This is a fascinating example. Thanks for the additional perspective! My gut instinct was that I've worked in a union and I wasn't a fan of it. I am in Canada, so it's possible that union vs non-union employment doesn't have as large of a gap as it would in America.
I'm no expert on unions nor am I an expert on labor economics or game theory, however, I had a few thoughts that I would love references to explore.
1. the union is for employees in Canada and the US. Google employs economists. Is there some game theory solution that would show google should end up transitioning all labor overseas over time? With remote work caused by the pandemic is there really a barrier to eliminating US and Canadian jobs?
2. what's the distribution of google's labor force? As best as I can tell, google has 223,000 total workers. About 45% (102k/223k) are full-time, the rest are temps and contractors. Where are these jobs? What percent are in the US?
3. I have seen employers in the US close up entire businesses and relocate to Canada when the US business unionized. I've seen Canadian businesses close up and move to new provinces when the employees unionized. When the profit loss caused by unions exceeds the transition costs, transitions happen.
4. how many employees are truly irreplaceable? I know a lot of people like to think they can never be replaced, but companies move on. is it like for like? not always.
5. how much of this extra profit employees think they deserve is enabled by google and google scale? i.e., if you're saving google 1 million per year and you think you deserve a large chunk of that, what happens when you try to go to a company that has 1/1000th the scale of google? Note: these union doesn't seem to be aimed at capturing value for them (full-time), but instead seems to seek to distribute the full-time benefits to the part-timers and temps. That's commendable.
6. I'm sure there are more unions than the oversimplification that follows. The google union doesn't seem to be a collective bargaining agreement type union for salaries. Salaries are still up to individuals.
Let's roughly define CBA (collective bargaining agreement) unions vs "superstar" unions.
Superstar unions:
- Hollywood and professional sports have unions where they have minimum salaries and working conditions, but the stars can end up negotiating a huge salary (some sports have salary caps across a team). Will tech workers start taking on agents to negotiate tech contracts on their behalf?
- Sports has drafts and minor leagues, will the hoops to get hired at google become even more outrageous? Look at the meat market that is the NFL combine [2].
CBA unions:
- contractors and temps still exist in these situations. Now full-time jobs are split into permanent part-time (PPT) and full-time (FT). Permanent part-time meaning you can get 40 hours a week, but you have no benefits. This can take years to move from PPT to FT.
- Teaching and nursing unions enforce a minimum level of credentials. Trade unions do too, in the form of apprenticeships, which still require formal education.
- in the negative extreme, the Vancouver longshoreman union jobs are nearly impossible to get. you need to have a family member (yes, these are passed from grandpa to father to son) endorse you to join the union. union call for new members happen every 1-3 or more years. if you're endorsed, you end up in a raffle. if you're lucky enough to be drawn, you still have to wait your turn before you can work and then become full-time. it's a many year long process. or, supposedly, you can buy endorsements for tens of thousands of dollars.
- jobs get opened up internally before being opened up to external candidates
- companies have to provide training to get internal employees who are more or less qualified up to a level suitable to accept the next jobs.
7. There has been mention of other fields such as accounting, law, and medicine. I don't think these are the same types of unions. In Canada anyway, you have to go through certain education, professional exams, and professional development in engineering and accounting. At a first level, you need to get professional licensing. That doesn't seem to be the same type of union presented here. If anything, moving tech towards accounting, engineering, law, medicine, etc. will add more gate keeping, and I've seen lots of arguments against gate keeping on HN.
8. Canadian engineering has three levels. Technician (1-2 years of post-secondary education), technologist (2-3 years of post-secondary education), and engineer (4+ years of post-secondary education). Typically these roles are not interchangeable. It's very difficult to transition from one to the other without going back to school. The education (there may be exceptions) levels are not stepping stones. Technician can ladder into technologist, but technologist to engineer often means 4 more years of school. Maybe this will start to break the different SWE roles up.
9. Anyway, this is probably all for the betterment of employees working in tech, so it's commendable that some in such an envious position are leading the charge. If this is the start of "professionalizing" tech, then it'll be interesting to see how this impacts innovation (no more move fast and break things) and educational / meritocratic diversity in the long-run (professionals require licensing and other credentials). Maybe that would be the big kicker to make an impact in the outrageous costs of US higher education.
10. I hope I'm wrong, but this could be the start of tech salaries in SV (a couple of other American cities and some Canadian cities) regressing to the mean of professional engineers. They are still good salaries, but it's not like you can decide to move to a city and 2-10x your salary / TC like you can with tech and SV. Tech seems to be a good way to have social mobility, but if the salaries regress to the mean, there will be even more inequality and less mobility in America.
[1]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-wo...
"As of March, Google worked with roughly 121,000 temps and contractors around the world, compared with 102,000 full-time employees, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times."
I'm no expert on unions nor am I an expert on labor economics or game theory, however, I had a few thoughts that I would love references to explore.
1. the union is for employees in Canada and the US. Google employs economists. Is there some game theory solution that would show google should end up transitioning all labor overseas over time? With remote work caused by the pandemic is there really a barrier to eliminating US and Canadian jobs?
2. what's the distribution of google's labor force? As best as I can tell, google has 223,000 total workers. About 45% (102k/223k) are full-time, the rest are temps and contractors. Where are these jobs? What percent are in the US?
3. I have seen employers in the US close up entire businesses and relocate to Canada when the US business unionized. I've seen Canadian businesses close up and move to new provinces when the employees unionized. When the profit loss caused by unions exceeds the transition costs, transitions happen.
4. how many employees are truly irreplaceable? I know a lot of people like to think they can never be replaced, but companies move on. is it like for like? not always.
5. how much of this extra profit employees think they deserve is enabled by google and google scale? i.e., if you're saving google 1 million per year and you think you deserve a large chunk of that, what happens when you try to go to a company that has 1/1000th the scale of google? Note: these union doesn't seem to be aimed at capturing value for them (full-time), but instead seems to seek to distribute the full-time benefits to the part-timers and temps. That's commendable.
6. I'm sure there are more unions than the oversimplification that follows. The google union doesn't seem to be a collective bargaining agreement type union for salaries. Salaries are still up to individuals. Let's roughly define CBA (collective bargaining agreement) unions vs "superstar" unions.
Superstar unions: - Hollywood and professional sports have unions where they have minimum salaries and working conditions, but the stars can end up negotiating a huge salary (some sports have salary caps across a team). Will tech workers start taking on agents to negotiate tech contracts on their behalf?
- Sports has drafts and minor leagues, will the hoops to get hired at google become even more outrageous? Look at the meat market that is the NFL combine [2].
CBA unions: - contractors and temps still exist in these situations. Now full-time jobs are split into permanent part-time (PPT) and full-time (FT). Permanent part-time meaning you can get 40 hours a week, but you have no benefits. This can take years to move from PPT to FT.
- Teaching and nursing unions enforce a minimum level of credentials. Trade unions do too, in the form of apprenticeships, which still require formal education.
- in the negative extreme, the Vancouver longshoreman union jobs are nearly impossible to get. you need to have a family member (yes, these are passed from grandpa to father to son) endorse you to join the union. union call for new members happen every 1-3 or more years. if you're endorsed, you end up in a raffle. if you're lucky enough to be drawn, you still have to wait your turn before you can work and then become full-time. it's a many year long process. or, supposedly, you can buy endorsements for tens of thousands of dollars.
- jobs get opened up internally before being opened up to external candidates
- companies have to provide training to get internal employees who are more or less qualified up to a level suitable to accept the next jobs.
7. There has been mention of other fields such as accounting, law, and medicine. I don't think these are the same types of unions. In Canada anyway, you have to go through certain education, professional exams, and professional development in engineering and accounting. At a first level, you need to get professional licensing. That doesn't seem to be the same type of union presented here. If anything, moving tech towards accounting, engineering, law, medicine, etc. will add more gate keeping, and I've seen lots of arguments against gate keeping on HN.
8. Canadian engineering has three levels. Technician (1-2 years of post-secondary education), technologist (2-3 years of post-secondary education), and engineer (4+ years of post-secondary education). Typically these roles are not interchangeable. It's very difficult to transition from one to the other without going back to school. The education (there may be exceptions) levels are not stepping stones. Technician can ladder into technologist, but technologist to engineer often means 4 more years of school. Maybe this will start to break the different SWE roles up.
9. Anyway, this is probably all for the betterment of employees working in tech, so it's commendable that some in such an envious position are leading the charge. If this is the start of "professionalizing" tech, then it'll be interesting to see how this impacts innovation (no more move fast and break things) and educational / meritocratic diversity in the long-run (professionals require licensing and other credentials). Maybe that would be the big kicker to make an impact in the outrageous costs of US higher education.
10. I hope I'm wrong, but this could be the start of tech salaries in SV (a couple of other American cities and some Canadian cities) regressing to the mean of professional engineers. They are still good salaries, but it's not like you can decide to move to a city and 2-10x your salary / TC like you can with tech and SV. Tech seems to be a good way to have social mobility, but if the salaries regress to the mean, there will be even more inequality and less mobility in America.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-wo... "As of March, Google worked with roughly 121,000 temps and contractors around the world, compared with 102,000 full-time employees, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times."
[2] https://nflcombineresults.com/nflcombinedata.php