You can't unionize every startup in the world, and non unionized employees will be able to demand a premium.
Other people are free to burden themselves with union rules, and I will be free to accept the higher salary that I can command because my competition is hindered.
It is a competitive advantage to not be burdened by union rules.
I wonder if tech contains too many people who think they are too smart to get screwed to gain critical mass for a union. Maybe everybody thinks they have a competitive advantage... What's weird is that this is also how the employers like it. So is everybody winning, or does one side just think they are? I have never before heard the complaint that unions reduce wages. Maybe I'm missing something because employers should be all for that!
If everyone bargains collectively, overall compensation goes up as companies have much worse alternatives to negotiated agreement. However, these companies are generally very willing to bribe people into breaking solidarity, and so it's often personally lucrative to be the scab crossing picket lines.
Give me a better deal.
If the union job pays 50% more then I will take it. I'd have to be stupid not to.
But don't expect my loyalty to the union. As soon as it become a better deal to do something else, I am going to do that thing.
I don't care about solidarity, or "crossing the picket line" or whatever. I will take the best deal that is offered to me.
It's because when workers at one company have their salaries suppressed - by collusion in hiring, by wage theft, by death-march management - the market rate for their labor goes down overall. When any one company can abuse its workers, we all lose from that injury to the labor market we all share, as well as from the lost productivity from sub-optimal allocation of labor.
Empirically, this is completely untrue. Union workers have higher compensation than nonunion workers overall.
>It is a competitive advantage to not be burdened by union rules.
Doesn't look like that to me. Unions don't just have advantages in terms of salaries; they have the advantage of helping to grease the wheels between companies, between jobs for the unemployed, and between skillsets. Unions are an important source of job-training for an ever-changing field like tech.
Why pay for a web-programming bootcamp if your union dues entitle you to one?
