cjhanks

Today Zipcar sent me an e-mail stating:

> Thank you for being a Zipcar member. We’re writing to let you know we’re moving your account to our $7 standard monthly plan and retiring your previous membership plan. This change should be reflected in your next billing cycle, but it may be a few cycles before it shows up on your account.

That is, Zipcar is automatically changing me from a $0/month plan to $7/month plan. And they provide no "Cancel my account" feature on their site.

Is this even legal?

It has been my observation that there exists a division between management and engineering in both smaller and larger software companies. As a consequence, management in many software companies has become less about the advocacy of employees and more about controlling people's free will.

Are there any existing software engineers unions? Has there been any past attempts at creating them? If so, do we know why they failed?

To be clear about what a "union" is in this context:

- Hours should be within "reason" (agreed upon during hiring and salary negotiations) and an employee should not be required to work beyond them, but should be permitted if they so choose of their free volition.

- Wrongful terminations would receive legal support from the community which prevented larger companies from abusing the legal system to prevent justice.

- Hostile work environments for all would be handled through cooperation between union mediators and company advocates.

There would of course be dues, but hopefully the very existence of a union would be enough to dissuade some of these companies from acting ruthlessly.

Any thoughts are welcome, even if they believe this to be a bad idea.