What do you think of software developers forming labor unions

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  • If the employee is generating value for the company, why is the company unable to pay them?
  • It is true that some companies will be very careful with an unpaid intern system, and protect them. It is also true that some will be unscrupulous. How can the law differentiate so as to protect unpaid workers? A union, for example, can do that, because it exists at the same level and can act in an atomic way. Regulation is broad-stroke and is easier to for the unscrupulous to find loopholes in.
  • How does the unpaid employee afford to live whilst being unpaid?
  • How does a system where unpaid interns are common not unfairly favour the rich to a massive extent (the fashion industry in particular has this problem)?

The main issue is that in a system where unpaid workers being a thing is normalized, unscrupulous employers will immediately take advantage of that to cut costs. And following on from that, yes, individuals can agree to work unpaid but this may, overall, poison the system for everyone

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You don’t know the circumstances of the unpaid intern. They could be living with friends or their parents while they are getting the payment. And again, itss a MUTUAL agreement between the employee and the company so why does a third party need to interfere and dictate the agreement terms between the employee and the company

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I am fully aware of that, that’s why I wrote the above. Individuals may well be fine, that’s not really the issue with unpaid interns though. Also it’s not actually mutual in many cases, although it may be sold as such.

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Exploitation and abuse can often be wrapped in a thin veneer of “you could have said ‘no’”. We have minimum wage laws because there will always be people who will be desperate enough to “agree” to work for incredibly low pay when the alternative is not to be able to work at all. We have child labor laws because there will always be families desperate enough that the offer of working instead of school as early as possible seems like the best option. We have laws requiring minimum safety standards because there will always be people desperate enough to risk death or injury if that’s the way they can feed their loved ones. We have overtime laws because if people are afraid of losing their jobs, their employers can demand that they work more hours. These laws exist because of labor unions.

In some industries, it is prohibitively difficult to get a full-time job unless you have the type of experience gained through an internship (or similar). Some university programs (including my own) will not give you a degree without an internship. Not only does this mean that there are far more, and better, opportunities for people who can afford to have no income for several months, it pushes poorer people to “agree to” situations that they really can’t afford by doing things like taking on predatory loans, going without necessary medication or medical care, or even becoming homeless. (I knew people in college who went through all three of these things.) Companies will be able to find people desperate enough to work for no pay (and no benefits) from whom they can get free labor and derive profit. This obviously harms the unpaid workers, but also devalues paid employees and makes those paid employees easier to exploit.

Unions historically have existed for professions that are physically dangerous, but industry unions for “white-collar” careers (like journalists or performers) have been seen to be invaluable. There are a number of abuses that exist today that coal miners and factory workers didn’t have to fight against - unpaid internships, 70 hour weeks (with no overtime because you are salaried), being required to always be “on call”, workplace harassment, rapid hire/fire cycles, forcing workers to be treated as “independent contractors”, unreasonably broad non-compete agreements and NDAs, ownership of intellectual property, etc.

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Yeah, and what is wrong with people agreeing to those terms? They increase their wages when you give them opportunities to work and gain skill and experience, not by implementing a price floor that would make it more costly for employers to hire the lowest skilled and least experienced workers. That what price floors like minimum wage do .

You know the history of minimum wage? You know that they were initially advocated for by eugenicists BECAUSE they know the detrimental impact minimum wage laws would have on the poor, minority workers and immigrants?(https://fee.org/articles/the-eugenics-plot-of-the-minimum-wage/)

“We have child labor laws because there will always be families desperate enough that the offer of working instead of school as early as possible seems like the best option.”

Yeah, and child labor LARGELY declined in this country because parents became wealthy enough that they did not need to work. Children work in poorer countries because its a NECESSITY , not because they are being exploitated. Child labour has always existed way before the US was ever thought of . Child labor exist in other countries because those countries are poorer and not as productive as the US and they NEED children to work out of NECESSITY.