This is a flawed argument, the current system gets rid of good performers all the time, and we have evidence of wage suppression, so employees don't get to negotiate on fair terms. You just get stuck in your pay band.

I agree it would be a good counter-factual, but I think the differences would be more around industry stability. Particularly, I think the ability for employees to push back against historical threats like off-shoring would have made the industry more appealing to younger people looking for something stable, and prevented this weird cycle of labor shortages causing salaries to explode, unqualified candidates pivoting to the industry using low cost training solutions (bootcamps, shitty masters programs), then companies failing to deliver on initiatives because the people they hired are poorly trained.

If we had 30 years of steady growth in CS education, then we'd have more experts in the field, doing a better job at executing. And it would likely cost companies less in wages as well. There are many industries where incredibly talented people make fairly modest salaries while producing world-changing products.

> IMO the ability for individual employees to negotiate for themselves is a positive?

I keep hearing this, but FAANGs don't allow individual negotiations. You are banded, like you would be at a union.

Also you're assuming that unions would be able to, or want to block the firing of bad performers. Since the bad performers would also hurt the bottom line, and therefore your pay.

Unionisation might hurt the startup as it would stop certain levels of exploitation (ie not being able to ask people to work for free in exchange for shares that will be worth nothing.)

It would be a hard model to pick up and move over and just drop into place. The trades that have union halls for carpenters, electricians, etc., aren't normally working in anything as unstable or dynamic as tech startups. If I try and think back to how things were thirty years ago I don't think it really applies. Unions are for big shop floors where bosses could fire you on a dime and replace you and then you're SOL. Skills in high demand 30 years meant fine, you could just go work somewhere else just as easily. Who expects to be in the same place for 35 years anyways?

A union is merely a group of people who agree to work together for a shared benefit. That doesn't mean that there cannot be individual negotiation, nor does it mean you can't get rid of bad performers. There is no reason why it would need to hurt the startup ecosystem either.

If the tech workers wanted those things they could make it so, but they already could have made those things so already and didn't so...

> or it would make it impossible for the most toxic (non-criminal) team members to be fired.

The issue at present is that everyone is being laid off. If we accept this anti-union trope, let's t least accept that it is strictly better than the current situation where no job is safe.