I wish non-union worker organizations would get more traction, not everything really works well in the labor union model. Eg. professional workers more traditionally organized into guilds yet I've never seen any movements toward organizing modern professions into guilds.
Having thought a bit about the space, I agree! I think we could gain a lot by organizing as a guild.
That being said, if you have the knowledge-working talent, organizational skills, ambition, and reputation necessary to start a successful guild, you can make a lot more money as a consultant, and money is a powerful motivator.
I think if, as an economy, we were geared more towards quality and building for the long-term, a software guild would emerge more naturally. We've optimized for a different system, that doesn't much reward the differential outputs of a guild-like association. Reasonable people can disagree on the relative merits of this system. :)
To add some color to this, I know of at least one contracting agency / consultancy that effectively operated as a guild for about 10 years.
When you hired somebody from them, you knew you were getting the real deal. Their contracts included protection from off-the-clock hours, 4-day weeks, etc. They were also super transparent and accurate with the "level" of people you were getting. They charged a premium-level fee (read: not an exorbitant, luxury-level fee), but my company at the time was happy to pay – the marginal expense was basically insurance that nobody involved was going to be wasting their time. On every IC team they were embedded in, they got better performance reviews and 360 reviews than anybody else.
I think over the years, they (tragically, IMO) appear to have drifted away from this model, because they found they could grow faster by aiming more "mid-market"; my guess is that the pool of money on the buy side in the mid-market is larger.
Basically, mediocrity is the most profitable equilibrium. You have to possess some organizing principle that's more foundational than the pursuit of profit to avoid it. There's ways to do that without getting totally wonky. You could organize as a Co-Op (so you operate group-selfishly instead of leader-selfishly), register as a benefit corporation, etc.
I'm not sure as I don't belong to any of these but here are some examples (US) that seem like they "work well"... Screen Actors, Directors, Writers all have guilds. Real-estate and Lawyers have decent looking guilds, they just don't call them by name. Doctors, Dentists and Nurses also have guilds (they call them associations).
SAG, DGA, and WGA are all labor unions. The other cases I'll grant you, but it's less clear what their direct benefit to their members is besides acting as lobbying organizations.
SAC, WAG, etc. are all labor unions similar to the one Bandcamp just created. Don't be confused by the name.
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As for the other examples, what I like about tech is that anyone can join the industry. I think the way attorneys and doctors have set up their profession works for them but it really makes it hard for anyone who didn't choose the golden path to join.
Turkish chambers of engineers are regulated as trade associations with mandatory membership, not as labor unions. Trade associations in Turkey are semi-governmental whereas unions in Turkey are non-governmental, hence this distinction matters a lot here.
Unions exist in Turkey, as a separate type of entity. In fact, Turkish unions even participate in the national minimum wage and public service pay coefficient negotiations.
In the engineering space, it's common to get chartered with one of the Institutes, such as the Institution of Civil Engineers, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE who make so many standards), Institution of Engineers of Ireland, and a great many others. These are massive organisations, which write standards, certify engineering courses in universities, and lobby governments. They are absolutely the successors to the guilds
