Would You Unionize for WFH?

No, I was a member of, and worked with a number of unions in heavy industry. After that experience I would never join or work with another union.

Yay.

WFH autonomy isn’t trivial, it’s about reclaiming control of your time, environment, and productivity. If collective action focuses narrowly yet powerfully on securing that benefit, the leverage is clear. Companies resisting WFH often rely on isolated dissent; collective solidarity flips that script. Risky? Sure. But meaningful rights rarely arrive quietly. Worth the fight.

> WFH has proven to be both popular and workable but no union effort has made it their one issue.

Well, yeah, real unions tend to have more than one issue, because real workplaces tend to have more than one working condition, pay, etc., issue of concern. But it certainly has been a major issue for some unions, e.g., SEIU Local 1000, the largest union covering California state workers, which bargained for WFH terms in the current labor contract and has filed a unfair labor practice charge over the Governor's recent attempt to unilaterally change WFH conditions with a 4-day-per-week RTO order.

I would run screaming in the other direction.

Yes and for other reasons as well.

fucking nay man

you have to learn to negotiate in 1 on 1s instead of taking your bad laundry in the public.

it ends up looking like group think and in that setup your value is dragged down to the average of everyone in it.

I don't think an industry wide tech union would work. There are way too many people who think of themselves as unicorns (and some may very well be) and don't care about what happens to the rest of us. No one would hire from the union if the other 50% or more of devs are ununionized and would happily take your job. Especially in this economy, when nobody can get hired to begin with.

We are approaching the era when many of us are beginning to train our own AI replacements. If there's a union at all, it probably ought to focus on job security as a first consideration. WFH is moot when nobody would hire you to begin with. A union can't magically change the industry economics.

WFH only happened because labor had so much power during the pandemic. Capital clawed it all back as soon as it could. If you want more labor power and specifically WFH, another pandemic is likely to be more effective than trying to loosely unionize a tiny subset of tech workers.

You can also unionize a single company or team/division etc., which might have a better chance. But don't expect the NLRB under Trump to fight for you the way it did under Democrats. Right now you have the entirety of government, Wall Street, the tech industry, and Elon Musk personally against WFH. It's an uphill fight.

No. I don’t particularly enjoy remote work personally.