Many people instantly bristle at the word "union". It's worth distinguishing between the gatekeeping and seniority effects of a "union" as understood in the currently-not-pro-union mind and the potential benefits of a collective voice using more descriptive nomenclature.
Most unions don't have "union" in their name, I don't think it's an issue of nomenclature. People know which organizations can be colloquially referred to as a labor union.
That said people just have problems understanding how unions work. It's a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the union members. If you want that to include gate keeping and seniority protections that's up to the members. If you want it to be a political lobby, same thing.
>It's a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the union members.
I've never been in (or had the opportunity to be in) a union, but it seems like you could apply this exact same argument to the US congress. Congress is a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the voters. Of course, it's far from that simple in the real world.
Do you have some organizational mechanisms in mind to prevent such an institution from eventually evolving gatekeeping and seniority (or to dislodge it from power if it does)?
So re-brand it. How about ‘collective’? Bernie Sanders literally lost the election because he couldn’t rebrand socialism and instead called it socialism.
I also don’t thing developers need a traditional labor union. We probably need baseline guidelines where non-compliant companies would be seen as ‘very lame, avoid’. Similar to a coding standard.
