I'd like to see unions negotiate better equity deals. For pre-IPO companies, it's typical that the equity is worth nothing, and employees can actually lose money on their equity by buying it during early exercise or when they leave. For a typical employee, equity is too risky and too detached from their individual activity to be part of compensation, and it makes more sense to have different incentives. E.g. SAFEs or convertible notes where you can get paid at the next funding round instead of the IPO between 10 years and never. Alternatively, a union would have leverage and scale to arrange tender offers that individuals wouldn't. Also, during an acquisition, the union can negotiate to waive liquidation preference, since an acquirer doesn't want to buy a company where the employees don't get paid and strike on the first day.
this is a great example of the kind of things unions should talk about when doing tech organizing.
too often, unions pitch themselves on fixing problems that are low on the hierarchy of needs in a particular job (e.g., will this job kill/maim you? do you make enough money to feed yourself?) and it just doesn't resonate with the types of problems that tech folks have.
but pre-IPO equity deals are something that all employees hate and are completely powerless to change as individuals.
