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Oh the US isn't that far behind in maternity leave.

Just because "12 weeks seems like a lot to me" doesn't change the actual fact.

Look at the data, and see for yourself. The US offers 12 weeks of unpaid leave, which puts it basically at bottom of the pile, even if you consider 3rd-world nations.

I'll concur with you about the absurd vacation leave situation though. I get ~12 days per year with no sick leave, and my supervisors make comments like "I'm not sure that's a great idea" every time I ask to redeem a vacation day.

In Australia, IT workers are represented by the Association of Profesional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia (APESMA). This is both a professional society and a union (it is a member of the Australian Council of Trade Unions).

It seems to be an American-specific thing that unions are only for blue-collar workers.

Wow! Companies can be violent too. So can football teams. Should we ban them?

Seriously. It is rare for unions to be violent. Stereotyping them is just ridiculous. Modern unions are more about ensuring managers don't exploit employees (and recovering employee entitlements when they do) than collective bargaining or strikes.

It is frequently a self-correcting problem...

Yes, I agree it is self-correcting in some situations. However the problem is when a manager simply expects the employees to work until the job is done. Then you end up with the situation like the one that I mentioned above where I was working 3-4 hours per day unpaid overtime because the owner was too lazy or greedy to hire another employee, he could certainly afford it. I couldn't leave the job at the time. I put up with it for more than a year, until I could afford to take a risk and change jobs (in small towns like where I live there aren't too many options for employment). This was IT work, not retail, but I still resent unpaid or forced overtime in all industries, and am suspicious of overtime in general.

It's all like I said before. :) The relationship between employers and employees is a delicate one, and when treated with respect can be very rewarding for both the employer and the employee.

I certainly agree with you in this regard, I had hoped that I had made that clear in the grandparent post. I even modded up your post (yes, I have a Slashdot account, but had already modded in this thread, so I am posting AC).

See, there is also something called "job requirements". If the job occasionally requires an employee to work extra, and the employee knows this before taking the job, and the employee later refuses to ever work extra, then that employee is not fulfilling the job requirements. It's one thing to say "You never told me I'd need to stay late" and quite another thing to say "I knew this when you hired me, but I refuse".

I agree 100%, although I don't think that contracts should enforce much more than 40 hours a week (with overtime). In fact this is actually illegal in several European countries. I think that the 'forty-hour week' is one of the great achievements of the 20th century, and I am sad to see it being undone.

These days, I am sure to get my contract checked by my union before I take a job, so I can feel safe that I will not be exploited again. However many people still fall into the trap of signing contracts with ridiculous clauses for overtime, as they cannot understand the legalese, and are not members of unions.

Don't get me wrong, I can't stand workers who shirk their responsibiliies and make life more difficult for the rest of us, but they usually don't last long in their jobs. I think that incompetent or greedy employers who have unrealistic expectations about their employees are a bigger worry, as they can really make your life hell (as I have experienced first hand).

Back to the original topic, I think that overtime should be optional, and it should certainly be rewarded. If an employer can't find someone to work overtime than there are other options, so nobody should ever be forced to work overtime. It looks like you are not too far from this opinion either.

Unions are starting to take off in hi-tech business. In Australia, APESMA has won a reasonable award (minimum) salary for all engineering graduates, and continues to lobby for increased privileges for IT workers.

There have also been dozens of cases of APESMA representing their members to win unpaid wages (due to "dot-com" companies exploiting their workers and forcing them to work unpaid overtime). There have been cases of them winning thousands of dollars of unpaid entitlements that had been ripped off workers by corrupt directors.

Given the current chaotic state of the IT industry, I think that unions are not simply a good idea, they are necessary. IT unions, of course, aren't the stereotypical collective-bargaining type. They are more focussed on winning basic rights for IT workers, exposing exploitative businesses, and winning back entitlements that have been stolen from their members.

Anyone who has worked in IT over the past ten years has at least one story of being exploited, and having wages stolen from them. IT unions are designed to stop this.

Maybe they won't take off in the USA, due to it's anti-union attitude, but in the rest of the world, they are alive and well. They are often just an extension of the existing engineer or scientist unions (like APESMA is).

In Australia, the Australian Services Union provides some basic union services to IT workers, however, as the name suggests, they cater more for call center personnel and office equipment repairers, and I don't believe they have representatives in any programming shops. The New South Wales government recently established the IT Workers' Alliance, which should better cover programmers and engineers.

Those with a university degree could also ask APESMA for legal advice or employment updates.

There are no 'shop organisers' and none of the usual 'the workers' versus 'the bosses' rhetoric. So there is no conflict of interest; I don't tell them things that are commerical in confidence. This organisation is not interested in forcing a one-size-fits-all on employee or unions. (Although it has worked towards saftey net conditions.) This is not quite the balanced organisation you might like to see -- but it does balance my own country's employer body, the AIIA.

I've also found APESMA membership to be better value than my other membership of the more traditional IT professional society, the ACS, which seems more concerned with prestige and suit-ish stuff that I do not understand. But apparently others do, because Lawyers, Accountants, and the like see membership of the ACS as being a badge of 'professionalism' of the same value as membership of their more established professional societies.