Let's try to be honest when we discuss this kind of thing; Unions are like people. They have unique agendas, unique executive decisionmaking trends, and affect their members differently.

No single union is 1:1 alike.

When I had a family member get a job as a local grocery store bagger, then job stipulated he HAD to join the union and give his dues out of paycheck within 1 month or he would be fired from his job.

He quit. He was a 15yrold teenager just trying ro have an after school job and he got squeezed.

Unions are not good. Unions are not bad. Unions are.

I am eager to see how this specific union engages with the game development industry.

Similarly, I encourage HN readers to better understand the relationship between unions and immigration before deciding whether they are in favor of immigration.

Unions are almost fundamentally against the practice of undercutting them with cheaper labour.

I think unions are great but they are deeply flawed, like any human organization, but for my family they really worked and both my parents had good jobs in unions. My dad's union both saved him from being fired and also tried to get him fired themselves (he pissed off an up and coming union leader who then proceeded to lie about him). They always seemed like an important counterweight more than actually a great organization (and you actually have a vote, unlike most companies).

Of course they did. Unions are always going to be against immigrant labor.

That would make sense considering how abused OPT is. It very fundamentally decreases the unions leverage.

I encourage HN readers to read your username before replying to this comment. And also to consider why self-identifying capitalists like yourself might want a large cheap labor pool of people who can be deported if they complain about their working conditions.

For what it’s worth, I think it should be very easy to become an American citizen. I think these companies benefit from that not being the case. They’d call ICE on native-born citizens for trying to unionize if they could.

"Unions" are a broad category of human organization, like "business." It makes little sense to favor or oppose "business" in general, and similarly for "unions." I encourage everyone to better understand the specific organizations they support or oppose, unions or otherwise.

Yes, unions can be protectionist about their work force, but there are international worker unions; maybe this is a European thing.

An econ 101 observation: unions contribute to structural unemployment: Keeping wages above market-clearing levels, and by preventing wage adjustment.

Through collective bargaining, unions can negotiate wages that are higher than what the market would naturally set. This can lead to the cost of labor being too high for some employers, resulting in fewer jobs. Similarly, unions can prevent wages from adjusting to market conditions.

So for the common good, individuals may go without a job.