Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions
I&#x27;m always amazed at the complete double standard between unions and companies.<p>Look at the discussion here: lots of people arguing against unions, saying they&#x27;re just plain bad, or they&#x27;re good in some industries but not in tech, or we just don&#x27;t need them, or whatever.<p>And not to say that these arguments are wrong, but....<p>Hands up, how many of you think that it&#x27;s a good idea to run a business with employees as a sole proprietorship?<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure there are no hands up. The first thing you do when you&#x27;re going to create a business with employees is to organize. This is so ingrained that we don&#x27;t even think about it. When was the last time you saw &quot;Ask HN: do I need to incorporate?&quot; Of <i>course</i> you do. There are many questions around where to do it and what type of corporation to create and what ownership structure you want to use and so forth, but there&#x27;s <i>no</i> question about whether it&#x27;s a good idea.<p>When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a &quot;union&quot; and we come up with many reasons why this may not be a good idea.<p>When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a &quot;corporation&quot; and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do.<p>If workers are better off without organization, maybe the same is true on the management side? Instead of big companies, we should have individual managers on their own, employing a team as a sole proprietor.