ClueCon Weekly with Brian Meeker [Sn. 15 Ep.29]: Tech Unions Explained
Tech used to feel like the “safe” industry: easy job-hopping, steady salary growth, and the sense that good engineers would always land on their feet. Lately, that assumption has cracked and in this episode of ClueCon Weekly, host Jon Gray sits down with Brian Meeker, Engineering Manager at GetThru, to talk about what’s changed and why more tech workers are looking at unionizing.
Brian shares the story behind GetThru Workers United, including how organizing started in 2022 and how they negotiated a contract in 2025. They dig into what unions can do in tech (and what they can’t), why “worker-to-worker” organizing matters, and what kinds of protections teams are pushing for right now — from severance and recall rights to on-call policies, work hours, and AI usage guardrails.
They also talk candidly about the current job market: the post-COVID shift, layoffs justified by “AI,” and how automation and market saturation are hitting junior engineers especially hard.
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