Unions are great...in certain industries.

If the work doesnt change much, but requires doing lots of the same thing, and where experience is highly correlated to productivity or efficiency, and people are likely to spend a long time doing that job, unions make sense. Dock workers, auto factory assemblers, lathe operators, grocery associates, etc, all makes sense.

The videogame industry is as volatile as it gets, how is a union supposed to manage such a dynamic and short lived base of workers? Thats the bigger issue, can they sustain and make it work longer than a couple years, especially if a couple key workers get promoted or leave and the driving unionization impetus wanes.

Like, a union is great when you know you're gonna have a job in 20 years if you stick it out. If the average turnover rate in your industry is measured in months or just a couple years however, thats a different prospect.

LucklessWonder: zbtop: Like, a union is great when you know you're gonna have a job in 20 years if you stick it out. If the average turnover rate in your industry is measured in months or just a couple years however, thats a different prospect.

Do you think there could be a correlation between unionization and more long term stability in jobs, perchance?

I suppose one could, but I'd argue that as technologies shift/platforms change/skillsets mutate/etc, it's just a much more dynamic industry.

Like, the question of if your employer will even exist in 5/10/20 years is a much larger one in software than most traditionally unionized industries.

I'm currently a data analyst. I used to work in IT. I've also done software QA over the last 20 or so years. I get that grind, and I'm genuinely not against unions.

However, most of my various employers over the years don't even exist anymore, and of those that do, the positions mostly don't. Even the old Sony testing farm doesn't exist the way it used to. None of them operate anything like they did when I was employed there. 15 years ago being an A+ Certified wrench monkey who knew how to swap a hard drive and video card, and a handful of networking bits, could get you a job in IT almost anywhere, now if a component fails the unit just gets sent back in to Dell and if there's a network issue someone else handles it in a centralized support center better suited to handle the task. That job just doesn't exist the same way as say, being a grocery worker or longshoreman still does. If you were a software designer at MySpace, how relevant do your skills remain today versus an auto mechanic from the same era who may still work or own the same garage.

Looking successful, resilient unions, they're not typically in highly dynamic constantly evolving industries. Agriculture, large scale manufacturing, government work, grocery stores, warehouse workers, longshoreman, iron workers, etc, sure.

Of everyone I know still in IT, the only ones still working for the same employer they were 5 years ago work for defense contractors. I think that's more a condition of the industry's inherent dynamism more than a reflection of the abusive power of Capital over Labor. Looking at my own IT dept at work, we have problems keeping people not because they hate working for us, but because they keep getting hired away as soon as they're worth anything.