There's no unions for H1B workers. If there's any union stepping up for their interest, it would find mass enrollment tomorrow. Unfortunately, there isn't support by non-h1b engineers, let alone unions.

Why does there have to be a lack of transparency?

Yep this. I think i've lost count of home many US and German companies keep moving their SW positions to my home country because US labor is too expensive and German workers rights and unions too annoying for business.

Where I live now in Austria, there's some union of IT workers, but it's small and toothless because they know their work can be offshored and have no leverage especially that the country is already not attractive to investors as-is due to high costs, high taxes and regulations. IT workers giving themselves even more benefits and protections through unions, like the rail workers have for example, would just mean non critical IT work leaves the country ASAP to neighboring Hungary or Slovakia or something.

In a globalized free market without trade and regulatory barriers, where the products and the "labor" travels freely over a wire with no borders or tariffs, the best value players win all, and everyone else is stuck in a race to the bottom trying to match that even if their operating costs are higher due to regulations, taxes, etc

Unions only worked in jobs where the workers could collectively use the leverage they had all along against their employer but were too afraid to use due to retaliation, but unions can't fix real world economic and trade facts that make your leverage zero to begin with. See the VFX industry for best example.

Unions might be able to bargain against h1b because they can have an honest conversation with management about the "we just can't FIND anybody" lie.

said the devil himself

Despite the downvotes, this is at least partially correct. If unions were ubiquitous in the tech sector, companies would have been a lot more stingy with the hiring during ZIRP or boom eras. Or they would have been more creative with the hiring form - contractors, temporary staff, etc. None of these companies would risk locking in so many employees knowing that they'll be very expensive or impossible to fire.

I don't know about how a union would affect the standard salary being offered. I'd say that it could be higher for those essential enough to be "core staff", those that the company hires permanently knowing they'll be hard to get rid of and who drive the company forward because they're motivated with additional means.

So a union might drive the salaries and employment conditions up for the "core" team, while driving them down for the "temps". I've been through this as a unionized tech worker in both categories, and this is how it played out.

  > Preventing efficiency in markets slows growth, which slows the progression of living standards.

You're entirely relying on a false dichotomy and an unsupported causal chain, assuming (without evidence!) that unions inherently reduce efficiency, slow growth, and lower living standards. The fact is that there's evidence that unions can correct power imbalances, raise wages, reduce inequality, and even support long-term productivity and social stability

Unions are just businesses that sell labor. There’s nothing wrong with getting a bunch of people to cooperate on selling labor, any more than there is with getting a bunch of people together to cooperate on selling bananas.

Unionism is capitalism. If you are a W2 employee in the United States, you are in a contractual relationship in which you have very limited leverage to negotiate and limited protections.

Humans organize together in many different ways for many different reasons. Your own assertion belies that — if my negotiating my terms of working for someone is crime against humanity, why should the guy controlling the capital have that right?

The dude for whom I work is worth $10-15B. What should he make for the benefit of humanity and efficiency? He negotiated a deal with the board for his comp.

Markets are anti-human. Any economic system not designed for the well-being of human beings is anti-human. "Living standards" is a concept the owning class uses to justify their obscene wealth and promulgation of a system solely focused on profit.