this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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I have a friend in programming. He says it's baffling that the entire industry is anti-union and tends to be pretty pro-corporate.
It's because companies have tricked them into thinking that joining unions means they wouldn't get paid as well or would restrict their promotions. Also they had it pretty good for a long time as their jobs were in demand which gave them more negotiating power so they got paid better and had more benefits. But now that their jobs are put in danger by AI they are kinda fucked since they individually don't have the same power anymore, power which they would have as a unionized block.
I agree on the tricking them, but there's another part I look at. Basic fucking pattern recognition. The jobs have stopped being the in demand for a while now, and they're not so much on the negotiating power. But the idea of a union is still apparently more anathema and are shocked at these mass layoffs that keep happening.
I have a feeling that’ll shift in the next few years.
When things are great, everyone is hiring and the money is flowing a union doesn’t seem necessary. But that’s drying up now and it’s looking to be worse than the dot com crash. That’s when BS starts to come from companies and the anti union people aren’t gonna get the same paychecks and perks they used to.
Ehhhhhh... I don't have faith in it. The manufacturing sector has been in the process of getting worse back when I tried to get into it in 08, and finally gave up on actually finding work in the industry and moved to healthcare. I know people who've quit welding jobs because they hit the ceiling on pay and it's still not making living wages here in the midwest.
Yet that's an industry that has consistently anti-union my entire life. They just buy into the foreigners taking their jobs. I fear the programming sector will drink the same koolaid, just Indians instead of Mexicans.