the union is free to strike if they don't sign. It's about what's less expensive for the company and who has the more leverage. If the union is well-organized, they have disproportionate power over the management and the management concedes everything.
if your union is not democratic, it's not really a union. It's a business scam exploiting union rights. There's a difference between yellow unions (pro-business) and red unions (pro-workers). Just because something is called a union it doesn't mean it's one.
if you joined a non-democratic union to begin with, that's on you. This is a rare anomaly though and most unions have democratic processes you can engage with and bring the change
There's a union of wikipedia editors being formed and they are in alliance with the US and UK Wikimedia union. More public statements will follow in the next weeks about this.
The problem with guilds is that they preserve the interests of who is already inside at the detriment of everybody else. They range from cool kids clubs to straight up mafia behavior. There's no solidarity in guilds.
It's not exclusive to tech workers and it has nothing to do with Maoism. I'm not even leftist. It's just how our present economy works: since needs have long been satisfied, profit goes to who exploits better. Either the workers, nature, or the consumer. The more you exploit, the more you profit. Or do you think it's by chance that every major investment group, tech unicorn and military company does or enables unthinkable dystopic horrors?
This is like asking how you can keep drinking the blood of babies without the guilt of killing babies. The quality of living attributed to tech workers is on the condition that they participate in the system that extracts value from people and society. If you don't want to participate in that system of exploitation, you don't get the privileges that come with being an exploiter.
I think the title implies "tech industry", as in companies producing digital technology for profit. Working for an union as a developer is not working "in tech" imho.
there are plugins for all of this stuff and more: there are kanban boards, stuff for openscience (I think peer-review and the likes), some collaboration features etc etc