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Developers need unions. What actually has to happen for devs to get them?
- Thread starter ObbyDent
- Start date
Another Software Developer here who has no interest in a union.
I appreciate the concern for our well-being, but it's honestly a bit misplaced. Developers are not some down-trodden, coal miners who need to organize to fight for our rights. We're very well paid and in great demand. Companies treat us well and if they don't there's plenty of other opportunities for work. Developers are equipped to fight for their own rights as individuals. We have no need for collective bargaining.
I appreciate the concern for our well-being, but it's honestly a bit misplaced. Developers are not some down-trodden, coal miners who need to organize to fight for our rights. We're very well paid and in great demand. Companies treat us well and if they don't there's plenty of other opportunities for work. Developers are equipped to fight for their own rights as individuals. We have no need for collective bargaining.
It will help with the "fall in line, or else" too. But if the employer negotiated an exception where certain times certain rules can be relaxed it might not matter. And yes they could always staff the place with "scabs" and work those poor souls to death.
They were facetious examples of hyperbolic regulations. Obviously, I made them up, and they weren't well received. When I made the edit, I added this note:
They examples quoted so many times in the thread, there's no danger that anyone reading the thread would think that I didn't write that. No pretending was involved.
Are we good?
It applies to all industries in general. I tried to start a union at my last job and most people don't even get the concept of collective bargaining and would rather try to sort it out with HR by themselves.
I guess you're more optimistic than I am. Which is fine, because I really hope I'm wrong.
As someone working in the industry, including - in a previous job - at a studio that booted a bunch of people for even thinking about joining a union, please don't expect devs whose identity might be traced back from Era to express their want for a union in a public forum, while working in an industry that still actively fights against this whole topic.
Personally, I'm currently at a gig that's completely without crunch or otherwise horrible behaviour and genuinely happy with the place, but I can assure you that a lot of devs at other places would love to be unionized. It's just a thing nobody talks about in the open, because, a) well, see above, and b) companies who don't want them meddling in their business do their best to misinform their workers about how they'd destroy everything et cetera.
It's not as easy as some might think (and yes, there might be negative consequences as well, since there will be suddenly a lot more paper trails involved, a lot more organizing and a lot less freedom, depending on how the company is handling things generally).
Personally, I'm currently at a gig that's completely without crunch or otherwise horrible behaviour and genuinely happy with the place, but I can assure you that a lot of devs at other places would love to be unionized. It's just a thing nobody talks about in the open, because, a) well, see above, and b) companies who don't want them meddling in their business do their best to misinform their workers about how they'd destroy everything et cetera.
It's not as easy as some might think (and yes, there might be negative consequences as well, since there will be suddenly a lot more paper trails involved, a lot more organizing and a lot less freedom, depending on how the company is handling things generally).
I've dealt with about a dozen different unions, public and private sector. I have direct supervision over about 6000 employees in my system right now under 3 separate ones. We're all restricted by the same laws. I'm telling you here, you're wrong about this.
That link spells it out more clearly. You cannot negotiate outside of the contract. It's possible to structure the contract so that individual performance bonuses are permissible, but the employee cannot negotiate on their own outside of the terms set within that contract. The link you have is extremely misleading about this.
edit: even more clearly, from the NLRB:
employers MAY NOT
This is federal law. Doing it triggers an unfair labor practice.
This seems to be an issue with unions that set a standard wage. Many AFL-CIO unions set minimums. My union's president encourages us (apprentices) to seek out more valuable skills so that we can eventually negotiate higher than the minimum.
This thread isn't about software developers.
This was in the OP.
How is this thread not about Software Developers? Game Developers are Software Developers.
The OP mentions Naughty Dog and posted this in the gaming forum. That should be all the context needed to understand that this is specifically about game devs.
If I'm not mistaken, software devs outside this industry are - usually - paid way better, have way more secure job situations and, for the most part, don't get potentially laid off once a project is finished. Given the thread is on Era, a gaming forum, following multiple threads about unionization within the game industry, I think it's pretty clear this isn't about general software developers outside of gaming.
As wiser men than me said (also to me), "not everything is about you".
OP
OP
I find it hard to believe that you and that other guy are this dense.
Can you please stop insulting the posters that have come to participate in your thread?
Why would game developers and "not game" developers be subjected to different labor laws? Where do you draw the line for "game" developer? What about something like VRChat?
So what you're suggesting is organizing a nation wide union that only applies for developers in companies in the gaming industry? That's kinda strange, isn't it? Instead of a union representing a subset of the field, wouldn't it make more sense to just have a union for all workers in that company to fight for worker rights? I'm pretty sure the artists and QA people at Naughty Dog are just as stressed out as the programmers.
I'm all for Naughty Dog workers organizing into a union and the workers in other companies following suit.
I'm all for Naughty Dog workers organizing into a union and the workers in other companies following suit.
No. That's not what people are suggesting.
It would be an industry wide union. That covers artists and QA peeps.
It's all explained here.
As part of a studio that has a collective agreement with Unionen, and being the biggest studio in Sweden in the industry, here are some horror stories and negative things we experience regularly when part of a studio that is unionised:
* We have free access to massages, yoga and mindfulness classes, and various organised exercises.
* We have free access to therapists and can request additional grants for any mental health needs.
* We get a bunch of games for free and credits to "buy" other random merchandise.
* We get various ESPP, RSU, stock grants, and similar ongoing bonuses programs.
* Our salaries are very, very competitive on the market.
* New employees get discounts to buy personal hardware.
* We get free Swedish language lessons.
* We get 400 EUR yearly health-related allowance to spend on gym membershps, random health-related personal equipment, personal sports activities, and similar.
* All employees are immediately part of a pre-set Retirement Plan, and get free access to pension consultants.
* The union helps resolve salary related issues between employees and the company.
* The union helps with migration related issues and concerns.
* By working with the union, the studio has much stronger compliance with Swedish labor laws.
* By working with the union, the processes of moving large group of people around for employment reasons are simplified.
I could go on, but it got too scary to continue. Being part of a union, what a horror! :)
* We have free access to massages, yoga and mindfulness classes, and various organised exercises.
* We have free access to therapists and can request additional grants for any mental health needs.
* We get a bunch of games for free and credits to "buy" other random merchandise.
* We get various ESPP, RSU, stock grants, and similar ongoing bonuses programs.
* Our salaries are very, very competitive on the market.
* New employees get discounts to buy personal hardware.
* We get free Swedish language lessons.
* We get 400 EUR yearly health-related allowance to spend on gym membershps, random health-related personal equipment, personal sports activities, and similar.
* All employees are immediately part of a pre-set Retirement Plan, and get free access to pension consultants.
* The union helps resolve salary related issues between employees and the company.
* The union helps with migration related issues and concerns.
* By working with the union, the studio has much stronger compliance with Swedish labor laws.
* By working with the union, the processes of moving large group of people around for employment reasons are simplified.
I could go on, but it got too scary to continue. Being part of a union, what a horror! :)
You mentioned that on post #133. I agree with your idea -- don't get me wrong - - but let's not pretend that's what this topic was about since the beginning. The OP was clearly talking exclusively about developers.
People would be more respectful if you dropped the cocky attitude. Obviously there is better job security with unions but unions also have their downfalls with dues and treating all members as equal. What is appealing to many are the benefits including proper break times, holidays, standard operating hours and overtime, and retirement packages.
I see, thanks for explaining!
I guess that explains why Nintendo was able to hire non-union voice actors then. They can just hire a studio in another state for the job, so it's a workaround. Would be a lot harder to do the same with their dev studios.
I don't want to put words into OP mouth. But i honestly interrupted it to be that way.
Yeah, Ive worked for a large union for a long time and you wouldn't believe how many people open a second company with a slightly different name so they dont have to pay their workers union wages.
Exposure to aggressive unions can also have that effect. I've presented at conferences where trying to set up for a demo I found out I wasn't allowed to plug in my own equipment. Why? Unions had negotiated that they were the only ones allowed to plug anything in anywhere in the entire convention center.
It's not that they're ill intentioned, it's that they're comprised of people. Groups of people are inherently political, and the notion of working somewhere that has two political parties (management and unions) that need to agree to get anything done? Well, it's not the worst idea, but it does have its problems. In a technology company in particular, slowing down the pace of decision making and the ability to shift strategies is a real problem.
Not that putting everything in management's hands is always ideal, either. It's just that the idea that unions inherently improve things is overly simplistic.
Funny. This is an exact experience that I had at McCormick place when setting up a booth for a hosting company I used to work for.
The reason unions have to do the small stupid shit (like plugging in electronics at conventions) is because they have to police their own work. If they don't, contractors can use it as evidence in negotiations to take that work away from union members. There's some small stuff I don't necessarily like doing in my job, but if I let the shop guys do it, there's potential that the entire union could lose that little work and have it handed off to people making $10/hour.
There's a constant push and pull between unions and contractors and that has created a situation where union members have no choice but to police their work to the extreme.
First step, developers need to want an union and fight tooth and nail for it. It won't be easy and there is a real possibility of job lost and broken friendships as the history of unionizing has shown us in the US. This isn't for the fickle.
Second step, vote for laws and politicians that support unions and get rid of many the anti-union laws across the country.
Third step, have a lot of patient. This isn't something that can be done overnight and can possibly take years. So you have to be it in for the long haul and all the BS that comes with it.
Second step, vote for laws and politicians that support unions and get rid of many the anti-union laws across the country.
Third step, have a lot of patient. This isn't something that can be done overnight and can possibly take years. So you have to be it in for the long haul and all the BS that comes with it.
In America step one would be electing Sanders. One of his key plans is to make signing up for a union easier and legally requiring companies to negotiate and penalizing them if they don't negotiate in good faith. He's put time limits in place too, so even if companies drag their feet eventually they'll be forced into arbitration and whatever comes out of that is binding. He also wants to kill the misuse of the "independent contractors" classification. "Right to strike" is included as well. So basically step one is electing someone who will lay the foundation for unions and make it impossible for giant companies to wiggle their way out of it.
My mom was a teacher and in a union. While the union was a good thing for the most part, it did have some downsides. The most noticeably being that the school system couldn't fire teachers after they reached a certain seniority unless they do something illegal or amoral (I think it was five years). Sounds good on paper since this prevent teachers from being fire for petty or political reasons, but this had the unintended consequence of not being able to fire bad teachers. Namely, teacher who became lazy or unable to control their classrooms. Which made many classrooms fall behind because they went an entire year without being properly taught, which forces the next teacher to pick up the slack, which puts everyone behind. This only gets worse if the student had several bad teachers, which can literally put them years behind.
This is actually how my school system suffered. Too many bad teachers and principles who were allowed to keep their jobs thanks to the union, along with a terrible superintended (not related to the union, but sure in hell didn't help).
An extreme change in American politics.
Corporations have gotten pretty good at making employees just happy smfh to not form unions. And even after that, the system is set up against unions without decades of backing.
To make matters worse, there's little chance that "scrubs" would be villainized as the "individual" has been systematically demphasized over the last few decades.
Corporations have gotten pretty good at making employees just happy smfh to not form unions. And even after that, the system is set up against unions without decades of backing.
To make matters worse, there's little chance that "scrubs" would be villainized as the "individual" has been systematically demphasized over the last few decades.
As a swede I have never been in a union, all workplaces I have been to have had unions though, but these unions are not workplace specific but branch specific (unless I am missunderstanding some posters here that this seem to be the case in US from time to time?). So game developers and software developers would (IIRC) fall in the same union here.
In Sweden you can be ordered overtime (aka crunch), of course you get well paid and, key here, it is a limit of how much you can work overtime untill you can no longer order overtime due to regulations (laws).
I see. But that wouldn't apply to employees that didn't unionize right? And that separation between union and non-union workers could create a negative work environment
I guess what I'm trying to say is, nearly everybody at Naughty Dog would want to unionize for this to work. And I'm not sure everybody would
In theory yes, but usualy people not in the union is included here in Sweden, aka the employeer applies the same to both groups. You also have to take into account that we in Sweden have quite good worker regulations which removes a lot of the Union needs that people scream after in the US as an example.
If an employer signs a collective agreement then all people they employ are covered, at least for a given profession. Meaning cleaners aren't covered by the collective agreement for engineers for example.
Doesn't matter if the employee is a union member or not. But you aren't covered by the safety net of having the union fight for you in any legal issues.
A union member would have their union represent them legally (and probably for free outside of normal membership fees) if they were fired without cause or harassed etc.
Speaking from a Swedish perspective.
edit: hej hej fanboi 😄
edit2: Oh and also someone talked about laws against bargaining individually. Maybe that's the case in USA but not here. You can never go lower/worse than the framework set up inside the collective agreement. But for example you might be able to switch overtime pay for higher base salary, or get additional benefits not present in the collective agreement.
In all fairness some of the gaming companies I use to work for did offer a lot of these same perks, sans union, BUT only If you were a part of the company... which in most cases meant that QA and other contractors didn't get a lot of these perks you mention (although "the getting games at a discount thing" was usually for everyone, and if you had to stay late they would provide meals at least.).
Also from a non gaming software dev side of things most tech companies offer all of this without you joining a union. Google. Facebook, Apple, even like new tech start ups all offer that and more (maybe not the Swedish language lessons, unless it was required for work I think). I've worked at offices where they had free beer or alcohol for employees, stock options free food, discounts and much, much more.
Personally the only people who need to unionize in gaming are the main people who typically get a raw deal, which would basically mean contracted workers and Testers. BUT seeing how most big companies would rather outsource all of these rolls it makes unionizing tricky for these group of people over all.
I left the game industry mainly because it was killing me, my health declined among other things. I started in the industry as a Tester and then became QA, by the time I left the Industry I made it all the way to Lead UI designer. When I had to start over again I decide to try my hand at tech. At that point in time I decide to go back to QA but not for gaming. Here is where I learned how truly under paid Testers and general QA were in the gaming industry. To compare most testers and QA were paid like 9.50 (and if you worked night shifts you got a little more like 10.50 or 11.00 dollars an hour) at the time when I was still living in LA for gaming. When I moved back from the west cost to the East cost and started working as QA for tech, the tech industry treated me so much better. They offered me a great salary, full time benefits and regular work hours. If I had to learn something new they would pay for my training. The biggest difference between gaming development and software development for tech is that the tech industry treats their works like people and typically try to keep their workers as happy as possible because we can always do better than the company we work at. This vs the game industry which treats most of their contractor works and testers like shit (not all of them do but a good majority of them do) and thus why Unionizing sounds like a better deal for gaming then regular software engineering.
To put it bluntly it's not that non gaming software devs (and Americans) are against Unions, for the most part we get a fair deal so we don't really complain much or have much to complain (not saying we all do Imma sure there are some people of us who might), but overall we get paid well and enjoy some incredible perks from the companies we work for. Game developers on the other hands get mistreated by management and parent companies so often that unionizing sounds like a great idea. Personally I think it would only solve some of the issues, but Imma not sure it would fix crunch time either, (but one could hope anyways).
unions don't make sense in the day-to-day work of tech/IT
you need general strong labour protection laws
like in my country germany we have in general for any job some of the strongest labour laws in the world regardless of unions, so i feel very good as a software engineer
however we have lots of unions, and we are one of the few countries in the world with workers co-determination systems and works councils
but these unions, works councils, only make sense in sectors like manufacturing, construction, etc, which of course in Germany we are one of the biggest in the world. these systems do not make sense in tech/IT though.
what does have good appliance in tech/IT in germany is co-determination, combined with just in general strong labour protection law. this occurs in the big tech/IT companies here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
in germany for example it's very difficult to be fired, you either have to violate your work contract, or the company has to prove that its continued financial losses cannot support the salaries. this is why it is more often in germany people are re-trained in companies in other areas for e.g. if their performance in their current position is not so good. quite a few european countries are like this such as france
this is why i would never move to USA even though i could get 2-3x the salary and had offers from companies, i turned it all down, because I would still be worse off even if i have more money,. germany i get 30 days (but it's actually up to around 40ish days with public holidays) of paid holiday, a couple of months (can't remember exact amount) for sick leave, one of the best welfare systems in the world (healthcare, education, free education on all levels, etc), months of paid maternity leave for mother/father, strong overall labour protection laws in all sectors so that employers who can't just fuck over employees. never felt i needed a union nor any other person working in this sector in the country.
you need general strong labour protection laws
like in my country germany we have in general for any job some of the strongest labour laws in the world regardless of unions, so i feel very good as a software engineer
however we have lots of unions, and we are one of the few countries in the world with workers co-determination systems and works councils
but these unions, works councils, only make sense in sectors like manufacturing, construction, etc, which of course in Germany we are one of the biggest in the world. these systems do not make sense in tech/IT though.
what does have good appliance in tech/IT in germany is co-determination, combined with just in general strong labour protection law. this occurs in the big tech/IT companies here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
in germany for example it's very difficult to be fired, you either have to violate your work contract, or the company has to prove that its continued financial losses cannot support the salaries. this is why it is more often in germany people are re-trained in companies in other areas for e.g. if their performance in their current position is not so good. quite a few european countries are like this such as france
this is why i would never move to USA even though i could get 2-3x the salary and had offers from companies, i turned it all down, because I would still be worse off even if i have more money,. germany i get 30 days (but it's actually up to around 40ish days with public holidays) of paid holiday, a couple of months (can't remember exact amount) for sick leave, one of the best welfare systems in the world (healthcare, education, free education on all levels, etc), months of paid maternity leave for mother/father, strong overall labour protection laws in all sectors so that employers who can't just fuck over employees. never felt i needed a union nor any other person working in this sector in the country.
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People continually complain and then feel powerless to make any changes.
Do you know what helps with that? Unionisation.
Do you know what helps with that? Unionisation.
I find it genuinely incredible as a non-american that US people seriously argue against the benefits of working as a collective of same class to improve your conditions and think that management and the government will give you better conditions, hypothetically down the line? Like, it's just unthinkable for me, living in a country where the whole healthcare and labour legislation was built on the back of unionisation and aggressive fightbacks.
And to consider that unions are a bad thing because sometimes you gotta wait for one guy to plug a thing in an outlet? Wild.
And to consider that unions are a bad thing because sometimes you gotta wait for one guy to plug a thing in an outlet? Wild.
Important note: The reason we have those regulations in the first place (both in Sweden and Germany), is because unions fought tooth and nail for them. They are being scrapped and de-fanged and are not set in stone (see the recent neutering of the right to strike in Sweden).
I usually draw the comparison of pro-/anti-vaccination:
The very reason that certain diseases are nearly eradicated in the first place, is vaccination programs. This means that people have the luxury of becoming complacent, because they haven't experienced the disease and aren't aware that the absence of the disease is not set in stone going forward into the future. So why should they or their children get vaccinated? It's not like the measles are a threat in the 21st century! Cue reduction in vaccination rates. Cue increase of infected. The diseases are seen as a thing of the past, so people don't see the reason for vaccinations.
The very reason that workers' right exist in the first place, is that unions fought for them (sometimes literally, with workers being killed by police and military). This means that people have the luxury of becoming complacent, because they haven't experienced a life without an 8-hour work day or paid vacation, and are not aware that their rights in the workplace aren't set in stone going forward into the future. So why should they join a union and pay a fee? It's not like European workers lack workplace rights in the 21st century! Cue reduction in union memberships and bargaining power. Cue the gradual hollowing out of workers' rights. The fight for workers' rights is seen as a thing of the past, so people don't see the reason for unions.
Unions are a vaccine. And like all vaccines they aren't perfect, but they're a damn sight better than the alternative.
Man, it is scary how opposed people can be to unions when they clearly have no idea what they are. I think people really need to educate themselves on this matter; I am seeing a lot of paranoid, anti-union propaganda pop up in this thread. It is a little disconcerting.
Maybe the first step is disseminating reliable, accurate information to people working in game development?
Maybe the first step is disseminating reliable, accurate information to people working in game development?