I am very pro-union. I was a Teamster for years (Local 495).
I now work in the game industry. A good chunk of the gamedevs I know are pro-union, but there's enough of those opposed where there's effectively a question mark.
Generally, the holdouts tend to think:
-
Union leadership is corrupt/greedy, and they don't want to give union leaders money for "nothing" (as they see it)
-
Being in a union means everyone would need to be bound to strict regulations - keeping exact track of time worked, having exact lunch breaks, documenting everything. As-is in the game industry, the "standard" at most places is hands-off, take lunch whenever, stay at lunch however long you want, clock in/out whenever, nobody questions you as long as your work is getting done. People like this and don't want to risk losing it
-
Being in a union threatens close relationships with management. I can say that when I was a Teamster, management was outright adversarial and conversations with them weren't fun. In the game industry, management is quite literally my friends and people I chill out with. There's a very, very blurry line between "friends" and "bosses" - some bosses are horrible, to be sure, but the general vibe is casual
-
There's a lot of benefits in the office like free snacks, free swag, a place to chill out and play games at work, etc. People are afraid that this would count as "compensation" and thus being unionized would mean that you'd have to pay for snacks or swag or whatever - or that it could be taken away as retaliation from management
Again, I myself am very pro-union. However, to some extent I can see the logic in each of these bullet points - I disliked the guy running my Teamster local way back when because I felt he was too soft and captured by management. I can understand needing to clock in/out (fairest way to ensure nobody is being overworked), ruining relationships (can't have accusations of bias from being friendly), and losing benefits (although this can be put into a contract).
So I can understand where the holdouts at least are coming from. It would take a shitty workplace for it to happen. I hear Blizzard is really bad from people who have worked there, and my money is still on them being the first "big" dev to unionize - assuming Microsoft doesn't come in and clean up.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m actually the reverse of this, a former programmer who is now a school bus driver (and a Teamster). Another bullet point for your list would be that programmers tend to think of themselves as being a lot better than most other programmers and thus deserving of much better compensation. The general union mindset of everybody getting paid the same (or more based purely on seniority rather than ability) doesn’t really fit very well with that - even though it’s necessary to prevent managers from using workers against each other.
EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yep, you're 100% right. People who have the same job can be paid dramatically differently, and the "reasoning" is that one guy is better at things than the other.
I got a 9% raise this year because I outperformed everyone else on my team, but I know that my 9% raise came at the expense of someone who only got a 2% raise. A union contract would give everyone like a 4-5% raise, which people dislike because they always think they're going to be the ones on top of the totem pole.