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This is the free market at work. Exactly as intended by the corporations in charge.

This is the free market at work. It's ripe for unionization.

Good luck with that ... Sentiment from several sources (Google: Kavanaugh anti-union), quoting from the first:

Judge Kavanaugh routinely rules against workers and their families and regularly sides with employers against employees seeking justice in the workplace, including CWA members.

• CWA Opposes the Nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
• Trump Unites Unions Against ‘Anti-Worker’ Kavanaugh for Court
• Kavanaugh Sided With Trump Casino in 2012 to Thwart Union Drive
• Brett Kavanaugh Ruled Against Workers When No One Else Did
• Brett Kavanaugh Once Sided With an Anti-Union Company That Scapegoated Undocumented Workers

Well... Let's See about that... Oh wait, I'm having trouble finding support for him. Oh wait, I found this Wikipedia page So, the police and firefighters unions. That's it.

if you're company stops growing, even for just a bit, the investors eat you alive. There's even a name for it: Bained, after former Presidential Candidate Mitt Rhomney's old company made the practice well known.

Nintendo is a Japanese company, so they might not be vulnerable to it though. But for us here in America we're wondering if they'll get cut to pieces by their investors.

Alliance@IBM = Communications Workers of America: http://www.endicottalliance.org/

The Communications Workers of America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_America is a labor union for communications and media workers; if you read the previous link, you'll see that it's the largest, with about 700,000 employees under their purview.

I'm rather certain that software engineers don't count as communications workers, although I'll agree that communications workers are being displaced, as more and more telephone companies turn into providers of dumb internet pipes.

The interesting thing to note is that their dues are typically set to about 1.3% of your gross pay: http://www.cwa-union.org/pages/what_does_cwa_mean_for_att_mobility_employees , are not tax deductible, and get deducted from your post-tax pay.

Now the fun part! For a typical salaried software engineer in California, between state and federal income tax, you re paying nearly 50% of your income in taxes. The average salary for an engineer at IBM in the US (average, meaning band 6) is ~$100,000/year. So that works out to $1,300/year in union dues, if they are successful, which is ~$2,500 of your pre-tax dollars, or double the 1.3%, were it taken off your net, instead.

But the really fun part is what 120,000 workers at IBM being unionized would mean to them: 120,000 * $1,300 = $156M/year in additional income to the union.

I'm guessing that these people are either used to dealing with people who are bad at math, unlike engineers, or they believe engineers are fairly gullible, and can be used as a replacement source of income, as their traditional milk cows run dry over time.

NB: For full disclosure, I was a band 9 engineer at IBM before leaving them, and the CWA picketed our offices, which were the offices of a small company which IBM had acquired, to try and unionize us, as well. They had not a chance in hell.

I'm sure if you called up the Communications Workers of America, they'd be happy to talk with you about this subject in detail. (warning: I am not responsible for what happens to your employment status if you click that link from work and it shows up in your company's webserver logs).

A decade ago I worked at a Lockheed Martin site (in Camden, NJ) that had all its software engineers unionized under the CWA. I was on loan (yes, a scab), but I never witnessed any of the common horror stories you typically hear about unions while there. It was almost exactly like working anywhere else. The only real difference I saw was that when we got sold to Lockheed, the union at that one site was single-handedly responsible for the old company being forced to fork over our saved pension funds to the new company.

Verizon wants 100 concessions from their union employees. Even though Verizon’s top five executives received compensation of $258 million over the past four years (1), Verizon wants to freeze pensions for current employees. Also eliminate traditional pensions for future workers, while making its 401(k) plans somewhat more generous for both (2). Additional, there's demands from Verizon regarding health care premiums for union employees.

References:

• (1) CWA - http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/45000_workers_on_strike_at_verizon
• (2) NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/us/07verizon.html

If you're really interested, the best place to start is probably the Communications Workers of America (CWA). They represent more than 600,000 workers (many of whom are in IT and related disciplines) both directly and through WashTech, an independent group they helped tech workers in Washington State organize to advocate for them. Here's information on how to organize your workplace.

If you're really interested, the best place to start is probably the Communications Workers of America (CWA). They represent more than 600,000 workers (many of whom are in IT and related disciplines) both directly and through WashTech, an independent group they helped tech workers in Washington State organize to advocate for them. Here's information on how to organize your workplace.

You have to look at who the CWA are. I think the first bullet point of their mission statement makes the point. If you want to "Improve the standard of living for our current and future members" then you want to make sure they have stable jobs that pay well, in which case you want to scare the public about how the lack of service will hurt us and make us look technologically backwards compared to other countries. Got to love the manipulation of good ol' American pride.

You have to look at who the CWA are. I think the first bullet point of their mission statement makes the point. If you want to "Improve the standard of living for our current and future members" then you want to make sure they have stable jobs that pay well, in which case you want to scare the public about how the lack of service will hurt us and make us look technologically backwards compared to other countries. Got to love the manipulation of good ol' American pride.

You're absolutely right. IANAL but I can think of no precedence where this would ever be appropriate.

Secondly, regardless of the fees that they charge for people to get copies of things in WV, I can't see how they'll lose that much money. West Virginia is in the bottom five of internet access speed availability in the United States (Sourced here. I don't think that many of the people in WV will do online retrieval of public records.

Down in Florida we have the Sunshine laws and we have about anything you want online.

Xserv

For what it's worth, I'm also in the telecom industry.

A true production level environment has fully controlled endpoints. Even the VOIP cable companies provide don't use IP. Most use ATM and/or frame relay.
ATM and frame relay are legacy technologies. They're being phased out in favor of IP just as quickly as carriers can.

Everything's not so free when it's YOUR equipment or network others want to leech, is it.
Yeah, except that it was built with OUR tax dollars, and the current "owners" are doing little to invest their windfall profits back into the system.
As a result, the United States is now falling behind the rest of the world in broadband internet.

I can vouch for this, having worked at a major router manufacturer. We made lots of sales around the world, to BT, France Telecom, some Russians, KT, India. There's a lot of growth around the world, but hardly any in the U.S. market. Of course, part of this is because the U.S. population has not been growing.

But the bigger issue is that the U.S. telecoms invest the absolute bare minimum to keep people from screaming.
And if you live in a rural area, you might as well forget about it-- you'll be stuck paying 1940s era prices for 1940s era phone technology. (Here's a hint-- in 2007, that's not a good deal.)

Companies also try to maintain the farce that long distance calls cost them more, which today makes about as much sense as the droit de signor. And the related farces that caller ID and three-way calls should be hugely expensive. I could go on, but... what's the point? I could hardly think of an organization I hate more than Verizon, except maybe the Internal Revenue Service.

Why do you think your phone and DSL bills are so high? It isn't the 4,000 managers, it is the 60,000 union members with so-so skills taking home $70K per year, fantastic medical, HUGE pension plan and free phone service and 30% off all other offerings. The loaded cost of a tech is around double their pay when you add benefits. Overtime is 2x and 3x for overtime on holidays.

Thank you unions. Good work if you can get it.

My sister is in the CWA http://www.cwa-union.org/ and works for a telecom/RBOC. Everything is great except she can't get better vacation days until someone else dies or retires. Her winter vacation period begins the week after Thanksgiving (Monday) and she's been working there for almost 15 years. I'd hate to see when the new folks get their vacations!

Well, either it is the union at fault or she simply doesn't want to see the rest of the family. The more I think about it, that MUST be it. Way to go CWA!

Nobody is paid what they are worth, but unions make everything cost more and teach employees not to work outside their specifically documented tasks. They sap the initiative from otherwise smart, capable people who would otherwise climb the management ladder and provide tremendous innovative ideas to serve customers and more efficiently provision new telecommunications technology.

it is precisely circumstances like these that led to the development of labor unions (well, plus a few deaths-by-locked-door-in-a-fire)

it's alarming how many modern workers buy the company line about unions and how they're only in it for the dues. why is it ingrained in modern companies that teamwork is the solution to problems, but then teamwork is lambasted as a strategy to improve conditions?

i had a discussion with my sister once in which she railed against the organized workers at her job because they didn't have to work as much and got paid more. ? why is that bad? it's in the power of every worker! (except those working for the tsa, thanks to mr. bush.)

the communications workers is the first place to look if you're looking to get started. you have nothing to lose but your lousy schedule and crappy raise percentages. and your chains, but that's more metaphorical.

I don't know if you have had to deal with a baby bell trouble ticket recently, but it wouldn't be hard to beat them in service.

It's called the CWA (Communications Workers of America). No matter where you go or which provider you use, if it's a union "job", you'll have them breathing down your neck.

Best bet is to talk to a local teamster rep. If you can't find one, head to a local UPS. They are there.

I believe the Communications Workers of America were the ones looking to organize software engineerings. The teamsters drive trucks. Both unions are AFL-CIO, so the teamsters would be able to put you in touch with the right people though.

There already is a union for communication tech workers. From what I understand, they are all for other technology workers organizing.

http://www.cwa-union.org

Here is the Union See N Say game.

Please see:

SeeNSay
for a good laugh.

The retiree benefits and the outsourcing/contracting issues are some of the major things this strike is about.

SBC is talking about raising the copays on insurance to double our triple what they are now. It's also talking about cutting phone concessions (discounts) all together for retirees..and possibly current employees. That's a lot of extra cost to add to anybody's monthly bills...but moreso to a retired person who isn't getting any raises anytime soon.

The other half is the outsourcing of new jobs. New technology areas such as DSL and WiFi aren't being opened to the current technical and phone support staff. They're all being outsourced to contractors...and for phone support...India. So the CWA is pushing to open those areas...and reduce the cutting of current employees.

You can see more details at CWA's web site.

In the interest of "Fair and Balanced" reporting:
CWA.

The strike starts on Friday morning (12:01 a.m.) and goes until Tuesday starts (12:01 a.m. again).

See the official CWA announcement.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Communications Workers of America announced that a 4-day strike involving 100,000 union employees of SBC in 13 states will begin at 12:01 a.m. local time in each time zone on Friday, May 21. Workers will return to their jobs at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, May 25.

Among key issues in the contract dispute, CWA members are seeking to strengthen their employment security, including gaining access to new jobs in growth areas of the company, and to preserve their health care benefits in the face of substantial cost-shifting demands by SBC management.

National bargaining that has been taking place between the parties in Washington, D.C. over health care, wages, pensions and employment security will cease, and these issues will now be referred back to the four regional tables in New Haven, Conn., Chicago, Austin, Tex., and Pleasanton, Calif.

"We appreciate the hard work of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Peter Hurtgen in helping us try to work out an agreement on these issues, but unfortunately these efforts have failed to achieve a settlement," said CWA President Morton Bahr.

"We are making this a limited job action right now to drive it home to SBC that our members are serious about securing their future at SBC," said Bahr. "We know that a prolonged strike could cause a loss of major customers and do significant damage to the company, and hopefully that can be avoided."

CWA also is ratcheting up other mobilization activities in the field and is being supported by the AFL-CIO and other major unions in mounting a carrier-switch campaign that potentially could shift substantial business from SBC to another union carrier, AT&T, which operates in 11 of the SBC states. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka personally is spearheading carrier-switch efforts aimed at labor organizations and the 5 million union families who are SBC customers. Customers are being asked to give CWA their "proxy" to implement a carrier switch if the union deems it necessary.

CWA members, who have lost 29,000 jobs at SBC over the past three years, are seeking access to the new growth jobs in Internet data services, installation of Wi-Fi hotspots, voice over the Internet (VOIP), DSL broadband and other areas. Virtually all of this SBC work, amounting to thousands of jobs, is being outsourced, including going offshore to countries such as India and the Philippines.

"SBC continues to refuse to give this work to our members, the frontline workers who have built SBC into the nation's most profitable telecom company," said Bahr. SBC's profits last year were more than $8 billion.

CWA also noted that SBC's latest bargaining proposal called for members to receive no base wage increase upon settlement, but instead receive a one-time lump sum payment of 4 percent. A cash payment instead of a 3 percent base wage increase equates to a savings to SBC of more than $1 billion over four years.

"Incredibly, SBC wants to take $1 billion out of our members' pockets in wages, not to pay for rising health costs, but just to fatten its profits. At the same time, SBC is still demanding that workers also start paying tens of millions more out of pocket for their health care," Bahr stated.

Negotiations began in mid-February. These contracts cover SBC workers in Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, California and Nevada.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Communications Workers of America announced that a 4-day strike involving 100,000 union employees of SBC in 13 states will begin at 12:01 a.m. local time in each time zone on Friday, May 21. Workers will return to their jobs at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, May 25.

Among key issues in the contract dispute, CWA members are seeking to strengthen their employment security, including gaining access to new jobs in growth areas of the company, and to preserve their health care benefits in the face of substantial cost-shifting demands by SBC management.

National bargaining that has been taking place between the parties in Washington, D.C. over health care, wages, pensions and employment security will cease, and these issues will now be referred back to the four regional tables in New Haven, Conn., Chicago, Austin, Tex., and Pleasanton, Calif.

"We appreciate the hard work of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Peter Hurtgen in helping us try to work out an agreement on these issues, but unfortunately these efforts have failed to achieve a settlement," said CWA President Morton Bahr.

"We are making this a limited job action right now to drive it home to SBC that our members are serious about securing their future at SBC," said Bahr. "We know that a prolonged strike could cause a loss of major customers and do significant damage to the company, and hopefully that can be avoided."

CWA also is ratcheting up other mobilization activities in the field and is being supported by the AFL-CIO and other major unions in mounting a carrier-switch campaign that potentially could shift substantial business from SBC to another union carrier, AT&T, which operates in 11 of the SBC states. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka personally is spearheading carrier-switch efforts aimed at labor organizations and the 5 million union families who are SBC customers. Customers are being asked to give CWA their "proxy" to implement a carrier switch if the union deems it necessary.

CWA members, who have lost 29,000 jobs at SBC over the past three years, are seeking access to the new growth jobs in Internet data services, installation of Wi-Fi hotspots, voice over the Internet (VOIP), DSL broadband and other areas. Virtually all of this SBC work, amounting to thousands of jobs, is being outsourced, including going offshore to countries such as India and the Philippines.

"SBC continues to refuse to give this work to our members, the frontline workers who have built SBC into the nation's most profitable telecom company," said Bahr. SBC's profits last year were more than $8 billion.

CWA also noted that SBC's latest bargaining proposal called for members to receive no base wage increase upon settlement, but instead receive a one-time lump sum payment of 4 percent. A cash payment instead of a 3 percent base wage increase equates to a savings to SBC of more than $1 billion over four years.

"Incredibly, SBC wants to take $1 billion out of our members' pockets in wages, not to pay for rising health costs, but just to fatten its profits. At the same time, SBC is still demanding that workers also start paying tens of millions more out of pocket for their health care," Bahr stated.

Negotiations began in mid-February. These contracts cover SBC workers in Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, California and Nevada.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Communications Workers of America announced that a 4-day strike involving 100,000 union employees of SBC in 13 states will begin at 12:01 a.m. local time in each time zone on Friday, May 21. Workers will return to their jobs at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, May 25.

Among key issues in the contract dispute, CWA members are seeking to strengthen their employment security, including gaining access to new jobs in growth areas of the company, and to preserve their health care benefits in the face of substantial cost-shifting demands by SBC management.

National bargaining that has been taking place between the parties in Washington, D.C. over health care, wages, pensions and employment security will cease, and these issues will now be referred back to the four regional tables in New Haven, Conn., Chicago, Austin, Tex., and Pleasanton, Calif.

"We appreciate the hard work of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Peter Hurtgen in helping us try to work out an agreement on these issues, but unfortunately these efforts have failed to achieve a settlement," said CWA President Morton Bahr.

"We are making this a limited job action right now to drive it home to SBC that our members are serious about securing their future at SBC," said Bahr. "We know that a prolonged strike could cause a loss of major customers and do significant damage to the company, and hopefully that can be avoided."

CWA also is ratcheting up other mobilization activities in the field and is being supported by the AFL-CIO and other major unions in mounting a carrier-switch campaign that potentially could shift substantial business from SBC to another union carrier, AT&T, which operates in 11 of the SBC states. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka personally is spearheading carrier-switch efforts aimed at labor organizations and the 5 million union families who are SBC customers. Customers are being asked to give CWA their "proxy" to implement a carrier switch if the union deems it necessary.

CWA members, who have lost 29,000 jobs at SBC over the past three years, are seeking access to the new growth jobs in Internet data services, installation of Wi-Fi hotspots, voice over the Internet (VOIP), DSL broadband and other areas. Virtually all of this SBC work, amounting to thousands of jobs, is being outsourced, including going offshore to countries such as India and the Philippines.

"SBC continues to refuse to give this work to our members, the frontline workers who have built SBC into the nation's most profitable telecom company," said Bahr. SBC's profits last year were more than $8 billion.

CWA also noted that SBC's latest bargaining proposal called for members to receive no base wage increase upon settlement, but instead receive a one-time lump sum payment of 4 percent. A cash payment instead of a 3 percent base wage increase equates to a savings to SBC of more than $1 billion over four years.

"Incredibly, SBC wants to take $1 billion out of our members' pockets in wages, not to pay for rising health costs, but just to fatten its profits. At the same time, SBC is still demanding that workers also start paying tens of millions more out of pocket for their health care," Bahr stated.

Negotiations began in mid-February. These contracts cover SBC workers in Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, California and Nevada.

My home network consists of the following:

A 6Mb DSL circuit
Cisco Catalyst 3550PWR-24 Switch
Cisco 1751-V Router with 2 FXO's running CallManager Express (3.3 beta)
Cisco Aironet 1100 802.11g IOS AP
6 Cisco 7960 Phones and 1 7920 WiFi Phone

It ain't much. I have separated voice, data and guest VLANs each with their own dedicated wireless SSID (and WEP keys) and quality of service on the LAN and WLAN. I need some 1000baseTX GBICs so I can plug in the gigabit NICs on my Athlon 64 and Compaq Evo laptop. I'd also like to get IOS firewall feature set fired up so I can authenticate my guest users in a walled garden and control their outbound Internet access. Keeps the punk in-laws from running Kazaa!

I won't have much time to play or study the next couple of weeks, because I'll be learning how to wire and install phone lines! w00t!

Start here. And I wish you the best. Even though I referred you to a big union, they provide excelent info on organizing. Everything zogger said is very right on, and some of his /hers(?) posts should be required reading for some people here. Especially the industry drones that post here. You know who you are. Anyway, like the man said, you DO have the power. Use it wisely and effectively. The best of luck and keep us "posted" - no pun intended. We need to hear success stories from our side for a change.

CWA - Communication workers of America and Washtech - Washington Alliance for IT workers.

Maybe its time to Unionize.

Well, there is the [American] Programmers Guild. It's not a trade union, but probably the next best thing to it. If you live in Washington State, however, there's a tech union that's a part of the CWA.

I'm not promoting unionization in most cases, but I recognize there are some egregious situations (like that at Divine.com) where it might make sense. A democracy of the worker pool is sometimes, sadly, the only way to counteract anti-employee decisionmaking by corporate executives. The shareholders certainly won't stand up for the employees!

Eric's done this sort of thing before. Originally, verizonreallysucks.com pointed to the Communications Workers of America site.

Unless you are a saleried employee, then you obviously are screwed.
The FLSA guidelines are very stringent about this, to the point that if a company has had a grievence filed concerning these matters you will generaly find that they will soon mandate tighter control of hours if they deem overtime pay to be a burden to them.

In many states people goverened by FLSA in our field are covered under the "CWA" or "Communications Workers of America" Union. While there may be some benefits to the union, I rather take my negotiations into my own hands.

As a job, being a sysadmin is a lot like being a plumber or electrician. Those guys have work rules and get overtime. This keeps them from being jerked around. Sysadmins need a union too. And there is one.

Click here to organize your workplace.