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For those that don't know, there isn't one. I believe what the summary is referring to (and possibly the article itself, which of course I didn't read) is Alliance@IBM, a ... well, rumor site that gets a lot of disgruntled workers on it.

IBM has a ton of international employees but I believe the largest percentage of employees is in the US. It'd be interesting to compare, say, HP, IBM, Intel, etc., with percentages of employees and where they work, etc.

I guess, in order to make people REALLY happy, they should have just laid off workers and said goodbye for good, huh? Offering to re-locate and stay employed, pfffft, how stupid. Right.

For many people the only way to settle these issues is through a trade association or union. When you have the power and collective funds of a large group you can afford lawyers. IT workers are quit often of a libertarian bent and against such things, but unions aren't the anachronism most people think they are. They have to operate far differently than they did in an industry based economy but have evolved with the times. Entry level and unskilled labor possibly has the most to gain, for example in the rising healthcare services industry, but technical workers still benefit greatly.

IBM has their own unit within the Communications Workers of America and a lot of their power in settling this issues came from the strength in numbers.
http://www.allianceibm.org/

IBM Alliance itself is part of Washtech.
http://www.washtech.org/

Disclaimer: I'm a systems analyst and since Aug 1st a VP of a CWA unit.

You absolutely can, and you wouldn't be the first, either. Check out WashTech (represents technical workers in Washington State) and Alliance@IBM (represents IBM employees) for some examples and inspiration.

You work for IBM.

So are you an IBMer, an LTS (Long-Term Supplemental), or contractor (the lowest of the low)? I would really like to know. I used to work at IBM.

There is a very big reason IBM is leading the way to unionizing the IT field, management is treating employees like crap at that company. CWA Local 1701 (Communication Workers of America, http://www.allianceibm.org/).

They are NOT outsourcing to skilled offshore workers. Case in point, American operators require 2 years of experience plus degree, or four years experience plus. The Brazillion operators they are offshoring to (starting with the Nissan account, loved that project), the ONLY requirement they had: Speaking English.

That isn't uncommon when dealing with the fresh Indian Programmers. Many people billed as offshore "skilled" labor have less training than American staff. I spent many hours cleaning up others messes, still bitter.

As for your misleading statement that "IBM will do its utmost to find [the outsourced] good jobs", I call pure bullshit on that. IBM freezes hiring months before layoffs, so that people can not change to different departments or jobs. LEAN is not working, and if you are one of the idiots that think it's helping IBM, you are obviously not one of the people doing the job 4 people did a year ago because of LEAN.

I left because I did not like working 12-14 hours a day 7 days a week. For three months straight.

I still have friends at IBM, and situations are not getting better. .Sorry for the rant, but after seeing what's happening at IBM recently, I have nothing nice to say about them. ..Though they get nice PR at Slashdot, but working conditions for "real workers" are horrible. ...Didn't IBM steal their blade server technology from Tandem?

But maybe many got "LEANED" for working AT IBM :)

http://www.allianceibm.org/

I have no problem with Cringley being called a hack. But like the old saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Whether or not he's got his numbers exactly right, if you've got any doubt there are massive layoffs occuring at IBM, read the comments attached to Cringley's articles:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70504_002027_comments.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70511_002058_comments.html

Not to mention reports from other IBMers here:

http://www.allianceibm.org/jobcutstatusandcomments .php

Also, consider that IBM's employee headcount doesn't include contractors. I don't know how much including them would effect the headcount, but it's certainly by a substantial amount.

Being an idiot doesn't necessarily preclude his occasionally being somewhere in the ballpark of the truth.

I think I found one: here
search for "insurgency", or just keep scrolling. The mood here is downright ugly, and I'm not even in Global Services.

I call "bullshit"... this is the union guys again.

I'm a former IBM Global Services employee; I left IBM on my own steam to start my own startup when they were closing down our division in 2001 (IBM Global Small Business - say that with a straight face). When that happened, they gave each of us six months to find a job elsewhere within IBM, including paying for flights for interviews, and sending HR people out on site to help write resumes, etc.. IBM bends over backwards to retain employees. IBM is not just a job, it's a job for life for most of its employees.

Here's the original "The Register" article which set off this current firestorm:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/02/ibm_may_la yoffs_2007/

Notice who the press release is from: "Alliance@IBM, a group working to form a union at the company, reports that..."; this is The Communication Workers of America Union; here's their site:

http://www.allianceibm.org/

They claim to be "The official national site for the IBM Employees' Union CWA Local 1701, AFL-CIO" - only there *is no* "IBM Employees' Union" (nowhere on this site will you find membership statistics of any kind).

These are the guys that have been trying to unionize IBM since smelling a payday, in order to get their claws into everyone's paycheck at $10/month and control of the IBM pension plans. When the IBM pension plan converted over to a cash-balance plan, about the only people who didn't have a choice were people who hadn't vested in the plan at all. Yet these same guys tried to stir up a firestorm about it, and attacked IBM over it in the press.

These guys are all about trying to FUD IBM employees into joining their union; while I was with IBM, no one was interested in their party line, even though they practically camped out in all the off-campus restaurants and tried to chat us up every chance they got - they were worse than religious missionaries.

It's too bad Cringely bought into this fake press release, I genuinely enjoyed his "Triumph of the Nerds" television programs.

-- Terry

The unions should work just how the members say they should work. Here's my hopothetical union which addresses your questions:

1) Seniority plays no part in union negotiations about promotions or layoffs. Every union member is an equal. Ideally, the union would stay out of promotions, unless it could be documented that the promotion occurred because of reasons other than factors related to job performance. i.e. a good worker should get the promotion over a good schmoozer, unless schmoozing is critical to the job.

2) How would this union be better than what you have today? Well, if your company tries to cut your medical insurance in order to cut their costs, the union would step in. If your company tries to make you work overtime without booking it, the union would step in. If your company reduces your pay but increases executive pay, the union would step in. If your company is giving the boss' pet two raises a year but hard workers only get one, the union would step in.

3) The union would not standardize wages. It would bargain in your stead, but not necessarily for strict salary equivalence. Because though you might imagine that you have the power to bargain on equal terms with a behemoth 100 billion dollar company, you actually have little barganing power. There's really just no comparison in power there. Heck, when my benefits and salary were set, I had absolutely no input into the matter. The small company I worked for was sold, and I woke up at a huge company. No opportunity to bargain. I'm not unhappy with the deal I got, but it just happened to me without my involvement.

4) The union wouldn't impede movement into management. When a union member is promoted to management, they just stop being a member of the union, that's all.

Here's a union trying to organize IBM. http://www.allianceibm.org/

In a nutshell, what do you want from a union. It could be as little as help when the boss breaks out the vibrators and insists that you bugger him before you leave for the day. You should have an option other than quitting your job.

From http://www.allianceibm.org/

Attention IBM employees:

IBM is blocking e-mail to and from the Alliance@IBM e-mail address endicottalliance@stny.rr.com from inside the company. Please send your job cut information and other correspondence from your home e-mail.

Here is the IBM Union website, if anyone is interested.

Are there any plans to simulate the Multiple Personality Disroder (MPD) with their flagship e-server z/OS?

Or, perhaps start replacing employees with these bad boys... 607 employees cut in IGS, so far. ref: http://www.allianceibm.org/

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Indian programmers cost 1/4th the amount typically paid for an American programmer. A 4:1 bang-per-buck ratio.

What outsourcing firms wont tell you is that you're also buying into an average 6:1 loss in productivity. American coders are better educated, and have more experience -- This results in _better_ quality code that's produced _faster_ than their Indian counterparts.

Sure, you're saving your company money, but you're also taking an enormous hit in productivity. Your offshore project is putt-putting along at 15 MPH when the rest of the industry is doing the equivalent of 10 over in a 65 MPH highway. By the time your product hits the street, your competitors are already dominating the market AND working on their next release.

Something to think about.

There have been attempts to unionize IBM workers through the Communications Workers of America. This may be more attractive for non-salaried than salaried workers, but they're shooting for anyone not in management-- doesn't matter how "white collar" your job is.

However, politically... those of us who actually work in the industry rather than own it (realizing that some folks do both), have very little influence. Politically, we are all over the map with a general spirit of libertarian ethics with a distrust of the megacorporation ingrained into our psyche by personal expierence and cyberpunk literature we have been gobbling for the last two decades.

And, if we formed our own party in the single member-district system of the U.S (sorry, I know the rest of the world is more democratic with parlimentary systems) such would be a third party which would never gain any influence outside of local elections in California and the Pacific North West. We also, as workers, don't have the money to buy...er...lobby politicans. Easy example... if you and AOL/Time-Warner lobby congress about MP3s, who do you think is going to win?

No, fellow workers... we get paid so much because we have power. Power, untapped and unrealized. Middle-management was gutted through downsizing and our network connections have given rise to more "just-in-time" capitalism. Our skills , if you believe the Software Labor Shortage Myth are in such short supply that we can not train and import workers fast enough. Imagine if we can collectively come to agreements in which we decide what things we will work for and will not. Not only can we have influence over technology, but a host of other things that need geeks to be accomplished.

Our power is in action, not the ballot box. We can vote with our feet. We can strike (here is the source. We can slack and slow down. We can sick-in. We can boycott. We can Direct Action. We can be as Electornically Civilly Disobedient, and we can be... it works like we did with Low Power FM through an organized political campaign of radio piracy, we were able to sieze part of the spectrum from corporate monoplization for community interests. We can break mass media blackouts of information, by making our own media, like we did in Seattle, and like we'll do again in DC.

Are you tired of 60-hour work weeks? Of corporations making deals with politicans to undermine over-time pay and encourage permatemping? We don't have to be slaves.

Are you tired of technology developing that penalizes both the worker and the consumer, to the benfit of a handful of the rich and power... anybody remember the Java Class War? Where was our class in that? Complaining about how the standards needed to be independent of propietary control, and largely doing nothing about it! We need to take control of training and make it clear that it is those of us work in the industry that can figure out who knows what, rather than some profiteering third party or a way for leading software companies to gouge folks for certification!

We need non-profit employment services (or hiring halls) so we can dump our contracting companies (ie. pimps, job sharks, etc... ) once and for all.

We need to organize, and organize in a way that maintains our autonomy and democratic values. We don't need any union bosses, telling us what we can and can't do... but we do need to be in solidarity with our fellow workers so we can support each other in struggle. Who among you wouldn't strike to help the workers in hardware manufacture to get a better shake? Some more pay, a safer environment, etc... Who among you wouldn't refuse to work, if you knew by refusing for a short time you could bring in ecological sound practices. We can bring on the Viridian revolution, but innovation won't be enough... we have to force the issue and force companies to clean up their mess.

We have to become responsible, or we have noone to blame for how bad work is but ourselves.

Solid,

Flint

Baltimore IWW Telecommunications and Computer Workers IU560

(San Francisco, Toronto)

Also check out: Syndicat de l'Industrie Informatique, Washington Technical Workers Alliance, FACE Intel, Alliance@IBM, BITE Division of NWU (Business - Instructional - Techincal - Electronic).

We Can Win! No Nerds, No Birds!