Why couldn’t a union created by presumably innovative, disruptive tech workers, invent a better mechanism than seniority-based pay? All of this anti-union rhetoric imagines that unions are inherently stuck in the 19th century and lack imagination.
Most white collar unions don't negotiate pay, other than maybe initial and minimum salary.
Edit: I must say I don't think most people here get it. Unions negotiate with employers. The idea that a tech union would agree with tech companies to set salaries is ridiculous. If that is what tech companies wanted they could have already done it. What white collar unions do is to negotiate for the things most people don't consider. They don't negotiate salaries, they negotiate that you should have salary review every e.g. year and some framework for that. That doesn't make a difference for those who already have that, but it does for everyone else. And that is how it is for every area. I don't know if there is a white collar collective agreement available in English online, but if there is one could just read that to get an idea.
And yet, Silicon Valley seems to be currently focused less on tech itself than using tech to reshape many long-running social conventions. Why would labor relationships be any different?
Well it seems like there's some interest to take that on at least from a product perspective when you look at these HR, Payroll, Employee Relations platforms coming out that could be argued try to take a portion of the market away from HR giants like ADP.
And then you have the various interviewing services (interviewing.io is an example I often point to), developer bootcamps with (presumably, at least by some of the verbiage used by said bootcamps) deep connections and mentor programs that ostensibly exist to get people hired.
Then there are your ZipRecruiters and Indeeds that claim to have revolutionized online recruiting and staffing.
Maybe the question isn't "why would labor relations be any different" but "how can tech make more of an impact in labor relations than just getting people hired and automating payroll?"
I don't have that answer, just thinking through my keyboard here.
