I think any job could benefit from workers union. No matter if restaurant workers or software engineers. We can see right now the issues that exist with US at-will work situations and green card holders being held hostage.
I am part of a union as a software engineer and I wouldn't have it any other way anymore. I am based in the EU though.
You could just go with Debian unstable. I rarely ran into issues while running it in a rolling release style.
Debian testing might also work for you. But it will have a freeze window before each release.