It is completely inexcusable that people in STEM fields are so reactionary, considering how capitalism utterly destroys science.
If universities were actually "left wing indoctrination factories" like the right thinks they are, every STEM grad would be taught, for example, what Kropotkin had to say about innovation.
As a mechanical engineer who went to university in a pretty conservative area, yeah, it's tough. Because of how Americans like to define "smart" I make sure to tell people (especially when they think I'm "smart" just because of my degree) that engineers are some if the dumbest smart people you'll ever meet. Sure, they can do math and make a CAD model but god forbid they spend 2 seconds thinking about any kind of social issues. While I grew up firmly middle class, both of my parents worked union jobs majority of my life. This kind of working class upbringing is super rare amongst the majority of engineers I've know. They come from landlords and pharmacists and doctors and engineers and just basic petite bugeious backgrounds, and man does it show.
On the bright side I've met some of the other incredibly rare based engineers at the job I started this year, so they do exist.
But, tl;dr: as an engineer, fuck engineers
You hit the nail on the head. The place I'm at used to have an engineers & designers union but it ended up dissolving. There's a few dudes close to my age who were in it but they don't have fond memories for it. Felt like all their union dues just went to subsidize the pension funds and any future for them was getting negotiated away. Which it did though because after it dissolved only guys with ~20+ years in will be getting any pension.
But now it's all completely fucked because everything is so outsourced and leaned down there's no leverage to be gained; let alone a realistic shot of changing other engineers on coming together. And it's only gonna get worse from here.
So yeah. Also fuck engineers.