The funniest/saddest thing about tech bosses fighting unions so hard is that many of the very same things they complain non-stop about their employees would vanish with a healthy and strong union.

Worries about employees hopping from company to company? Offer them a pension and unions have perks and promotions based on seniority, people won't be leaving.

Struggling with DEI initiatives? Giving the Union rep a seat at the table means that you'll be rid of toxic managers and keep your most valuable diverse employees.

Struggling with recruiting talent? A clear union contract showing what the company will give in exchange for what expectations, you'll have a whole class of people who want stability over chasing the highest paycheck beating a path to your doorstep.

Activist shareholders bullying you about needing to do layoffs even when you know it's not going to actually benefit the company? Tell the investors "Sorry, but we can't do layoffs without risking Labor action." The Activist investors will go away and you'll get more investors who want to hold for the long haul.

Worried about hostile takeovers? Not with a union. Vulture capital will leave your business far alone - Unions are their kryptonite.

@JessTheUnstill so basically what every company in Germany has to do as soon as they get double-digit employees...

Also #Healthcare and #SocialSecurity ain't #perks but must-provide here...

@kkarhan @JessTheUnstill Germany doesn't really have a US-style seniority system, though. For example, here, train drivers are scheduled based on a central system that spreads the painful shifts equally among drivers; in the US, they pick their schedules in seniority order and so for the first 10 years workers are stuck with the shifts nobody else wants.

(The one place I know where office work is organized by seniority, Japan, is infamously inefficient and has brutal working hours to boot.)

@Alon @JessTheUnstill then again, Germans emphasize punctuality and will fulfill their contracts to the letter and prioritize good working conditions and teamwork where beneficial for everyone.
@kkarhan @JessTheUnstill Yeah, to be clear, I think Northern European unions are really good, I'm only pushing back against the line about a seniority system. (Another big difference with the US: unions here are fiercely anti-racist and anti-nativist; a Swedish union report about exploitation of EU migrant construction workers went to great lengths to reject migration restrictions and find models in which such migrants do unionize, citing a positive example from Norway.)

@Alon @kkarhan @JessTheUnstill

"anti-racist and anti-nativist"
reads like an impossible combination to me,

but then I realized that "anti-nativist" means something different in Europe than in the US.

@wrog @kkarhan @JessTheUnstill Even in the US, nativism means anti-immigration attitudes, not support for the rights of Native Americans.

@Alon @kkarhan @JessTheUnstill

I don't think the word gets used that way here. People would find it confusing. (I'll note this is the first I've encountered it, i.e., "nativist" in the sense of white supremacist)

@wrog @Alon @kkarhan @JessTheUnstill The word was used more like that historically, to the point that a 19th century political party opposed to Catholic immigration was officially known as the "Native American Party." Members of the party were required to say "I know nothing" when asked about the workings of the party, leading it to quickly be nicknamed the Know-Nothing Party.