11 ms·

Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

339 points by simjue 9mo ago

thinkingemote 9mo ago
I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these new tech unions don't have the same "shop floor" power as in industry. Why is this? Perhaps generally the ideals the new unions are advocating for are different than traditional ones?
- wrs 9mo ago
  If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. But given the continual decrease in job stability in tech, perhaps we’re headed toward more of a Hollywood model, where the skilled workers are nearly all free-lance and project-based, and have powerful unions with such provisions industry-wide.
  - palmotea 9mo ago
    > If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent. Also the technology union people were dumb, seemed to focus more on hot-button political activism than worker power, and thus undermined their own project. IMHO, a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue, because controversy around those issues allows the bosses to divide-and-conquer the union.
    - mrsilencedogood 9mo ago
      But how do you actually bootstrap that process? Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. I still suspect part of the reason Epic sold them is to ninja-bust the union (or at least get it out of the way).
      - closewith 9mo ago
        Legislatively. In most of the Western world, TUPE would have made the manoeuvre impossible.
      - palmotea 9mo ago
        > But how do you actually bootstrap that process? I don't know. > Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. That seems like something that should be illegal, if it's not already. It seems like a paper maneuver. It should probably be expected that employers will play dirty, which is one of the reasons why I think the unions need to be hyper-focused on worker and workplace issues to the exclusion of all else.
      - sallveburrpi 9mo ago
        Btw what was the outcome of that? AFAICT the bandcamp union still exists and I don’t see any public news about the case from after December 2023, so wondering what happened Edit: last news i see on their mastodon are from April 2024 and seems they negotiated some severance pay for the laid off workers and that it; so I guess the union busting was successful?
    - danaris 9mo ago
      > a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue So...should it pick and choose which kinds of workers to represent the interests of? Or should it fight for the interests of all the workers? Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? Either choice is a political choice. You cannot avoid politics when one side of the political aisle has declared that the validity and ability to exist in public life of certain categories of people is against their agenda.
      - Izikiel43 9mo ago
        > Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? You fight for the interests of tech workers in this case, or truckers in a truckers union, so on and so forth. Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it.
        danaris 9mo ago
        > Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? Because the political party currently in power in our country is an actual, literal, (Christian) White Supremacist party. They are deliberately rounding up people that look like they might be Hispanic (and various other non-white ethnicities), declaring them to be illegal immigrants regardless of their actual status, and deporting them or putting them in camps.
        heavyset_go 9mo ago
        > If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it. As part of the policy of the current administration, the EEOC has dropped all cases related to LGBT discrimination in the hiring and the workplace[1] and is refusing to take new cases. If you focused any effort on addressing that, I suspect someone who isn't even in the union would come out of the woodwork to say "that union shouldn't be addressing policy like that, it's divisive and what about everyone else?" Union workers' rights and interests are impacted by policy that discriminates, pretending that isn't so doesn't get us anywhere. [1] https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbtqi-employment-discrimination-claims-targets-transgender-workers/ https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbt...
    - tehjoker 9mo ago
      Unions should focus on worker power, but staying away form politics entirely is called "economism" and "opportunism". Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. Unions should do political education and work with issue based, socialist organizations, and invite speakers to facilitate discussions, while building consensus around what needs to be done in the workplace and fighting on behalf of their fellow workers ferociously.
      - palmotea 9mo ago
        > Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. I should clarify: I totally agree with being "political" in that area. The stuff I'm thinking about are things like Gaza, BLM, etc. They may be very worthy causes, but there's controversy about them too, and they don't really seem to be in-scope for a union.
        tehjoker 9mo ago
        Here's what I'll say. Every union is a democracy and has to decide what is right for it, but unions are the fighting organizations of the working class and we are the rightful rulers of this society by virtue of actually making it run and being the literal majority in a classic liberal sense. U.S. and western unions generally have been very conservative and "business unions" since the anti-communist counterattacks after WW2. This is because there has been a constant counterinsurgency tactic against our leadership involving cooptation, sidelining, and even assassination. The wealthy want to rule unopposed and for you to just vote for one of their pre-selected candidates in elections. Since you mentioned Gaza, an issue dear to my heart (not that BLM isn't, but for brevity I'll talk about the movement that is highlighted right now), let me give an example that illustrates how essential unions are. Tech companies like Google and Microsoft are supplying information technology and AI systems to the occupation and are making bank doing it. Who is going to stop them? The people best positioned to do so are their workers. The most essential way to help Gaza is to enforce sanctions, halting economic activity with Israeli companies, and most importantly stopping the transfer of all military materials to Israel, even so called "defensive" weapons like Iron Dome that allow the occupation to perform the genocide without repercussions. In Italy, huge strikes and protests forced the openly fascist PM that praised Mussolini to send a warship to aid the Global Samud Flotilla which aimed to break the siege on Gaza. Dock workers in Italy refused to service ships bound for Israel with weapons, and got the (again openly fascist) PM to enforce a weapons embargo. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike-dockworkers-flotilla/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike... Assert your right to rule this global society in the interests of humanity in concert with your brothers and sister workers around the world.
- nitwit005 9mo ago
  With a factory, the owner has to deal with the cost of all the late or canceled deliveries. With farms, the crops wither on the vines. There's not really an equivalent with most service industries. Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running.
  - mrsilencedogood 9mo ago
    "Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running." Can you tell me where you work, and are you hiring???
    - natebc 9mo ago
      Their ops teams are probably ground into dust.
      - JohnMakin 9mo ago
        For real - this made me laugh, because I had the immediate exact thought. Oh boy
      - esseph 9mo ago
        Trying to keep alive 30yr old tech stacks and still pass security reviews, while doing stuff like manually compiling and packaging python 2 and jre6 tools. Ouch.
        esseph 9mo ago
        (sorry, replied to wrong comment!)
    - websiteapi 9mo ago
      Didn’t twitter get 3/4 people laid off? Seems to still work as of time of writing (x.com).
      - lawlessone 9mo ago
- paxys 9mo ago
  While things can be bad in software in general, game developers need a union more than anyone. Conditions in that industry are horrendous. The entire period of a game's development is "crunch time". Everyone is exempt, so no overtime of course. And it is standard practice to downsize studios and have mass layoffs right after big launches. It's a shame that so many are drawn to this just because of a passion for gaming.
  - themafia 9mo ago
    > Everyone is exempt, This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm
    - dragonwriter 9mo ago
      > This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. That's true federally, too, but the CA salary threshold is much higher.
    - kg 9mo ago
      When people complain about game devs being exempt, I think they're usually not complaining that salaries are too low - they're generally fine these days - but the expectation of 80+ hour weeks during 'crunch' when crunch often lasts 6+ months. Doing hours like that for a long period of time is destructive to health and to family ties.
  - bufordtwain 9mo ago
    If you enjoy your job your employer is able to exploit you more?
    - chrisjj 9mo ago
      If you are enjoying your job, you are happier to accept lower other benefits.
- doctorpangloss 9mo ago
  Situation: There are 14 competing unions. You: That's ridiculous! We need one universal union that covers everyone's needs. Yeah! Situation: There are 15 competing unions.
  - fwip 9mo ago
    Is there an alternative union that you think Id employees should have joined?
  - mrweasel 9mo ago
    That's how it works in other countries. Unions are per industry, not per business, because per business is... weird and not really helpful. The union negotiates salary ranges for the entire industry, so it doesn't matter if one company is being difficult, their organisation (the one that organises the employers of that industry) have agreed to the ranges on their behalf. If you need to go on strike, the union members employed at other businesses can help cover wages. Your union can also call for sympathy strikes at other businesses, putting additional pressure on the misbehaving company.
    - salawat 9mo ago
      In the U.S. capital got sympathy striking illegalized as part of the Taft-Hartley Act around WWII, because labor exploiting network effects was just to unconscionable for the time.
- collinmcnulty 9mo ago
  According to the article, they are part of the Communications Workers of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_Amer...
  - dragonwriter 9mo ago
    And CWA is part of AFL-CIO, which is the largest federation of unions in the country, representing ~15 million workers.
- dragonwriter 9mo ago
  > Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? The article here mentions the umbrella union that this effort was associated with, Communications Workers of America (which itself is part of AFL-CIO.) IPFTE, I think, also organizes software developers along with other professional and technical workers, and SEIU has a lot in the public and nonprofit sectors.
herodoturtle 9mo ago
Article is thin on details and full of changing adverts that scroll you up and down whilst reading (on mobile). Annoying.
venturecruelty 9mo ago
[dead]
- css_apologist 9mo ago
  this is all true, especially for those of us who make no where near that much
  - venturecruelty 9mo ago
    Which is most of us. I'm paid well, and I feel fortunate for the privilege. But even my bills (healthcare, housing, etc.) are bonkers lately, and I live in a sleepy suburb. My health insurance will be much worse next year, and I probably need surgery, so that'll be nice and expensive. Meanwhile, we blew billions on an acquisition and laid off a lot of good senior talent. My colleagues and my friends. I don't think people here truly understand how much people are struggling, even other software developers. I think everyone here thinks every other programmer pulls six figures working at a FAANG, but it's not true. Except now, capital is out for blood, and the Palo Alto is the only place with some fat left to trim.
- advisedwang 9mo ago
  In particular, note the Google Union's success at getting voluntary buyouts instead of lay-offs for RIFs.
- matchbok 9mo ago
  [dead]
- Averna2 9mo ago
  Real life jobs are nowhere near this clear cut. Overly protective unions result in lower levels of innovation. Please look to the EU and their --ZERO-- level of tech innovation and how their anti-business regulations have worked out. Question - if you think layoffs during high profit times are bad/immoral, then should employees also accept pay cuts when profits are low? Didn't think so. Think about that "power" dynamic you keep talking about.
podgorniy 9mo ago
Good for them. During economic downturns, when fewer resources are available for redistribution, collective action across population groups can help address worsening power imbalances.
- hellojesus 9mo ago
  To an extent. There is always the chance that the collective action discounts the impact to the business too heavily and ends up driving the company under, making the outcomes worse for everyone. We saw this a couple years ago with Yellow Trucking.
  - c-hendricks 9mo ago
    They got ... $700 million bailout from the government and put part of the blame on not being able to secure a $50 million benefits package?
  - venturecruelty 9mo ago
    Yes, because companies never go out of business or kill products for no reason under our glorious people's free market. Google, famously, never ends good products for no reason.
  - popalchemist 9mo ago
    If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified, and that is simply the price everyone involved must pay to maintain equilibrium.
    - jimbokun 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - autoexec 9mo ago
        > There are lots of outcomes where having the wages the company can profitably offer are far better than having zero wages. Like sweatshops for example. The idea that getting anything at all is far better than getting nothing is not new or compelling. It's exactly that kind of race to the bottom mentality where workers are expected to shut up and take whatever scraps their masters give them that causes labor movements to rise up and start demanding better.
barfoure 9mo ago
It’ll be a bloodbath at Zenimax soon. They have a nasty army of lawyers.
daft_pink 9mo ago
I don’t understand what gives the union power at the end of the day when the company could easily outsource development and license their ip and fire everyone. Automotive plants have large factories, but when the primary assets are intangible intellectual property, I don’t understand how much power a union really has.
- jandrese 9mo ago
  If you think all developers are interchangeable you're the reason they're forming a union.
  - andy99 9mo ago
    Being interchangeable is literally why unions are formed. If you have some unique skill set that is valued, a union is unnecessary and would hold you back. If you’re happy being slotted in to whatever the next available position is based on your seniority with no regard to you as an individual, unions are great. That’s why they’re mostly autoworkers or longshoremen and whatnot an not professionals, outside a few niches motivated by ideology.
    - kleinsch 9mo ago
      NFL players have unique skills, are highly valued, and are represented by a union. Same with most other major sports.
    - torginus 9mo ago
      Not necessarily - many games have custom engines underpinned by a decade of arcane tech that you wont find anywhere in the world outside the company. It sucks both for you and the company if they have to replace you. In contrast, if you work building SaaS apps on top of k8s, you can both transfer your skills easily, and the company can replace you easier. It could go both ways, but in practice it usually turns out that if your skills are transferable you make more money. This thing also popped up in the gaming industry, with Unreal becoming popular, and people using it making much more and jumping between projects, because their skills are transferable.
brcmthrowaway 9mo ago
What happened to the Google union?
andy99 9mo ago
Curious if this was workers casting off the shackles of their oppression or a luxury option for a group that is already well off?
- stocksinsmocks 9mo ago
  Deprived of all options by the manifest oppression of the Republican Party, American youths of today face the grim choice between shoplifting Louis Vuitton below their AG’s prosecution threshold or working several hours a week in the shadow of the menacing smokestacks of ID Software to afford their meager iPhones. Affluent Ugandans make monthly donations to American charities who will send them pictures of smiling American 20-something’s named “Jaden” their charity has lifted out of complete destitution and given hope of owning their own Miami condo.
- torginus 9mo ago
  I think it's both - while game devs experience more hardship than regular devs do, I'd say they still constitute an insanely fortunate slice of society, not exactly Oliver Twist. From the article, remote work seems to be the crux of the issue - I do think devs should get it but the pity party they hold for themselves is kinda tone deaf imo
siliconc0w 9mo ago
The problem is that unions are only as strong as the NLRB which depends on the current administration. One of Trump's first actions was firing of a democratic member making them unable to form quorum, so it's not looking good for the rest of his term and the supreme court is likely going to bless that firing making it even more susceptible to executive branch meddling in the future. I also would like to see better 'tech' for tech unions to organize, vote on priorities, share grievances, elect representatives, etc.. Ideally moving to a fixed fee vs a % of compensation. It shouldn't require millions of dollars in overhead to organize.
- parpfish 9mo ago
  as much as i hate tech bros that think the solution to every social problem is a new saas app, there are two pieces of tech that would be great for workers: 1) for people that aren't in a union, make labor lawyers easy to use. there could be an app used to walk you through gathering evidence about various workplace violations (osha/safety stuff, wage theft, etc) and then hook you up with lawyers in a two-sided marketplace. workers would get easy represenation, lawyers would get a stream of clients that show up with a nicely formatted bundle of evidence. it could even work to find conneted cases could get bundled into class actions. 2) when everybody worked in the same office/shop floor, you could easily commiserate and start discussions about unionization and collective action. if you're an app-mediated gig-worker (uber drivers, door-dashers, etc) you don't know how to connect with your coworkers. there needs to be a social platform where people would be able to make these connections. to do this, you'd need a way to verify that users are actual employees and put in various protections to make sure management isn't spying on them.
  - abnercoimbre 9mo ago
    Would you be opposed to a tech bro making a startup out of this? :)
    - parpfish 9mo ago
      No, I’d love to see it! The first one lends itself to a revenue model really naturally, but I think it’d be hard to make number two into a business. It’s not clear how to monetize it while also maintaining a really high degree of trust
starkparker 9mo ago
Wow, even labor unions can run Doom now!
an_cap 9mo ago
FWIW, the union (CWA) via its Seattle affiliate tried to get OPT banned, a visa status that many readers of HN benefited from - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/21-5028/21-5028-2022-10-04.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/2.... I encourage HN readers to better understand the relationship between unions and immigration before deciding whether they are in favor of joining/supporting unions.
- ecshafer 9mo ago
  Of course they did. Unions are always going to be against immigrant labor.
  - willio58 9mo ago
    I think it’s a little more nuanced than that. They are against things that would lessen the collective bargaining power of those in their union. This is the whole point of unions, to collectively bargain. If those immigrants were forced to join the union upon entering the U.S. and entering that sector of work, I don’t see the union having a problem with that. The issue is that would lead to those immigrants and all other members of the union being paid more, which is a no-no for the billionaire class. So they’re not anti-immigrant. They’re against billionaires abusing immigration to pay people less.
  - criddell 9mo ago
    That's not true. The MLBPA (baseball players) is definitely not anti-immigrant.
- Normal_gaussian 9mo ago
  Unions are almost fundamentally against the practice of undercutting them with cheaper labour.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- jessepasley 9mo ago
Animats 9mo ago
Funny how the "story" doesn't link to the announcement it mostly copied from the CWA.[1] Here's the link to the union organizing page.[2] No draft union contract for Id, though. Interestingly, this is an industrial ("wall to wall") union, rather than a craft union such as The Animation Guild. IATSE Local 839, in Hollywood. TAG only represents specific jobs, mostly animation artists. A key point in TAG contracts is how "crunch time" is handled. It's allowed, but overtime rates go way, way up as the hours go up. This is standard procedure in Hollywood. Some terms from TAG's standard contract: All time worked in excess of eight (8) hours per day or forty (40) hours per week shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on the employee's sixth workday of the workweek shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on the employee's seventh workday of the workweek shall be paid at two (2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. All time worked in excess of fourteen (14) consecutive hours (including meal periods) from the time of reporting to work shall be Golden Hours and shall be paid at two (2) times the applicable hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification.[3] This encourages management to schedule realistically. The Id/CWA deal isn't far enough along for those terms to be visible yet. But such terms are common in CWA contracts. [1] https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-developers-texas-vote-form-latest-wall-wall-union-cwa https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-developers-te... [2] https://code-cwa.org/ https://code-cwa.org/ [3] https://animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2024-2027-Master-CBA.pdf https://animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2024-2...
- PacificSpecific 9mo ago
  That sounds great. I've worked so many days where I work 18 hours for zero extra pay. I usually get a free dinner and a cab ride home and that's it.
  - torginus 9mo ago
    In my experience, getting management recognition for overtime is an uphill battle. Even when I did get paid at some elevated rate, if we divided actual hours worked with the money I got, I still made way less than my hourly rate.
deanCommie 9mo ago
Somewhere, John Carmack, in his new conservative era, is seething.
- archagon 9mo ago
  I love this for him.
charcircuit 9mo ago
>RTO policies should not be handed down from executives with no consideration for accessibility or our well-being. If you don't like it, then quit. No one is forcing you to work for Id Software.
- the_overseer 9mo ago
  Or unionize... like they did.
- sallveburrpi 9mo ago
  Or form a union and push back - why are you defending ID software executives?
  - jandrewrogers 9mo ago
    You are imputing motives that are not in evidence.
    - sallveburrpi 9mo ago
      This isn’t a court of law sir, this is a message board operated by a venture capitalist fund
      - DamonHD 9mo ago
        I really want to do the "this is a Wendy's" thing, but...
  - charcircuit 9mo ago
    Why wouldn't you defend the executives. They lead the company, so they have the power to make decisions on how it should operate. They will always have the power to choose how it operates union or not. Forming a union is just a power grab for the union.
    - salawat 9mo ago
tomlockwood 9mo ago
Congrats to them! Unions are the reason we have (had) an 8 hour day.
- tclancy 9mo ago
  And weekends.
  - Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 9mo ago
    And vacations.
- sam345 9mo ago
  And all the major American legacy car companies filing bankruptcy through the years and becoming completely uncompetitive. Welcome to your soon do you come greedy unionion reps That will ensure high performers will leave for better pastures and low to average performers will stay and benefit from collective bargaining,. Unions always increase friction and company politics and stunts growth. Growth is what is key to success of any company and its workers.
DesiLurker 9mo ago
As a non gaming engineer, I dont want a union, what I really want is solid (really, harsh) enforcement of basic common sense labor rules for exempt workers like weekly working hour limits, no after hours scheduling or minimum notice/severance period for layoffs & many other abuses. Problem is tech industry does not wants to give an inch and workers don't complain because of higher pay and 'lottery ticket' effect. I fear the time for fixing this is passing fast. Its because within a decade AI will have enough of labor displacement that labor wont have any negotiating leverage against capital. If this happens with union, so be it.
- vablings 9mo ago
  I feel like you said you don't want a union and proceeded to describe exactly what a union is supposed to be. You are 100% a software engineer lol
  - t0mas88 9mo ago
    Those things can also be part of law, see Europe. The challenge with having good worker protection laws and high minimum wage is that at some point local labour becomes less competitive with foreign low cost options. Then you'll need tariffs or other import rules to keep your local industries alive.
    - gagik_co 9mo ago
      Many European labor laws came to existence thanks to their workers movements, which were primarily driven by, ehm, unions.
      - t0mas88 9mo ago
        Because it happend much longer ago. If the US wanted they could leapfrog that step and go straight to federal laws covering the same things. It's just that there is no majority that wants it.
- unionmember99 9mo ago
OptionOfT 9mo ago
This is good news. I'd take it even further. I would like to see a requirement for responsibility in the code we write, like Civil Engineers have. We have no way of defending our jobs. If we build it and it breaks, it's on us. If we find it unsafe, and provide alternatives that cost more / take longer our job is on the line. If we feel we cannot humanly review the insane amount of AI slop PRs coming in, because we have a sense of ownership, because it is OUR name on the document, it's on us.
lofaszvanitt 9mo ago
Holy bejesus, mandatory knitting classes incoming? They will go down the drain sooner rather than later. What have they done with modern doom, the infantilization, the totally mindwashed, empty shell or a story... Sigh.
sam345 9mo ago
Hello beuracracy, regulated relationships, and workaday droneness. What a shame for a company that has such a legacy of strong independent minded developers but that is the past.
mzmzmzm 9mo ago
The featured article today on Wikipedia's Main Page is "Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons," iD's pre-DOOM side-scroller. I like when Wikipedia editors land on subtle topicality with featured articles and images; it makes it more fun to check the page everyday.

339 points by simjue 9mo ago

I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these new tech unions don't have the same "shop floor" power as in industry. Why is this? Perhaps generally the ideals the new unions are advocating for are different than traditional ones?

wrs 9mo ago
If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. But given the continual decrease in job stability in tech, perhaps we’re headed toward more of a Hollywood model, where the skilled workers are nearly all free-lance and project-based, and have powerful unions with such provisions industry-wide.
- palmotea 9mo ago
  > If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent. Also the technology union people were dumb, seemed to focus more on hot-button political activism than worker power, and thus undermined their own project. IMHO, a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue, because controversy around those issues allows the bosses to divide-and-conquer the union.
  - mrsilencedogood 9mo ago
    But how do you actually bootstrap that process? Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. I still suspect part of the reason Epic sold them is to ninja-bust the union (or at least get it out of the way).
    - closewith 9mo ago
      Legislatively. In most of the Western world, TUPE would have made the manoeuvre impossible.
    - palmotea 9mo ago
      > But how do you actually bootstrap that process? I don't know. > Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. That seems like something that should be illegal, if it's not already. It seems like a paper maneuver. It should probably be expected that employers will play dirty, which is one of the reasons why I think the unions need to be hyper-focused on worker and workplace issues to the exclusion of all else.
    - sallveburrpi 9mo ago
      Btw what was the outcome of that? AFAICT the bandcamp union still exists and I don’t see any public news about the case from after December 2023, so wondering what happened Edit: last news i see on their mastodon are from April 2024 and seems they negotiated some severance pay for the laid off workers and that it; so I guess the union busting was successful?
  - danaris 9mo ago
    > a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue So...should it pick and choose which kinds of workers to represent the interests of? Or should it fight for the interests of all the workers? Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? Either choice is a political choice. You cannot avoid politics when one side of the political aisle has declared that the validity and ability to exist in public life of certain categories of people is against their agenda.
    - Izikiel43 9mo ago
      > Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? You fight for the interests of tech workers in this case, or truckers in a truckers union, so on and so forth. Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it.
      - danaris 9mo ago
        > Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? Because the political party currently in power in our country is an actual, literal, (Christian) White Supremacist party. They are deliberately rounding up people that look like they might be Hispanic (and various other non-white ethnicities), declaring them to be illegal immigrants regardless of their actual status, and deporting them or putting them in camps.
      - heavyset_go 9mo ago
        > If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it. As part of the policy of the current administration, the EEOC has dropped all cases related to LGBT discrimination in the hiring and the workplace[1] and is refusing to take new cases. If you focused any effort on addressing that, I suspect someone who isn't even in the union would come out of the woodwork to say "that union shouldn't be addressing policy like that, it's divisive and what about everyone else?" Union workers' rights and interests are impacted by policy that discriminates, pretending that isn't so doesn't get us anywhere. [1] https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbtqi-employment-discrimination-claims-targets-transgender-workers/ https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbt...
  - tehjoker 9mo ago
    Unions should focus on worker power, but staying away form politics entirely is called "economism" and "opportunism". Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. Unions should do political education and work with issue based, socialist organizations, and invite speakers to facilitate discussions, while building consensus around what needs to be done in the workplace and fighting on behalf of their fellow workers ferociously.
    - palmotea 9mo ago
      > Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. I should clarify: I totally agree with being "political" in that area. The stuff I'm thinking about are things like Gaza, BLM, etc. They may be very worthy causes, but there's controversy about them too, and they don't really seem to be in-scope for a union.
      - tehjoker 9mo ago
        Here's what I'll say. Every union is a democracy and has to decide what is right for it, but unions are the fighting organizations of the working class and we are the rightful rulers of this society by virtue of actually making it run and being the literal majority in a classic liberal sense. U.S. and western unions generally have been very conservative and "business unions" since the anti-communist counterattacks after WW2. This is because there has been a constant counterinsurgency tactic against our leadership involving cooptation, sidelining, and even assassination. The wealthy want to rule unopposed and for you to just vote for one of their pre-selected candidates in elections. Since you mentioned Gaza, an issue dear to my heart (not that BLM isn't, but for brevity I'll talk about the movement that is highlighted right now), let me give an example that illustrates how essential unions are. Tech companies like Google and Microsoft are supplying information technology and AI systems to the occupation and are making bank doing it. Who is going to stop them? The people best positioned to do so are their workers. The most essential way to help Gaza is to enforce sanctions, halting economic activity with Israeli companies, and most importantly stopping the transfer of all military materials to Israel, even so called "defensive" weapons like Iron Dome that allow the occupation to perform the genocide without repercussions. In Italy, huge strikes and protests forced the openly fascist PM that praised Mussolini to send a warship to aid the Global Samud Flotilla which aimed to break the siege on Gaza. Dock workers in Italy refused to service ships bound for Israel with weapons, and got the (again openly fascist) PM to enforce a weapons embargo. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike-dockworkers-flotilla/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike... Assert your right to rule this global society in the interests of humanity in concert with your brothers and sister workers around the world.
nitwit005 9mo ago
With a factory, the owner has to deal with the cost of all the late or canceled deliveries. With farms, the crops wither on the vines. There's not really an equivalent with most service industries. Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running.
- mrsilencedogood 9mo ago
  "Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running." Can you tell me where you work, and are you hiring???
  - natebc 9mo ago
    Their ops teams are probably ground into dust.
    - JohnMakin 9mo ago
      For real - this made me laugh, because I had the immediate exact thought. Oh boy
    - esseph 9mo ago
      Trying to keep alive 30yr old tech stacks and still pass security reviews, while doing stuff like manually compiling and packaging python 2 and jre6 tools. Ouch.
      - esseph 9mo ago
        (sorry, replied to wrong comment!)
  - websiteapi 9mo ago
    Didn’t twitter get 3/4 people laid off? Seems to still work as of time of writing (x.com).
    - lawlessone 9mo ago
paxys 9mo ago
While things can be bad in software in general, game developers need a union more than anyone. Conditions in that industry are horrendous. The entire period of a game's development is "crunch time". Everyone is exempt, so no overtime of course. And it is standard practice to downsize studios and have mass layoffs right after big launches. It's a shame that so many are drawn to this just because of a passion for gaming.
- themafia 9mo ago
  > Everyone is exempt, This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm
  - dragonwriter 9mo ago
    > This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. That's true federally, too, but the CA salary threshold is much higher.
  - kg 9mo ago
    When people complain about game devs being exempt, I think they're usually not complaining that salaries are too low - they're generally fine these days - but the expectation of 80+ hour weeks during 'crunch' when crunch often lasts 6+ months. Doing hours like that for a long period of time is destructive to health and to family ties.
- bufordtwain 9mo ago
  If you enjoy your job your employer is able to exploit you more?
  - chrisjj 9mo ago
    If you are enjoying your job, you are happier to accept lower other benefits.
doctorpangloss 9mo ago
Situation: There are 14 competing unions. You: That's ridiculous! We need one universal union that covers everyone's needs. Yeah! Situation: There are 15 competing unions.
- fwip 9mo ago
  Is there an alternative union that you think Id employees should have joined?
- mrweasel 9mo ago
  That's how it works in other countries. Unions are per industry, not per business, because per business is... weird and not really helpful. The union negotiates salary ranges for the entire industry, so it doesn't matter if one company is being difficult, their organisation (the one that organises the employers of that industry) have agreed to the ranges on their behalf. If you need to go on strike, the union members employed at other businesses can help cover wages. Your union can also call for sympathy strikes at other businesses, putting additional pressure on the misbehaving company.
  - salawat 9mo ago
    In the U.S. capital got sympathy striking illegalized as part of the Taft-Hartley Act around WWII, because labor exploiting network effects was just to unconscionable for the time.
collinmcnulty 9mo ago
According to the article, they are part of the Communications Workers of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_Amer...
- dragonwriter 9mo ago
  And CWA is part of AFL-CIO, which is the largest federation of unions in the country, representing ~15 million workers.
dragonwriter 9mo ago
> Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? The article here mentions the umbrella union that this effort was associated with, Communications Workers of America (which itself is part of AFL-CIO.) IPFTE, I think, also organizes software developers along with other professional and technical workers, and SEIU has a lot in the public and nonprofit sectors.

herodoturtle 9mo ago

Article is thin on details and full of changing adverts that scroll you up and down whilst reading (on mobile). Annoying.

venturecruelty 9mo ago

[dead]

css_apologist 9mo ago
this is all true, especially for those of us who make no where near that much
- venturecruelty 9mo ago
  Which is most of us. I'm paid well, and I feel fortunate for the privilege. But even my bills (healthcare, housing, etc.) are bonkers lately, and I live in a sleepy suburb. My health insurance will be much worse next year, and I probably need surgery, so that'll be nice and expensive. Meanwhile, we blew billions on an acquisition and laid off a lot of good senior talent. My colleagues and my friends. I don't think people here truly understand how much people are struggling, even other software developers. I think everyone here thinks every other programmer pulls six figures working at a FAANG, but it's not true. Except now, capital is out for blood, and the Palo Alto is the only place with some fat left to trim.
advisedwang 9mo ago
In particular, note the Google Union's success at getting voluntary buyouts instead of lay-offs for RIFs.
matchbok 9mo ago
[dead]
Averna2 9mo ago
Real life jobs are nowhere near this clear cut. Overly protective unions result in lower levels of innovation. Please look to the EU and their --ZERO-- level of tech innovation and how their anti-business regulations have worked out. Question - if you think layoffs during high profit times are bad/immoral, then should employees also accept pay cuts when profits are low? Didn't think so. Think about that "power" dynamic you keep talking about.

podgorniy 9mo ago

Good for them. During economic downturns, when fewer resources are available for redistribution, collective action across population groups can help address worsening power imbalances.

hellojesus 9mo ago
To an extent. There is always the chance that the collective action discounts the impact to the business too heavily and ends up driving the company under, making the outcomes worse for everyone. We saw this a couple years ago with Yellow Trucking.
- c-hendricks 9mo ago
  They got ... $700 million bailout from the government and put part of the blame on not being able to secure a $50 million benefits package?
- venturecruelty 9mo ago
  Yes, because companies never go out of business or kill products for no reason under our glorious people's free market. Google, famously, never ends good products for no reason.
- popalchemist 9mo ago
  If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified, and that is simply the price everyone involved must pay to maintain equilibrium.
  - jimbokun 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - autoexec 9mo ago
      > There are lots of outcomes where having the wages the company can profitably offer are far better than having zero wages. Like sweatshops for example. The idea that getting anything at all is far better than getting nothing is not new or compelling. It's exactly that kind of race to the bottom mentality where workers are expected to shut up and take whatever scraps their masters give them that causes labor movements to rise up and start demanding better.

barfoure 9mo ago

It’ll be a bloodbath at Zenimax soon. They have a nasty army of lawyers.

daft_pink 9mo ago

I don’t understand what gives the union power at the end of the day when the company could easily outsource development and license their ip and fire everyone. Automotive plants have large factories, but when the primary assets are intangible intellectual property, I don’t understand how much power a union really has.

jandrese 9mo ago
If you think all developers are interchangeable you're the reason they're forming a union.
- andy99 9mo ago
  Being interchangeable is literally why unions are formed. If you have some unique skill set that is valued, a union is unnecessary and would hold you back. If you’re happy being slotted in to whatever the next available position is based on your seniority with no regard to you as an individual, unions are great. That’s why they’re mostly autoworkers or longshoremen and whatnot an not professionals, outside a few niches motivated by ideology.
  - kleinsch 9mo ago
    NFL players have unique skills, are highly valued, and are represented by a union. Same with most other major sports.
  - torginus 9mo ago
    Not necessarily - many games have custom engines underpinned by a decade of arcane tech that you wont find anywhere in the world outside the company. It sucks both for you and the company if they have to replace you. In contrast, if you work building SaaS apps on top of k8s, you can both transfer your skills easily, and the company can replace you easier. It could go both ways, but in practice it usually turns out that if your skills are transferable you make more money. This thing also popped up in the gaming industry, with Unreal becoming popular, and people using it making much more and jumping between projects, because their skills are transferable.

brcmthrowaway 9mo ago

What happened to the Google union?

andy99 9mo ago

Curious if this was workers casting off the shackles of their oppression or a luxury option for a group that is already well off?

stocksinsmocks 9mo ago
Deprived of all options by the manifest oppression of the Republican Party, American youths of today face the grim choice between shoplifting Louis Vuitton below their AG’s prosecution threshold or working several hours a week in the shadow of the menacing smokestacks of ID Software to afford their meager iPhones. Affluent Ugandans make monthly donations to American charities who will send them pictures of smiling American 20-something’s named “Jaden” their charity has lifted out of complete destitution and given hope of owning their own Miami condo.
torginus 9mo ago
I think it's both - while game devs experience more hardship than regular devs do, I'd say they still constitute an insanely fortunate slice of society, not exactly Oliver Twist. From the article, remote work seems to be the crux of the issue - I do think devs should get it but the pity party they hold for themselves is kinda tone deaf imo

siliconc0w 9mo ago

The problem is that unions are only as strong as the NLRB which depends on the current administration. One of Trump's first actions was firing of a democratic member making them unable to form quorum, so it's not looking good for the rest of his term and the supreme court is likely going to bless that firing making it even more susceptible to executive branch meddling in the future. I also would like to see better 'tech' for tech unions to organize, vote on priorities, share grievances, elect representatives, etc.. Ideally moving to a fixed fee vs a % of compensation. It shouldn't require millions of dollars in overhead to organize.

parpfish 9mo ago
as much as i hate tech bros that think the solution to every social problem is a new saas app, there are two pieces of tech that would be great for workers: 1) for people that aren't in a union, make labor lawyers easy to use. there could be an app used to walk you through gathering evidence about various workplace violations (osha/safety stuff, wage theft, etc) and then hook you up with lawyers in a two-sided marketplace. workers would get easy represenation, lawyers would get a stream of clients that show up with a nicely formatted bundle of evidence. it could even work to find conneted cases could get bundled into class actions. 2) when everybody worked in the same office/shop floor, you could easily commiserate and start discussions about unionization and collective action. if you're an app-mediated gig-worker (uber drivers, door-dashers, etc) you don't know how to connect with your coworkers. there needs to be a social platform where people would be able to make these connections. to do this, you'd need a way to verify that users are actual employees and put in various protections to make sure management isn't spying on them.
- abnercoimbre 9mo ago
  Would you be opposed to a tech bro making a startup out of this? :)
  - parpfish 9mo ago
    No, I’d love to see it! The first one lends itself to a revenue model really naturally, but I think it’d be hard to make number two into a business. It’s not clear how to monetize it while also maintaining a really high degree of trust

starkparker 9mo ago

Wow, even labor unions can run Doom now!

an_cap 9mo ago

FWIW, the union (CWA) via its Seattle affiliate tried to get OPT banned, a visa status that many readers of HN benefited from - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/21-5028/21-5028-2022-10-04.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/2.... I encourage HN readers to better understand the relationship between unions and immigration before deciding whether they are in favor of joining/supporting unions.

ecshafer 9mo ago
Of course they did. Unions are always going to be against immigrant labor.
- willio58 9mo ago
  I think it’s a little more nuanced than that. They are against things that would lessen the collective bargaining power of those in their union. This is the whole point of unions, to collectively bargain. If those immigrants were forced to join the union upon entering the U.S. and entering that sector of work, I don’t see the union having a problem with that. The issue is that would lead to those immigrants and all other members of the union being paid more, which is a no-no for the billionaire class. So they’re not anti-immigrant. They’re against billionaires abusing immigration to pay people less.
- criddell 9mo ago
  That's not true. The MLBPA (baseball players) is definitely not anti-immigrant.
Normal_gaussian 9mo ago
Unions are almost fundamentally against the practice of undercutting them with cheaper labour.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
jessepasley 9mo ago

Animats 9mo ago

Funny how the "story" doesn't link to the announcement it mostly copied from the CWA.[1] Here's the link to the union organizing page.[2] No draft union contract for Id, though. Interestingly, this is an industrial ("wall to wall") union, rather than a craft union such as The Animation Guild. IATSE Local 839, in Hollywood. TAG only represents specific jobs, mostly animation artists. A key point in TAG contracts is how "crunch time" is handled. It's allowed, but overtime rates go way, way up as the hours go up. This is standard procedure in Hollywood. Some terms from TAG's standard contract: All time worked in excess of eight (8) hours per day or forty (40) hours per week shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on the employee's sixth workday of the workweek shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on the employee's seventh workday of the workweek shall be paid at two (2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. All time worked in excess of fourteen (14) consecutive hours (including meal periods) from the time of reporting to work shall be Golden Hours and shall be paid at two (2) times the applicable hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification.[3] This encourages management to schedule realistically. The Id/CWA deal isn't far enough along for those terms to be visible yet. But such terms are common in CWA contracts. [1] https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-developers-texas-vote-form-latest-wall-wall-union-cwa https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/video-game-developers-te... [2] https://code-cwa.org/ https://code-cwa.org/ [3] https://animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2024-2027-Master-CBA.pdf https://animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2024-2...

PacificSpecific 9mo ago
That sounds great. I've worked so many days where I work 18 hours for zero extra pay. I usually get a free dinner and a cab ride home and that's it.
- torginus 9mo ago
  In my experience, getting management recognition for overtime is an uphill battle. Even when I did get paid at some elevated rate, if we divided actual hours worked with the money I got, I still made way less than my hourly rate.

deanCommie 9mo ago

Somewhere, John Carmack, in his new conservative era, is seething.

archagon 9mo ago
I love this for him.

charcircuit 9mo ago

>RTO policies should not be handed down from executives with no consideration for accessibility or our well-being. If you don't like it, then quit. No one is forcing you to work for Id Software.

the_overseer 9mo ago
Or unionize... like they did.
sallveburrpi 9mo ago
Or form a union and push back - why are you defending ID software executives?
- jandrewrogers 9mo ago
  You are imputing motives that are not in evidence.
  - sallveburrpi 9mo ago
    This isn’t a court of law sir, this is a message board operated by a venture capitalist fund
    - DamonHD 9mo ago
      I really want to do the "this is a Wendy's" thing, but...
- charcircuit 9mo ago
  Why wouldn't you defend the executives. They lead the company, so they have the power to make decisions on how it should operate. They will always have the power to choose how it operates union or not. Forming a union is just a power grab for the union.
  - salawat 9mo ago

tomlockwood 9mo ago

Congrats to them! Unions are the reason we have (had) an 8 hour day.

tclancy 9mo ago
And weekends.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 9mo ago
  And vacations.
sam345 9mo ago
And all the major American legacy car companies filing bankruptcy through the years and becoming completely uncompetitive. Welcome to your soon do you come greedy unionion reps That will ensure high performers will leave for better pastures and low to average performers will stay and benefit from collective bargaining,. Unions always increase friction and company politics and stunts growth. Growth is what is key to success of any company and its workers.

DesiLurker 9mo ago

As a non gaming engineer, I dont want a union, what I really want is solid (really, harsh) enforcement of basic common sense labor rules for exempt workers like weekly working hour limits, no after hours scheduling or minimum notice/severance period for layoffs & many other abuses. Problem is tech industry does not wants to give an inch and workers don't complain because of higher pay and 'lottery ticket' effect. I fear the time for fixing this is passing fast. Its because within a decade AI will have enough of labor displacement that labor wont have any negotiating leverage against capital. If this happens with union, so be it.

vablings 9mo ago
I feel like you said you don't want a union and proceeded to describe exactly what a union is supposed to be. You are 100% a software engineer lol
- t0mas88 9mo ago
  Those things can also be part of law, see Europe. The challenge with having good worker protection laws and high minimum wage is that at some point local labour becomes less competitive with foreign low cost options. Then you'll need tariffs or other import rules to keep your local industries alive.
  - gagik_co 9mo ago
    Many European labor laws came to existence thanks to their workers movements, which were primarily driven by, ehm, unions.
    - t0mas88 9mo ago
      Because it happend much longer ago. If the US wanted they could leapfrog that step and go straight to federal laws covering the same things. It's just that there is no majority that wants it.
unionmember99 9mo ago

OptionOfT 9mo ago

This is good news. I'd take it even further. I would like to see a requirement for responsibility in the code we write, like Civil Engineers have. We have no way of defending our jobs. If we build it and it breaks, it's on us. If we find it unsafe, and provide alternatives that cost more / take longer our job is on the line. If we feel we cannot humanly review the insane amount of AI slop PRs coming in, because we have a sense of ownership, because it is OUR name on the document, it's on us.

lofaszvanitt 9mo ago

Holy bejesus, mandatory knitting classes incoming? They will go down the drain sooner rather than later. What have they done with modern doom, the infantilization, the totally mindwashed, empty shell or a story... Sigh.

sam345 9mo ago

Hello beuracracy, regulated relationships, and workaday droneness. What a shame for a company that has such a legacy of strong independent minded developers but that is the past.

mzmzmzm 9mo ago

The featured article today on Wikipedia's Main Page is "Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons," iD's pre-DOOM side-scroller. I like when Wikipedia editors land on subtle topicality with featured articles and images; it makes it more fun to check the page everyday.