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0 pointsrcme3y ago0 comments

That's really irrelevant. Even if compensation was entirely in cash, they'd likely still be shareholders through index fund investing, e.g. most 401k options would invest in the company. Does that mean employees working at an S&P 500 company should never unionize because technically they're shareholders?

Employees at Google are made shareholders because its cheaper for the company than paying cash. Employees form an absolutely tiny minority. The point of unionizing is to increase the leverage of the workers at a company. Workers would benefit much more from unionization than they would from holding the stock at a company without a union.

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chaostheory3y ago· 3 in thread

> Workers would benefit much more from unionization than they would from holding the stock at a company without a union.

Maybe this would work if the employees have some sort of monopoly like the people who work at the ports. However, with knowledge workers there’s a threshold when it’s simply cheaper to move states or even countries.

Employees who are well compensated also do not have an incentive to form a union.

You’re still wrong. What’s your next proposal? Investment bankers should unionize?

rcmeOP3y ago

Investment bankers job is to deploy capital. How would unionizing help them? Will unionizing increase the amount of capital? No, so no sane person would suggest that.

Software engineers are primarily manufacturers. They make products. The barrier to entry is extremely low for this line of work. I get that you think you’re really smart, but there are tens to hundreds of millions of people in the world who could do your job adequately. Your only leverage is to band together with others doing your work and demand your fair share from the business’ owners.

chaostheory3y ago

This is just really backwards

> I get that you think you’re really smart, but there are tens to hundreds of millions of people in the world who could do your job adequately.

This is my point, and you’ve just bolstered it. If knowledge workers ”band together”, the company will just hire elsewhere. Your arguments are terrible

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hn_throwaway_993y ago

> The barrier to entry is extremely low for this line of work. I get that you think you’re really smart, but there are tens to hundreds of millions of people in the world who could do your job adequately.

This is so laughably insane when it comes to Google-caliber software engineers.

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