Unions in the Tech Sector?

nanogeek asks: "I've worked for a few years in the computing infrastructure/support department of a large university. In my time here, there have been organizational movements and/or strikes by many segments of the employee and student population (librarians walking out, grad-students seeking a fair wage for TA responsibilities, etc). However, none of this fervor for collective bargaining and fair treatment by the upitty-ups seems to have touched our department; and this seems to be rather endemic to geekjobs. In a year when commerce was brought to a halt on the west coast over a dispute about the change in the use of technology in the shipping industry, I have seen my department and my co-workers displaced, disrespected, displeased, and occasionally dismissed over the same kinds of technological shifts (in both my case and that of the longshoremen, the changes require retraining and reshuffling of workload, manpower, and payment). Common complaints have been that we were never consulted before these changes were enacted, and I wonder if a powerful union could be the answer. Is there room for such labor organization amongst geeks? Does the mutability of the technology involved preclude the kind of stasis brought about by unionization? Does the status of the economy currently make it so that any attempt at such broad-based organization could be circumvented by black-listing and purging members from the rolls? Or could a powerful geekunion bring about a sea-change after which a modicum of parity between the bosses and the drones could be established?"

Comments

Re:wah

[BitGeek]

Whine about the ineptitude of organized labor all you want. When you find yourself paying $4.00 a gallon for gasoline to a giant oil conglomorate, you will be doing so because there was no powerful force like organized labor to counterbalance the power of oil company campaign contributions.


Uh, are you unaware that more than %50 of the cost of gas is state and federal taxes?

If you're paying $4.00 for gas, you can be assured that its because of taxes.

Of course, hiding these taxes in the price of gas is one way you get swindled by your government-- you probably support the liberals who want to increase it too, don't you?

All the while bitching about giant conglomerates as if they didn't compete on price, which they do.

Re:wah

[BitGeek]

No, I never said I wanted something for nothing. I just pointed out that gas isn't expensive because of corporate greed but because of government greed.

Here in the state of washingon, the road system is about %3 of the state total budget. THREE PERCENT.

But they can't be bothered to spend more than that and provided decent roads, so they are putting up an initiative to RAISE TAXES TO PAY FOR ROADS!

%3 of the current tax money is going to pay for it and %60 is going to pork-- people literally getting something for nothing like college and healthcare.

I can't tell you how much I wish I had to pay for my usage of state services-- cause if I did, I'd be paying only %10 of what I'm paying now. Cause %90 of what I'm paying is going to services I don't use.

And apparently none of that gas tax is getting into the roads-- since the state ran surplusses for 5 years (And spent all that money on stuff other than roads) and now wants to raise taxes to pay for roads.

Sure, unions can organize. I don't have a problem with that-- but the current situation is that unions are given special rights that violate the rights of the employees and the employers. And that is unacceptable.

The unions are TOO POWERFUL and have destroyed many industries in this country-- auto manufacturing and airlines being two big ones, but the steel industry is another.

The problem isn't that unions don't have rights in this country- they do, they have special rights.