I don’t have much experience with unions. Here in Norway they seem to be common and a couple of my colleagues are union members. Employment is not “at-will” and so employees already have a lot of rights. From what I understand, the benefits of joining a union are more for salary negotiation, housing loans, and other life benefits. I’d be interested to learn more from anyone who has experience with unions in Norway.
Pay isn’t everything. There is also sick leave, payed vacation time, parental leave, job safety and security, privacy guarantees etc.
USA software engineers are lacking in all of these. Many countries in Europe have those labor benefits as national law and unions are more about enforcing these rights, and protecting the workers from violation of them.
> USA software engineers are lacking in all of these.
My last two companies gave me 6 months each for parental leave. I also took a lot of sick time. Agree with vacation time though, could be better.
> job safety and security,
Job market in USA for engineers has been really good. Most software engineers i know have 'job safety' in a sense that they can find a job in a couple of weeks or couple of months at most. But randomly getting fired isn't super common from what i've seen.
One aspect that is often overlooked is the possibility of having labor represented at the executive level. The people doing the work have good idea about how to improve the product or what changes will be bad for the product. I always heard that unions leads to greater quality and I think it is because that greater voice lets you push back when management askes you to cut corners.
