<story><title>The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes at the top</title><url>http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/03/jaumotte.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Devthrowaway80</author><text>The wealthy in the US have successfully lobbied for &amp;quot;Right to Work&amp;quot; legislation and have managed to pump out anti-union propaganda that is being parroted in this thread for decades. This costs money and effort. Why do you suppose they have done this? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Because it benefits the individual worker? Or because it allows them to keep a larger share of the output of the economy?&lt;p&gt;Income inequality is the highest it has been since the beginning of the depression. Real wages have been flat for decades despite large gains in GDP. Is that a sign that workers have excellent leverage in negotiations?&lt;p&gt;Programmers are in a privileged position right now because there aren&amp;#x27;t enough of us to fill demand. That will not be the case forever. Look at what has happened with law - people saw the money to be made, flooded the market, and now a law degree doesn&amp;#x27;t really mean shit unless you&amp;#x27;re from a Big N school. The majority of programming work is not innovative or challenging - look at how many &amp;quot;I taught myself Javascript Framework 38! Look what I built&amp;quot; posts that flood this site. What do you think the long-term outlook for programming work is going to be like? Are you going to be the special snowflake ninja 10X rockstar in 10 years? Are you going to be happy to have no collective bargaining then?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tveita</author><text>Target shows its employees anti-union propaganda videos. It&amp;#x27;s interesting how it presents a union as a big bad &amp;quot;other&amp;quot; that would necessarily work against its members&amp;#x27; interests, and to see many of the familiar arguments cast in a ham-handed way towards retail employees. Do we also believe in the 10x retail employee, or do we agree that retail is a sector where employees have a lot to gain from collective bargaining?&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gawker.com/5811371/heres-the-cheesy-anti-union-video-all-target-employees-must-endure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gawker.com&amp;#x2F;5811371&amp;#x2F;heres-the-cheesy-anti-union-video-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gawker.com/behold-targets-brand-new-cheesy-anti-union-video-1547193676&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gawker.com&amp;#x2F;behold-targets-brand-new-cheesy-anti-union...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes at the top</title><url>http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/03/jaumotte.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Devthrowaway80</author><text>The wealthy in the US have successfully lobbied for &amp;quot;Right to Work&amp;quot; legislation and have managed to pump out anti-union propaganda that is being parroted in this thread for decades. This costs money and effort. Why do you suppose they have done this? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Because it benefits the individual worker? Or because it allows them to keep a larger share of the output of the economy?&lt;p&gt;Income inequality is the highest it has been since the beginning of the depression. Real wages have been flat for decades despite large gains in GDP. Is that a sign that workers have excellent leverage in negotiations?&lt;p&gt;Programmers are in a privileged position right now because there aren&amp;#x27;t enough of us to fill demand. That will not be the case forever. Look at what has happened with law - people saw the money to be made, flooded the market, and now a law degree doesn&amp;#x27;t really mean shit unless you&amp;#x27;re from a Big N school. The majority of programming work is not innovative or challenging - look at how many &amp;quot;I taught myself Javascript Framework 38! Look what I built&amp;quot; posts that flood this site. What do you think the long-term outlook for programming work is going to be like? Are you going to be the special snowflake ninja 10X rockstar in 10 years? Are you going to be happy to have no collective bargaining then?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>UmDieWelt</author><text>You are right that the current state won&amp;#x27;t last long. Computer science enrollments are skyrocketing, and businesses and government alike are pushing hard for even more people to flood the industry.</text></comment>