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On the other hand, democratic unions like WashTech are organizing.

As for not having the balls to get beaten up on a picket line. More nonsense. Have you ever seen a picket line? More likely than not you'd fall asleep from the boredom. And most organizing drives don't involve strikes.

And the only sort of "balls" you need are for realizing that you have more power if you stick with your coworkers than if you stand up alone. Speaking of "balls", the truth is that while union membership in the U.S. isn't really increasing, union membership for women is.

And there is no need to scream "F**K YOU" at your boss -- though a union might give you the power to do that and still keep your job... :)

But it's not too late. In this case, it sounds like management was looking for the easiest way to please the stockholders with the least cost to themselves. If the employees let themselves get screwed, it will only get worse.

Imagine if management saw that the 50% cut would have repurcusions -- when they kick the employees, the employees kick back. Then, when they are doing their cost-benefit analysis, cutting employee pay has extra costs associated with it, forcing them to look elsewhere to please the shareholders. Of course, employees standing up for themselves might push the company under, but with a company like that, who really cares -- sure, you might lose your job, but better to lose it on your terms than to work for another year dreading layoffs, working longer hours for less pay only to show up one day to be greeted by security guards telling you to never come back.

If my company made such an announcement, I'd walk out with my coworkers -- let's see the board of directors keep their servers running and develop software. Fuck 'em.

But if you walk out, don't quit -- if you do it right, you can walk out at 10am and be back to work without a pay cut by 2pm. If you quit you're gone and most likely won't get your job back, but if you go on strike you have a few protections. And you don't need to be represented by a union to go on strike, though you will want advice from an experienced union organizer and/or labor lawyer.

Of course, you might just want to quit -- but rather than using that as a chance to yell at your manager, hit 'em where it counts. Organize with coworkers you trust and all quit at once. Companies can cope with losing employees in a trickle, but you can't replace your whole workforce from scratch.

As for who to talk to, I'd talk to WashTech or the IWW if they aren't in your local area, they can refer you to someone closer or give you some advice.

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!

WashTech

IT workers need a Union for the same reason that workers have always formed unions: together you have more power to improve the terms and conditions of our employment than we do as individuals.

Oh, wait, you are doing fine, your 60-hour a week jobs have kept you entertained, the three grand training classes that you had to pay for yourself have kept you up to speed - but now you are unemployed and you can't do much about finding a job because you signed that NDA from hell. Its too bad that you were getting paid hourly and weren't qualified for overtime pay.

Oh well, don't do anything about it, just complain. Find a friend and complain together, but don't do anything about it because unions are lame.

If you want to give away your 8 hour work day, the weekend (all things that were fought and obtained by unions), then that is your prerogative, but don't come bitching and moaning to me when you are burnt out.

Painting all unions with the same brush is like saying all companies are like Microsoft. Unions are, after all, just a bunch of people in a workplace who have a common problem and decide to work together to solve it.

I'm actually surprised that the recent troubles in the e-dot-conomy haven't pushed more IT types to sign cards. When your skills are on the edge and times are good you figure you're pretty much invincible. What often happens is that people turn to unions when things are in the toilet and the water is swirling.

But it doesn't stop there. Some creative jobs are organized. Hollywood is very unionized; actors belong to the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) or the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), musicians belong to the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) directors belong to the Director's Guild of America (DGA), drivers belong to the Teamsters, and most of the support people belong to the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Workers (IATSE). Lucasfilm's animators and CGI techs in Northern California belong to IATSE, which is trying to organize online entertainment shops. If you're doing web design or involved in running a web site, it might be worth talking to an IATSE organizer. They send people to ACM SIGGRAPH meetings in SF, so they're not hard to find.

A union shop is a great advantage in an industry with heavy time pressures. It gives the employees an effective way to push back. Anybody in those unions who works a 12-hour day gets paid major overtime. Get called in for a weekend emergency, and big bonuses apply. This discourages employeers from understaffing and overworking their employees. If a job needs to be done 24/7, it takes four full-time employees.

Organizing in the US is very tough. Over 90% of employees who try to organize a union are fired, even though this is illegal. Canada, for example, has stronger labor laws, and it's much easier to organize there. This is the main reason for declining union membership in the US.

Despite the obstacles, temps at Microsoft have successfully organized a union, and won a lawsuit against Microsoft.

I think you're mistaken if you think a union would lobby Congress for laws that were more favorable *for* foreign workers. With the recent influx of H1B recipients, we have seen more xenophobia in the tech industry than we've seen in a long time. See this link from Washtech.

Dancin Santa

>Remember that they have never been on trial for anything to do with customers, only rivals.

Of course they have.

Windows-related class-action lawsuit
Windows refunds
Microsoft temps

there are many more if you'd care to look them up....Yahoo search

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!

The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers. They are the ones that fought against Microsofts "temp" worker practices. (Admitedly, the end result has sucked for both MS and the workers, but none the less, a union).

--GnrcMan--

From the article, you'd think that the only people who care about politics are "Tech Bosses" who have enough money to lobby politicians with. Perhaps its just that The Economist think its perfectly acceptable that politics is only who can buy which politicians and why... thats not democracy, its an indictment against the corruption in our political system.

The competing interests they talk about are the competing interests of corporations. How it could ever seriously talk about small nimble companies and the death of big business has got to be some kind of joke. Faster than the Federal government (with continually increasing powers and budget) can bust trusts and monopolies, are they not combining into larger and larger corporations.

About the only thing Big that they were right about getting small is Big Unions. This is largely their own damn fault, becaused they stopped being unions that fought on the job and became political machines, lobbying groups and pension/insurance plans. And, suprise, they never have the money to buy politicians like corporations can. Which is ultimately why efforts like Washtech are doomed as long as they try and compete with corporate money in electoral politics. Ofcourse, anti-democratic practices, corruption, organized crime, capital flight to the third world (GATT, NAFTA and the WTO), and being outmoded by new technology have heart Big Labor alot.

If unions are to ever work for geeks, they've got to be portable, decentralized, democratic, focus on direct action (instead of electoral lobbying), free (like in speech, not beer) and of a generally anti-authoritarian/libertarian culture. They've got to be willing to fight over issues like censorship (remember when the Web turned black against the CDC?), privacy, spam, standards, accessiblity, etc... I only know of couple humble attempts at that.

The complete cyberpunk fake book has a better hold on geek politics than the Economist. Fringe parties... if geeks are in parties are all... are like the Libertarians and the Greens. The number of out right anarchists growing in the industry is pretty astounding.

Most geeks don't identify themselves with any particularly ideology (and certainly not any party). They have a patchwork of issues they care about, if they vote registere independent or which ever party has dominance so they'll have a better choice during primaries. Political geeks would rather take action, or support their local communities, in the streets. If geeks want to get rid of propietary software, they out evolve it, they don't try and lobby it away; Anarchism Triumphant! If they think corporations have bought up to much radio spectrum, they help people take the airwaves back from FCC sellout. Or take out satellites.

But none of these things are politics, as far as The Economist is concerned. But then, civil disobedience is pretty hard to buy off.

When geeks start applying what they are already doing on other issues to work... then you'll really begin to see something. Syndicalism might get a rebirth for the new millenium yet.

Demand the Impossible!

Here's one for someone to submit if they can't think of one themselves, and something even the technologically disadvantaged can relate to:

Mr. Gates, a significant proportion of your workforce worldwide consists of employees contracted out from other organizations. These contractors are by and large dedicated, motivated individuals, committed to helping Microsoft create the best product it can. In light of this, and taking into account the U.S. Government's ruling that in many cases these workers are de jure Microsoft employees, why does Microsoft continue to treat its contract force like second-class citizens by denying them benefits given to full-time employees, excluding them from company functions, making them interview for their own jobs when those jobs are converted to full-time status and the like?

(Note: This is a hot topic among high-tech workers in the Northwest. The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers might be a good place to start researching the subject.)
--

On the other hand, if you think that your life and your family are important, then why not do what it takes to get more for yourself? And in this system we live in, that means getting organized. Yes, you can get decent pay, at the moment, because you are in high-demand, at the moment, but the industry is being restructured so that any perks we get now are temporary. The moment we are not in high-demand, expect to see the high salaries go away, the stock-options to be worthless, etc.

If we used the power we have now to get together and redefine basic working conditions (35 hour work week, anyone? Hell, 40 hour work week! Honest deadlines, whatever we see as important) then we can have those even when our bosses are no longer forced by temporary market conditions to pay us well and hold onto us.

If you're interested, WashTech is a new union based on democratic principles and bottom-up control. Yes, I know, a lot of high-tech workers are libertarian and inherently distrust unions, with their history of corruption and top-down control. Well, I'm an anarchist, myself (also a Wobbly), and I've been a member since the beginning. Not only is WashTech based on strict democratic principles, but we're also giving Bill Gates a good fight...