All a union does is give centralized power to the employees. If employees need to be cut for survival or salaries need to be lowered temporarily than these are things that an employer can provide proof of to the union and together with employees as a union work something out.
A union prevents the laying off of employees as a profit boosting measure even when it IS'NT required for survival. That is wrong on every count.
The employees are a greater part of the company than shareholders, board members, owners and C-level executives combined. Employees are not sheep to be herded and they deserve a centralized voice.
This doesn't make much sense from a numbers perspective. If entrepreneurs and managers manage more than one person then at the very least there should be double the amount of engineers then there are leaders, meaning at best your statements apply to only a third of all software employees if managers all manage 2 people.
Usually this isn't the case. Managers manage up to 5 people so your statements apply to on average 1/6th of all employees.
>As such I'm likely to look at solving problems from all sides and negotiating with a union to "prove" that I need to lay people off sounds extremely troubling from an operational and efficiency standpoint.
The efficiency standpoint is equivalent to the corporate standpoint. There's an additional standpoint you failed to consider. The moral standpoint. A 47 year old father of 3 kids depends on his job as an engineer to support his kids then you come along and fire him to replace him with a kid fresh out of stanford because this kid knows reactjs and will code 12 hour days for half pay.
There is no question, the scenario above is more efficient but it is also ethically wrong. Managers need to take steps to help the employee improve and managers should have their power limited so they cannot fire a father of three just because they don't get along or the kid straight out of stanford is his cousin.
Engineers make up the majority and backbone of a company they are not sheep for you to herd, hire and slaughter based off of operational efficiency.
>As a high performing IC I'm never at risk of being laid off unless the company really is in existential danger.
Good for you. I admire managers who care about the people they employ over managers who are efficient. The best managers are the ones who take underperformers and make them great.
I've observed this to be true myself, but don't really have a good understanding of _why_ that might be. Do you have any insights?
