Aussie Techs Threaten Chaos

tintinaujapon writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that NCR staff with key responsibility (among other things) for fast food & supermarket chains, banking ATMs, schools and baggage handling at Sydney airport are preparing to walk off the job next week, in industrial action aimed at resolving a pay dispute. NCR's general manager thinks few people in the general community will care about the plight of the palest workforce, but the union claims potential disruption and financial losses could be huge. The strike could last up to a week and is the most significant action yet taken in Australia by the techie workforce."

Comments

Biased headline

[mrraven]

Shouldn't that be Aussie tech workers threaten walkout? Why is the Slashdot headline FUDing managements position? Without labor unions we wouldn't have ever gained a 40 hour work week or an end to child labor. Is that really the way we want to go? Further labor unions are way for workers to gain rights without government interference which ought to be just fine with the Libertarians among you unless you are really just hypocritical cheap labor conservatives.

Re:Biased headline

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Unfortunately there's a strong "unions == bad" meme among a lot of geeks. I think it's because tech workers' conditions have, until quite recently, been very very good by overall work-conditions standards: comfortable environments, low risk of physical injury, reasonable work hours, etc. What tech workers, and office workers in general, have failed to grasp is that these conditions exist because of the efforts of organized labor over the last century or so; and now, inevitably, with the decline in the power of unions, we're starting to see work environments become less and less comfortable with work hours extending to the point where exhaustion and burnout are inevitable and physical injury, particularly RSI, becomes a serious risk. Whether this will lead to more organizing efforts like the one in Australia is anyone's guess, but I'd sure like to see it happen.

Complicating this is that a lot of geeks are libertarians, and a lot of self-styled libertarians think unions have the smell of socialism. Which is stupid, of course; unions are in fact an admirably free-market solution to the problem of employer-employee conflicts. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that asking someone who calls himself a libertarian about his opinion of organized labor is a good way to distinguish between true libertarians on the one hand, and right-wingers who call themselves libertarians because it's fashionable in certain circles on the other.

Re:Biased headline

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Silly analogy. There aren't a whole lot of Indians left in Manhattan (or anywhere else, for that matter.) Corporations that treat employers like disposable supplies, OTOH, are at least as numerous as they were in the heyday of unions in the early-to-mid 20th c.

Re:Biased headline

[Ironsides]

Without labor unions we wouldn't have ever gained a 40 hour work week or an end to child labor.

I think you need to retake history. The 40 hour work week was started by Henry Ford, prior to any unions being formed in his company (in fact he was very much against unions). Child labor laws weren't fully implemented enofrced until the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act in the US. Again, this had nothing to do with unions, instead coming from the more "socially concious" individuals.

What unions HAVE been good for is improving workplace safety, working conditions and a few other things. While there are unions out there that actually work for the members, there are also a lot of them that are fully corupt as well.

Further labor unions are way for workers to gain rights without government interference

Half true, half false. It is not a way for them to gain rights, it is a way for them to gain more pay, privlidges and better working conditions without government interference, which I fully support over the government having a hand in it.

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

You may laugh at labor unions now but when the corporations say your software engineering/coding/sys admin/systems integration/hardware design job is worth 8 dollars an hour on the world market and you have NO ONE to back you up when you renegotiate your job contract perhaps you won't be laughing so loud?

And again to Libertarians tell me exactly what is wrong with a non governmental organization representing workers in negotiating job contracts? How else are we going to see a minarchist society that provides a living wage for families? For I assure you if the globalists get their way their goal is to pay you as close to the prevailing wage in India and China as possible, don't let them get away with it.

Re:Biased headline

[paulthomas]

It should be pointed out that Unions in America are not an example of completely free market action. They depend on the government to enforce certain rules via National Labor Relations Board.

There are too many regulations that give positive rights to the employees in such situations to call unions in America a market solution.

I, too would find them admirable (much like I find voluntary collective consumer action to be admirable), if the playing-field were __actually__ level (instead of ostensibly so for the benefit of bureaucrats).

Unions without government-intervention would work. Instead of the unions we see now, we would find unions organizing as independent for-profit bargaining/insurance companies.

At the same time, the union company's risk and reward would come from providing some degree of insurance (out of union dues) to newly organized employees.

a thought.

Paul

Re:Biased headline

[NormalVisual]

Complicating this is that a lot of geeks are libertarians, and a lot of self-styled libertarians think unions have the smell of socialism. Which is stupid, of course; unions are in fact an admirably free-market solution to the problem of employer-employee conflicts.

I consider myself to be something of a libertarian, but I have mixed feelings about unions. On the one hand, collective bargaining can be truly necessary in those situations where the disparity in power between the employer and employee is such that the employer looks upon their workers as faceless, replaceable biological machines that perform a given task and refuses to treat them as human beings. On the other hand, I've seen firsthand the productivity hit and general attitude of entitlement that can result from a strong union, and many unions appear to embody an "us vs. them" mentality that makes it difficult to come to a compromise when the employer's needs/wants need to be taken into consideration, even when they're entirely reasonable.

Having said all of that, one thing that a lot of self-styled libertarians seem to gloss over is the inherent advantage that government confers upon corporations, specifically corporate personhood and all of the stuff that falls out from that, and the fact that corporations exist without fear of any kind of real punishment for criminal acts. I fail to see why some people don't see that for the government intrusion that it is, and then turn around and complain about other government involvement in free markets such as tariffs on imported goods.

Re:Biased headline

[screaser]

reasonable work hours, etc.

Seriously? All the geeks I know work 70+ hour work weeks... then again I think a lot of that is self-imposed...

More on-topic, though, I've seen many examples of unions just going way too far. They were a good idea, and have wrought many benefits. However the only 2 things they are responsible for are:

(a) Provide for their own survival.
(b) Increase benefits to their members.

Point being, there is no incentive whatsoever for them to act reasonably. Members only making $160,000/year? Strike and get more (see longshoremen). Company on the brink of bankruptcy? Screw 'em. Demand more wages and benefits (See big 3 automatkers).

Clearly when the little people are getting screwed unions can serve the greater good. But there needs to be some point at which they can say "we've done our job, things are reasonable, goodbye" and stop the drain on the companies they have become parasites to.

At some point, the companies are the "little people" being screwed by the unions, which is not really any better.

Re:Biased headline

[timeOday]

However the only 2 things they [unions] are responsible for are:

(a) Provide for their own survival.
(b) Increase benefits to their members.

Which one of those do you disagree with? Both a) and b) seem to apply even moreso to the corporations (if you interpret "members" as "shareholders"). Companies' heirarchial structure gives them inherent unified/collective bargaining power. I don't think it's necessarily wrong for workers to exercise the same power.

When workers want as much money for as little work as possible, they're spoiled and greedy. When companies want long hours for low pay they're "lean and efficient." How some people can hold both these views simultaneously and fail to see the hypocrisy is beyond me.

Finally on a related note, allowing companies to slash pensions for those who already earned them is legalized theft.

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

Of course labor organizations are organized into cross supporting networks, that's the way any successful organization works including the organizations of the ownership and management class. Do venture capitalists, stocks markets, and the WTO/IMF ring a bell? It's more than a bit hypocritical to lament mutual support networks among labor organizations when the ruling class has far lager, more powerful, and more wealthy organizations watching it's back. To say that workers should face a highly organized global economy as disempowered and isolated individuals is just ludicrous.

Re:Biased headline

[sjames]

Sorry, but if the market decides that all programming is worth is $8 an hour, no government or labor union is going to be able to change this, at least over a long term.

"The market" makes these "decisions" because of bargaining between potential employer and potential employee. If no potential employee will accept $8.00/hr, the potential employer will have to offer $9.00.

The problem of offshoring is one of differing economies. For now, workers in India can work for a fraction of the U.S. wage because their cost of living is a fraction of that for U.S. workers.

Of course, even if nothing is done to alter the natural cause and effect, eventually things will equalize, but not before a great deal of suffering happens, and quite possibly not before the U.S. is made a shadow of it's former self.

There are, of course counterbalancing forces that will come into play as well. I predict that if the trend continues, it won't be long before some Indian outsourcing provider realizes that they have all of the expertise they need in-house, so there's no reason they shouldn't just 'in-source' the management and crush their former client (that no longer has anything but a building, a bunch of managers, and a worthless unenforcable contract). That will trigger a big rush of on-shore in-sourcing.

Re:Biased headline

[Scudsucker]

Your points are both correct regarding the 40 hour week and child labor - but in the modern day, unions seem to exist more to shaft companies in the name of helping employees.

Of course, that's why executive pay has remained mostly stagnant for the last 20 years while the pay, bonuses and pensions given to the working class have exploded. And good, hard working American CEO's have been fired and replaced with cheap MBA's from India. Oh wait, I think I have something backwards here.....

Re:Biased headline

[Scudsucker]

But the only way I can see a union using "free market" means to get its way is to threaten to quit en masse if the employer didn't meet their demands.

Because that would be stupid for both parties. The workers want a job, the company wants workers. Actually quitting en mass wouldn't do either any good. This is what strikes are for - employees refuse to work, giving managment the option of negotiating or firing the strikers and hiring a new workforce.

They block enterances and refuse to leave. They harass customers and resort to violence.

Okay, how many times has this actually happened in the last 50 years. Besides, this is one of those boilerplate anti-union arguments out of a bad Jimmy Hoffa movie. Union X did bad deed Y in 19XX, so therefore...we shouldn't have unions! If we applied the same logic to business, we wouldn't allow any companies because they would all cheat on their taxes, dumb toxic chemicals into the river and fondle their secretaries.

First of all, wage growth was much faster in late 19th century America vs. Europe, while the former was virtually devoid of unions, while the latter was heavily unionized.

Of course you have economic facts to back this up, such as ratio of worker to executive pay, adjusting for different currencies and industries, right?

Would you really want to invest somewhere where your employees will randomly decide to just shut down at a critical moment?

And you seriously asked why you got modded down?

Re:Biased headline

[Scudsucker]

LOL. The association between unions and organized crime is well-known.

Maybe if you just stepped out of the 50's. But if ALL unions are bad because of a few tomato salesmen, then ALL businesses are bad because of Enron and Wal-Mart.

Re:Biased headline

[mabhatter654]

It should be pointed out that CORPORATIONS in America are not an example of completely free market action. CORPORATIONS depend on the government to enforce certain rules via INSERT RELEVENT LAWS HERE. There are too many regulations that give positive rights to the CORPOERATIONS in such situations to call CORPORATIONS in America a market solution. I, too would find them admirable (much like I find voluntary collective consumer action to be admirable), if the playing-field were __actually__ level (instead of ostensibly so for the benefit of bureaucrats). CORPORATIONS without government-intervention would work. Instead of the CORPORATIONS we see now, we would find CORPORATIONS organizing as independent for-profit bargaining/insurance companies.... Get the idea, corporations enjoy far too many benifits also [DMCA, Patriot act, low income tax, etc] , why should one CEO have control over hundreds of individuals jobs without some counter-balance to it. Remember, it's not the CEO's money, he is an "elecected" offical too. After all, Corporations are just "unions" where people pool their money [labor] so they don't have to be responsible to make it grow [like union contracts to keep benifits, hours, etc].

Re:Biased headline

[ultranova]

Company on the brink of bankruptcy? Screw 'em. Demand more wages and benefits (See big 3 automatkers).

It is rather hard to avoid this attitude when companies routinely sack their employers just to hedge their stock up a few pennies. You cannot demand loyaly from employees if you are unwilling to show them any. You cannot value your profits more than your employees and expect them to value you more than their benefits. If companies refuse to accept this, then they deserve to get screwed; they are only reaping what they have seeded.

Re:well, in my case...

[Mike1024]

That's why I don't like unions, because I've seen the end game, not because of some "meme" or because I'm pro-employee-exploitation.

The union you describe in your post certainly sounds bad, I'd agree.

However, I'm not sure its true to say that "at least one union is bad, hence all unions are bad". That seems as incorrect as saying "at least one company is bad, hence all companies are bad".

Michael

Re:well, in my case...

[spacebird]

Actually, its more due to the fact that their profit margins have plummeted on these gloriously inefficient yet mysteriously popular (yes, they still sell!) vehicles even as prices rise. These kind of union stories give an idea as to why.

Your post would be 100% true if the majority of the populace cared about value and efficiency versus style and ease. Ford and GM put nicer interiors, sound systems, and gizmos into their cars than the Asian companies do. It's the same reason Linux will never take a significant chunk of the home computing market unless something drastic changes; end users like that flashy, bloated, and ultimately useless crap that sits in the system tray of Windows letting them know it's 58 degrees outside and their friend just sent them a nudge.

I actually converted a friend to Linux, installed Ubuntu on his computer, and all was going well until he wanted to install his instant messengers. I ended up having to install Windows XP on his machine because he simply HAD to use the MSN Messenger 7; GAIM wasn't pretty enough, and didn't have the "cool features." That kind of thinking is why GM can sell H2s, Windows controls 95% of the market, and why a company that sells food that appears to be designed to kill is worth over $40 billion.

Geeks in Unions?

[fm6]

I can't think of any TechnoGeeks I know that would even consider joining a union. It goes against the whole kneejerk libertarian ethos that's standard issue in the geek community. (Comes from reading too much Heinlen and Pournelle I think.) On the other hand, I know a lot of geeks who should join unions, judging from how much they complain about management abuses.

I remember once sitting in an all-hands meeting listening to our CEO, saying that our wages would be frozen for yet another year, and our benefits further cut, even though the company was seeing record profits, and the company was located in an area where living costs were zooming. His explanation: the stockholders won't let me. I wanted to stand up and say, "No, damnit, what you mean is that you're listening to the stockholder complaints about costs and not our complaints about wages and benefits. They're pushing us to earn less; tell me why we shouldn't push back?" But then I looked at my co-workers and tryed to imagine organizing them into a union — and kept my mouth shut.

Obviously things are different in Oz.