Your basic statement is true @pmbrandvold:

> the power of a #union comes from ultimately being able to stop work and hurt the company because they don’t have an easy way to keep things going, this forcing change.

Though that is the *foundational* power of the #WorkerUnion: stop work to cost the employer; what's important to add, is that power needs to be expressed often, but *avoided* as far as feasible.

To be effective in #CollectiveBargaining, we demonstrate that we want to work!

Why are these effective? For much the same reason they're effective for #Union members generally:

Because cooperating to find the specific tactics that work, and armed with specific information on what not to do, and aided by legal and financial might, we rein in the employer tendency of exploitation.

The bosses use #CollectiveAction all the time to great advantage; they call it a corporation. When we do it, it's called a #WorkerUnion, and it advantages workers.

@pmbrandvold

So @pmbrandvold, a tech union still works much the same in these jobs even though they're vulnerable to outsourcing and other strike-breaking tactics.

Share information: our salaries, our conditions of work, our successful and unsuccessful negotiating tactics.

Provide mutual aid, legal aid, and the support of knowing many of us are in this together, across many employers.

Come to specific discussions with bosses, armed with general knowledge and buttressed by facts.

#WorkerUnion

@toolbear Maybe. What action would such a union take?

A #WorkerUnion has, as its primary power, that *money* is fungible (the workers can store it up and use it to survive a strike) while their *labour* is not (replacing one worker with another is more difficult than replacing one dollar with another). The boss can't ignore a strike.

But a Consumer Union would consist of people whose primary power is that fungible money. They can boycott, I guess. What is the theory of effective change there?