kwyjobojoe
Joined 5 years ago
Joined 5 years ago
USA has this really perverse view that unions are about dragging everyone down to the level of the worst employee, demanding money and gangsta standover men.
Most unions are about having someone in your corner when the big bad company decides to step on little old you. It's about having legal backing so some bro startup lord can't make your life a misery because you objected to him sexually harassing you.
I've worked at large dev companies, and had to put up with years of bullshit, team cuts, denied payrises because of other teams not getting their shit down, seeing teams lauded for breaking the rules then other teams threatened with firing for copying the favoured teams, teams gutted to make blackops groups for whatever stupid idea an exec currently likes then the originals teams getting no bonuses because they can't keep up. The vast majority of people in charge in software are selfish jerks, whether they are born again coders or mba suits brought in to increase profits. Unions are there so you are not alone
Now I work in one of the most unionised organisations in the country. Management might still be bastards, but I have thousands people on my side.
I worked at a financial software firm written in python that used Excel behind the scenes to run calculations and modelling.
Why? Because we don't have access to any databases. I dread to think of the requests and committees I would need to find and traverse to get a database set up for my team, let alone a system that I can write and run code on. Yet we can guarantee that every internal and external user has access to Excel.
Unless you are working for a software firm, or are part of a dedicated analytics team with access to suitable systems, large companies and government pretty much have no chance of being able to roll your own database.
Don't suggest Access. Never suggest Access.
The world doesn't work like that for the vast majority. Hell, I worked in a software role for 10 years and it took me 2 years to find a non contract, full time role elsewhere. I applied for hundreds of jobs, with university education and experience, and got a handful of responses.
The economy is set up so a minority of people live in heaven while everyone else is treated like an expendable cost centre.
Also, unionised workplaces do allow for terminating underperforming employees. It's just that companies need to try to actually help the employee first, and have clearly defined polices that lay out the process and allow the employee to appeal. The tech method of software deciding you get fired and no human can override is soooooooo much better.
I moved from one of Australia's largest software firms into a union role and got a 40% pay rise, and it's set in contracts exactly what I get paid and what increases I get. Which I much prefer than my pay rise depending on whether management would prefer to reward their friends.