The subject of unionization among software engineers and other workers across the tech industry has been growing in popularity over the last few years (and months, in particular). As others have mentioned, workers at Kickstarter – including engineers – agreed to unionize recently. Employees at Glitch (a mostly remote workplace) also recently unionized[1].

While software engineers enjoy relatively advantageous working conditions compared to workers in other occupations and industries, overwork/exhaustion (also known as "burnout"), discrimination, a lack of due process in discipline/terminations (i.e., "at-will" employment), etc. remain commonplace within the industry and field. While software engineers have some measure of professional leverage with which to advocate for themselves, the inequality of power between employer and worker within the workplace remains unresolved. Collective bargaining and unionization directly addresses that imbalance.

I work as a software engineer and also volunteer with an organization called the Tech Workers Coalition in New York[2] that aims to educate people in our industry about the labor movement and provide resources to help people learn more about successful organizing and their legal protections in the workplace.

Several unions, including the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU)[3] and Communication Workers of America (CWA)[4] have devoted greater resources to helping workers in the tech industry organize in their workplaces.

Throughout the history of the tech industry, there have been attempts to organize unions[5]. Many of those efforts have been unsuccessful. These failures have been explained in some cases as the result of the industry's "seductive" allure[6] or the stubborn individualism of professional programmers[7].

I don't believe that either are useful explanations. An alternative explanation, offered by the sociologist Peter F. Meiksins, is that organized labor in the United States entered a rapid state of decline beginning in the late 1960s, just as the modern technology industry and software profession was beginning to grow[8], i.e., software engineers and tech workers weren't joining unions because very few people were joining them in general, not because of any unique aversion.

There has been new, though extremely modest, growth in union activity in recent years, especially among younger workers in industries like healthcare and digital media (an aside: I was a member of the organizing committee of a union at a digital media workplace). With some renewed in the labor movement, it makes sense that software engineers and others would be looking toward unions and collective bargaining as a way to gain a stronger voice in their workplaces.

PS. I also gave a talk on tech workers and the labor movement at EmpireJS in 2018 that might be of some interest[9]

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/how-kickstarter-employees-formed...

[2] https://techworkerscoalition.org/nyc

[3] https://www.opeiu.org

[4] https://www.code-cwa.org

[5] https://archive.scienceforthepeople.org/vol-8/v8n1/rumblings...

[6] https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19831225&id=... "The union-free workforce is…the result of a mystique as likely to seduce production workers as millionaire entrepreneurs."

[7] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2589356/programmers--a...

[8] https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnLpXPCXKGA