see how you're going to get top engineers to join.
You appeal to their boredom. FAANG pays people to not compete more than anything. Rotation is a chance to break the monotony and actually be able to steer the ship for a change.
>I believe because the unions have an interest in increasing their membership, not letting it atrophy and decrease due to time and deaths.
It really depends. The smaller the organizing unit, the more short-sighted they're going to be because they have less leverage and they benefit less from long-term big picture thinking. For example, if I'm a union that organizes machinists specializing in a specific type of tool then my focus is going to be on keeping this tool in place and these machinists employed, even if it's at the expense of new entrants or generational changes in technology. If the union is organized for an entire industrial sector, though, then their focus is on organizing and developing labor rights and practices for the sector as a whole rather than any specific shop.
The big difference with these industries is that they are global. When the Austin office becomes uneconomical, it gets wound down and the Montreal office ramped up, or Warsaw, or Manila, or Brisbane, or... so many to choose from in many cases. The only power workers have over their employers is to stop work. Picket lines exist to increase the cost of bringing in new workers. But you are powerless if the employer is in a position to move the work elsewhere on the planet, especially if it is a net cost saving that will earn the executives a fat bonus.
The screen writers guild has some systems in place to ensure that a certain amount of scripts from 'new writers' have to be taken in. Not sure how effective that is, but that's a thing.
I was basically thinking about my present company that has done a great job of bringing in coops from local universities for work terms. We've had a great experience with this. However, this is one of the only games companies I've worked at that does it.
How does that square with what David Simon has to say in, “But I’m not a lawyer. I’m an Agent”?[1]. It seems pretty fanning about what happens to novices in the industry.
There's definitely a tension. When employers can treat employees as disposable, there is more firing and thus (sometimes) more hiring.
However, unions increase the value of jobs. Union workers enjoy a better QOL and career stability, and they can actually build a life for themselves without worrying about being fired on a whimsy.
Luckily for something like game development, it is a growing industry with a low barrier to entry. Finding a job or starting a new company is very realistic-- until the next economic downturn, which will hurt union and non-union workers alike
Game dev is not a low barrier to entry industry. It is WAY easier to get a SDE job at a FAANG straight out of college than it is to get a job as a programmer at a big name studio, even with experience.
Maybe at a place like Valve, but that's a special case. a private company swimming in cash and having basically zero urgency to innovate or produce even derivative content.
Any of the Rockstar Games studios, Naughty Dog, SCE Santa Monica, Bungie, Epic Games, any of the main Activision-Blizzard (Ininity Ward, Treyarcht) or EA studios (Respawn), etc... basically any major studio rarely hire straight out of college.
> everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in
I'd imagine unions are most prevalent in industries with a surplus of workers.
If you have a rapid growth industry with competitive hiring practices, you're probably getting treated great and courted to switch jobs for higher pay pretty frequently.
If your industry is stagnant and management is constantly trying to replace you with less expensive workers that can be quickly trained to do the same job I can see why there would be a strong desire to unionize.
In that sense, I can see how the union would be protecting it's workforce by stemming the inflow of new employees. The fewer the supply of workers, the higher demand for the one's you have.
One key difference for unions is whether a job is project based or more of a permanent placement. The problems you mentioned are often a problem in the latter like with teacher or police unions. Project based workplaces are different in that they have a natural turnover and people need to be continually rehired so seniority or difficult to remove employees are less of a problem. The various unions in the entertainment industry are a good example of this. Video games are closer to the project based end of the spectrum.
Just going to point out, everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in, not easier, by increasing the commitment an employer is expected to make to an employee, and by making it harder to remove employees that need to be removed but can't because of their seniority with the union.