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

E.A.

[Watson Ladd]

This looks a lot like the E.A. games problem, with an added twist: Aussie law penalizes staying at work if negotiations take long.

Thats a nice computer you got yourself there

[Anonymous Coward]

be a shame if nothing was to happen to it egh ?

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

[Jeian]

I'm probably going to get downmodded again for this...

Labor unions were necessary in the past. 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.

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

[RobotRunAmok]

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?

Uh.... who's dispensing the FUD now?

Re:Biased headline

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Who put you in a position where your job could be sold to the lowest bidder without management seeing a difference?

To use a cliche: if you're not part of the solution of moving the company forward you're part of the problem (or participate).

Re:Biased headline

[Zenmonkeycat]

I believe slashdot is using a modified version of the classic tabloid method, in which they print a really horrible word in all caps with an exclamation point, then explain that it's really not that bad on page 11b. Observe:

MURDER!

The Home Secretary today stated that rising health care costs could be murderous to the nation's podiatrists.

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

That's not FUD it's reality, cooperations right now as we speak are using the threat of lower prevailing wages in other countries to reduce peoples wages and benefits here in the U.S. A race to the bottom not only screws American workers but allows cooperations to exert downward pressure on wages globally as they frantically search for the cheapest labor market. Their goal is a return to the working conditions seen in Dicken's England, working conditions we are already seeing at U.S. owned multinationals like Nike in Indonesia, China, and Vietnam.

Globilization is just beginning to hit tech workers but if we let global corporations get away with it without organizing labor coders and other geeks will be the next victims of the global sweatshop. Hint a software engineer is paid about 15 dollars an hour in India. If that becomes the prevailing wage of IT work you can kiss your nice house and endless supply of cool new gadgets goodbye. Thomas Friedman's "flat earth" means YOU get flattned my friend.

Re:Biased headline

[cdrguru]

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.

Labor unions did manage to require railroads to keep "firemen" on the trains long after the job was eliminated. However, today the job is gone. Along with a lot of the railroad companies that employed those firemen.

All a labor union can eventually do is drive the company out of business. It might be able to grab some more benefits and salary for the members of the union, but eventually it will catch up with them. Look at auto workers in the US. We will not be making cars in the US much longer because of labor costs.

Transportation has reached the point where labor will move to the cheapest location, worldwide. No union is going to be able to prevent that.

Re:Biased headline

[Marlor]

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...

Maybe this was the case in the USA, but in Australia and most of the rest of the industrialized world, the 40 hour work week was earned by unions. In Australia, the "8-hour day" was earned by a collective organization of stonemasons and building workers in Victoria in 1856. Demonstrations were then held by unions to win the same rights for other trades. By the 1880s, the 8-hour day was commonplace in Australia, and "8-hour day" parades were held throughout the late 19th century to celebrate the fact.

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

[lawpoop]

"There aren't a whole lot of Indians left in Manhattan (or anywhere else, for that matter.)"

Try visiting south of the American bordere arcitic. You'll find plenty of Indians.

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

If you think American workers will stand for being reduced to utter destitution you are sadly mistaken. If the left labor unions won't protect workers then the workers who are being screwed will turn to people on the hard isolationist right like pitchfork Pat Buchanan. We won't go down the drain to a return to 18th century working conditions without a FIGHT. And if it comes to a fight those of you who justify utterly screwing people will be the targets, think about it, you may be laughing now thinking you own the world and screw everyone else, but you'll be laughing less hard when there is an angry mob at your door.

Honestly left or right means far less to me than defeating the globalists in their nefarious plans of becoming ultra wealthy while 95+% of people in the world are utterly impoverished, screw that. If Pat Buchanan is the only one concerned with a decent living wage than Buchanan it will be, though for the sake of civilized discourse I sincerely hope it's labor unions and not isolationists who step up to the plate to protect us from the globalists.

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

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Okay, good point; I should have said "... or anwhere else in the US ..."

Re:Biased headline

[Scarblac]

Uhm, you're saying that the reason we don't shoot indians anymore is that there aren't a whole lot left?

Re:Biased headline

[lawpoop]

argh! I meant simply "south of the American border".

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

[shreevatsa]

There aren't a whole lot of Indians left in Manhattan (or anywhere else, for that matter.)

There are more than a billion of us, and I resent that statement! ;)

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

Nice try stooge for the owners, you are off by about 30 years, with accuracy like that your labor should be worth about 4 dollars an hour on the global market. It's all good until YOUR ox gets gored, right?

"The struggle for the shorter work week is the thread that ties together the history of American labor. The country's first union 1;the National Labor Union in 1866 issued its primary demand, "8 hours shall bethe normal work day." The NLU died. But the demand prompted action. In 1872 in New York City thousands of building trades workers stuck for the 40 hour week. Some won. But their g~~h-s were lost in a tide of depression. In 1877 Pittsburgh workers, led by striking rail workers, seized the city and adopted a shorter day. They were shot back to work by federal troops.

1886. Chicago. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (later the AFL) called for a national strike for the 8 hour day on May 1. Nearly one million American workers stopped work that day. The nations industrial centers were hushed. Transportation halted. Some employers yielded concessions. Others sighted their targets.

*******

In the 1890's, as wealthy families like the Morgans and Rockefellers tightened their monopolies in industry , Spies' words stood true. The first general strike in the deep south, led by an integrated workforce in New Orleans, won a shorter work day. In this period the U.S. waged two wars. We fought Spain. And the government waged a war on the Western Federation of Miners led by Big Bill Haywood. Casualties in the hundreds. couldn't stop the miners, historically among the most militant of all workers. They won the 8 hour day near the turn of the century."

http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/ShorterWorkWeek.h tml

Re:Biased headline

[CSHARP123]

The strike has been called following a breakdown in negotiations over pay, Ms McManus said. "[The workers] are concerned that NCR is attempting to stonewall so they can use the Howard Government's new WorkChoices laws to cut away at wages and conditions. These workers do not want to inconvenience the public, but have no option to achieve pay increases."
I was googling on workchoice law. This is as per Queensland govt under "What does it mean for employees"

• Agreement making under the new laws will lead to a reduction in wages and conditions for workers.
• All work, whether currently covered by an award or not, can be offered to a worker conditional on them signing an agreement that signs away basic entitlements.
• Employees can lose basic entitlements such as:
• • rest and meal breaks;
  • incentive-based pay;
  • annual leave loading;
  • allowances;
  • penalty rates and overtime; and
  • control over hours and rosters.
• Employees may not be entitled to penalty rates for working on public holidays. However, an employee will have the right to refuse a request to work on a public holiday if he/she has reasonable grounds for doing so.
• Employers will also have the right to dismiss staff due to operational requirements and then offer employment to the same workers under a new agreement.
• Employees may lose the extra money they currently enjoy for shift work and overtime and time off to spend with their family over the weekend.
• The only legally enforceable minimum conditions are annual leave, personal leave, parental leave and ordinary hours. These replace the no-disadvantage test and agreements will no longer undergo any formal approval process.
• The federal Government has led workers to believe that they will be protected by award conditions when making agreements.

With these kind of laws I dont think they are doing anything wrong. Show solidarity to our tech brothers and sisters down under.

Re:Biased headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The following are things that Unions are good for and in my opnion are the core of their duties:
1) helping to prevent excessive workdays as mentioned
2) preventing discrimination against minorites\women\disabled\other workers
3) ensuring safe working conditions

However, unions currently are invloved in the setting of wages and benefits, which goes againsts free markets. The market determines what the wage of an employee is, not the unions. Allowing them to do so has caused serious harm to companies. Consider the U.S. Steel industry as an example. The U.S. Steel industry went out of business in part because their labor was 30% overpriced when compared to the market price. When asked for concessions during the tough times of the 1970s and 1980s, the unions refused and U.S. steel makers closed a large amount of plants.

Another thing I hate about unions is the seniority thing. It has the potential to hurt employees and companies alike. From the employee side, the seniority structure of the unions can favor those who just want to be average or below and hurt those who want to be above average. Thats because performance matters a lot less than experience in an union structure. As a result, there is not much incentive to perform above average because it doesnt get you much of anywhere. As a young professional who wants to get to the top quick and spends a lot of time on professional development and continuing education, I would NOT want to be in a scenario like this. Which is why I think unions have so much trouble recruting IT people and other professionals. From the companies standpoint, having a large amount of employees that do not strive for self-improvement is not very productive.

So unions have their place, but their powers in the West are far to great. But with the advent of globalization, that is in the process of changing. Many more unions that pratice wage\benefit inflation and exploit seniority will find their companies going out of business soon unless they change their ways.

And many more protectionist governments in the West will find their economies collasping under the weight of these policies combined with aging populations: Western Europe, this means you!

Re:Biased headline

[ElleyKitten]

I second sibling post's " Uhm, you're saying that the reason we don't shoot indians anymore is that there aren't a whole lot left?" and add a "WTF?" and a "Why are we comparing Native Americans to companies who are mean to their workers?"

Re:Biased headline

[lawpoop]

"Child labor laws weren't fully implemented enofrced until the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act in the US."

Unions did not pass labor laws -- only the the legislature can do that -- but they did succeed in getting child laborers out of the work place, thanks to their unionizing efforts. And when legislatures did pass laws , it was due to the grounswell of awareness and support that unions created. Where do you think this 'social consciouness' came from?

Re:Biased headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it is less that the equation for geeks is "unions == bad" and more "unions == one more corrupt organization taking a bite of my paycheck". Unions don't have a sterling record for actually caring about what is good for the union members, only what is good for the union. Since I am a "self styled libertarian" and most union bosses are effectively social democrats, there is a risk threshhold there of the nature: "Is the union going to do enough for me that I can afford to ignore the politics of the union?"

Lets just say that I am not yet in enough pain while at work to make me willing to ingore the politics of the unions.

Re:Biased headline

[Rick Genter]

For tech workers, the percentage of competents may reach as high as 30% or 40%.

If you read The Daily WTF with any regularity, you would doubt that tech worker competence is as high as 3%, never mind 30%...

Re:Biased headline

[Henry V .009]

Touché. I liked the recent one about the programmer who had to "add more days" every so often.

Re:Biased headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that unions should exist for one reason and one reason only: to represent the employees at the bargaining table. This is what they're advertised as to un-unionized employees who are maybe feeling a little disgruntled. If that were the case, though, the union would exist entirely of a single lawyer, hired by the pool of employees.

Ah, but someone's gotta collect that money from all these employees, someone's gotta make sure everyone's paid up, someone's gotta convince everyone that the union is good for them, and of course someone's gotta convince other companies' employees that unions are good for them too... now you've got a middle man, or make that a middle army. These people have to be paid, of course. Greed and corruption have set in, and the "bargaining" turns against the employees... it's one thing to demand that employers don't force employees to work 20 hour shifts, another to prevent employees from doing so. Then you've gone from arguing for the employees to arguing against them. So the company has to hire more people. Sure, this might help with the local unemployment problem, but really, these new hires will be paying union dues right? Somebody's gotta pay for all the political campaigns and lobster dinners.

Re:Biased headline

[KenSeymour]

While it is true that Henry Ford took it upon himself to institute an 8 hour work day in 1914, it was not in a vacuum. Some unions were demanding first a 10 hour day, then later an 8 hour day throughout the 1800s.

The interesting thing is that after Ford started the 8 hour day, his competitors followed suit because Ford was achieving higher productivity as a result.

The Wikipedia article has more detail.

In 1924, a consitutional ammendment banning child labor failed to pass.

In 1938, the Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act was passed, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week.
There was a court challenge and and the Supreme Court upheld the law in 1941.

In 1835, child workers in employed in the silk mills in Paterson, NJ went on strike for the 11 hour day/6 day week.

In the 1886, the Knights of Labour marched with 80,000 people marched in support of the 8 hour day and in subsequent days, 350,000 workers went on strike.

It is true that Henry Ford paid better and had a shorter work day than other captains of industry.
He also hated unions and hoped treating workers better would help keep unions out of his factories.

But thousands and thousands of workers struck and marched before and after this. Both private police and workers were shot or beaten to death
as part of the struggle.
Many of the events had names like Bayview Massacre, and Thibodaux Massacre.
Local police, National Guard and federal troops have been called in to end strikes.
For their part, early unions hired people to beat up "scabs" and were not afraid of mob violence.

It seems so different than the world we live in today. I have ancestors who worked in the mills in Fall River, Massachusetts.
They were recent immigrants from Ireland and French Canada.
I went there once and visited a museum about the mills, there were pictures
of children with missing fingers working in the mills.

For the most part, people had to fight for an 8 hour day, overtime pay, and to have a childhood.

Re:Biased headline

[Tim C]

Seriously? All the geeks I know work 70+ hour work weeks...

And how many of them are in unions, or otherwise do something about it?

Precisely.

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

AC said: "Lets just say that I am not yet in enough pain while at work to make me willing to ingore the politics of the unions."

By the time you are in enough pain (i.e. you've been outsourced) it will be too late to do anything about it. Sometimes narrow self interest, is just that narrow, and winds up not even being self interest but just short sighted and stupid.

Re:Biased headline

[LeonGeeste]

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.

In theory, you're right. 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. Can you name *any* union whatsoever that has done only this? I can't. In reality, unions have never used free market methods. They block enterances and refuse to leave. They harass customers and resort to violence. Often times the quitting is in violation of a contract.

So it's true that unions can be a free market method, but any union that did this would be as different from every other union as night and day. (not going to bother your with a clever simile)

And it's simply not true that unions "improved the workplace". 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. This only makes sense. Would you really want to invest somewhere where your employees will randomly decide to just shut down at a critical moment? This is why employers heavily discount, in calculations, the expected productivity of unionized workforces. Over time, unions scare off investement, like has been done in the Rust Belt, leading to lower wages. (And I'm not going to bother you with the stories people who can't turn off their own light switches because of union regulations.)

Look at it this way -- you buy labor, just as surely as any employer does. Now imagine that a supermarket had a history of jacking up prices right before you checked out, leading you to either pay more, or waste the time you spent collecting the goods for purchase there. Is that going to make you want to shop there? That's exactly what it looks like from the investor's standpoint. Now, you may still go there, but only if they offered lower prices to begin with. This is exactly why unions impede wage growth.

Re:Biased headline

[Detritus]

In every case that I've seen, a company that has a unionized workforce has only itself to blame. Corporate greed and stupidity did not vanish with the 19th Century.

A manager has to make his numbers, and if a few of the little people get squashed in the process, so be it. Besides, it can be entertaining to fsck with people who can't fight back.

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

[awol]

Labour unions are not inherently wrong. However, and it is a fundamental however, practices such as "union only" sites, secondary boycotts, cross site organisations, intimidation, branch stacking and a criminal lack of democratic responsibility are facets of the labour movement that make them abhorrent to many libertarians.

Re:Biased headline

[Traiklin]

However, unions currently are invloved in the setting of wages and benefits, which goes againsts free markets. The market determines what the wage of an employee is, not the unions. Allowing them to do so has caused serious harm to companies. Consider the U.S. Steel industry as an example. The U.S. Steel industry went out of business in part because their labor was 30% overpriced when compared to the market price. When asked for concessions during the tough times of the 1970s and 1980s, the unions refused and U.S. steel makers closed a large amount of plants.

you forgot the key part of that, everyone blamed the steel mills for closing, no one blamed the union for screwing over both sides and forcing the mill to close.

that's the thing I hate when it comes to unions, everyone blames the company for outsourcing or just outright closing, yet the Union that was a MAJOR factor in it just walks away like nothing happened.

I remember reading a news story from around where I live and it said that a local company was in talks with a Union, they wanted more of everything (even though the employees were making like $25 an hour and had FULL benafits) the company said they could not afford to keep everyone hired if they got more money and benafits, so the Union said everyone strikes. A couple months later while still on strike the company said they had no choice but to outsource overseas if they wanted to stay in buisness, naturally the members of the union got VERY pissed so the union suddenly changed it's tune and was ready to give up stuff but by then it was to late, they had already signed deals with the overseas company and everyone who was involved with the union that forced them to strike for no reason other then greed lost their jobs, that is the only time I have read or heard the media say the union was to blame for everyone losing their jobs and not the buisness itself held to blame for outsourcing.

Re:Biased headline

[fermion]

You have a point, but in most cases the market does bow to governmental pressures, even in the long term. For instance, at one time the the cost of picking crops was whatever it cost to buy or breed a person plus room and board. How, according to various figures, a farmer might pay $50 to over $100 a day to pick crops. It could be argued that the current pay-per-day-with-no-security system is cheaper, but that does not chang the fact that the government and liberal interest were instrumental in the change.

There are many other examples of this long term change in the face of the short term resistance of the market. Child labor laws, ADA laws, minimum wage.

One of the most interesting statements from conservatives is that unions drive companies out of bussiness. There seems to be a philosophy that a bussiness is never responsible for failure. It is never greed or incompetance of management, or failure to adapt to change, or just even natural changes in the market. I mean were the buggy whip manufacturers, the trolley cars, the typewriter companies put out of bussiness by the unions? Not likely. In fact the trolley car compnanies were destroyed by other corporations abusing the market.

In the end a labor union is no more than the dairy counncil or beef council. All of these protect the interst of a particular group, all distort the market, and all are benificial by keeping compensation at reasonable levels. I mean look at it this way. In order for the market to run, one must have a wide range of people with at least some disposable income. No disposable income means no money to fund or purchase innovations in the market. We see by the current negative savings rate in the US that our disposable income is at the lowest level in quite a while. Therefore, even in an employer appaulds Wal*mart wages, the employer is going to be in trouble unless he or she is Wal*mart or sells to Wal*Mart, because the Wal*mart workers are hardly going to have enough money to go to The Gap or Circuit City and get the even slightly higher end stuff.

Re:Biased headline

[Qzukk]

I think it would be fascinating for some group (one person doing this would probably get blacklisted pretty quickly) to go around and get offers of employment from different companies, get copies of their default contracts, attempt to negotiate better contracts, and compile a report based on, say, the top 50 employers (in terms of # of employees) in the country. Just to see how much "choice" there really is in negotiating away meal breaks, overtime pay, and government holidays. How many companies will let you trade meals for better pay? How many companies will pay extra to make you work on Christmas? How many companies simply take away all of these in the default contract for no extra pay?

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

[Stephan Schulz]

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.

This cuts both ways. The very idea of a company as something that limits liability of the owners and operators is a very anti-free market construct. That's not to say that companies are a bad idea. The limitation allows people to enter business with a calculated risk. But if the allegedly free market is already warped that way (for the benefit of capital owners), it needs to be warped back some way to compensate for this advantage.

Re:Biased headline

[Maxmin]

I think you need to retake history.

And you're just making up history. Ford was an early adopter, but was in no way the innovator. He adopted the 40-hour work week long after the American union movement made the 40 hour week one of the top agenda items of workers, along with higher wages, safer working conditions, etc.

The 1938 labor law was way behind the curve, as many unions had already obtained their demands in the workplace. Ford just knew which way the wind was blowing.

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

[AoT]

The real question is when people are going to realize that in a world of Multinational Corporations, unions need to be multinational as well. If tech people around the world actually stood together then all of them would be better off.

The IWW is a decent model. The best part is that they never use union dues for political contributions.

Re:Biased headline

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The very idea of a company as something that limits liability of the owners and operators is a very anti-free market construct.

How so? It would appear to be orthogonal to the freeness of a market.

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

Yep, the wobblies were and are a great model for the way could be organized.

Re:Biased headline

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Hint a software engineer is paid about 15 dollars an hour in India. If that becomes the prevailing wage of IT work you can kiss your nice house and endless supply of cool new gadgets goodbye.

If I made $15/hr in India, I'd be a fucking prince! As it stands, I make about 50% more than the average wage, so I may be able to swing $22/hr.

Re:Biased headline

[wik]

> The Home Secretary today stated that rising health care costs could be murderous to the nation's podiatrists.

Why? Patients can no longer foot the bill?

Re:Biased headline

[LeonGeeste]

Hm, flamebait... nah, wasn't that. Trolling? No. Redundant? Hardly. Let's see if I can refute the logic! Hm, can't. What to do, what to do. Oh, I know! I'll mod it overrated! That'll show him!!! Never mind that it wasn't rated in the first place.

If the only way you have to defend socialism in inaccurate moddings of people who argue against it, maybe you need to rethink your political philosophy?

Re:Biased headline

[Brian_Ellenberger]

However the only 2 things they [unions] are responsible for are: (a) Provide for their own survival. (b) Increase benefits to their members.

The problem, as I see it, is too many unions look only to short term gains and not to long term ones. It is the difference between viewing things in terms of "win-win" or "win-lose". Unions and the company could work together to both provide for the workers and build a strong and healthy company. Instead, the unions "won" in the case of GM at least in the short term. Long term they will both lose when GM goes bankrupt.

For a different example look at the case of the NFL. The Players Union could completely screw the owners if they wanted. Short term, the salary cap prevents money from going to players. So they are decreasing potential benefits to players. However, in the long term the competitive balance of the NFL has caused its marketshare to skyrocket and has allowed the NFL to pay its players hundreds of millions of dollars more than MLB or the NBA pay its players.

Re:Biased headline

[Oligonicella]

Well, if you clip his actual comment it sounds bad, sure.

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

That would be the "otherwise doing something". They work the time because of desire for IP reward or bonus or just love of tech. However, I've known lots of geeks over the last 35+ and don't recall any working 70+. That's a geek delusion of heroic grandure, m'thinks.

Re:Biased headline

[16K Ram Pack]

Unions absolutely are part of socialism. The labour movement has always gone hand in hand with trade unions. Look at party affiliations between trade unions. Is it low-tax parties supporting them? No.

I'm a libertarian, and my view on unions is simple - I don't need you. If I don't like the deal the company is offering me, I'll go elsewhere. Simple as that. If a boss is giving me a hard time, I'll escalate it. If it's still a problem, I'll walk.

I don't have a problem if people want to be a member of a union to help with certain issues, that's their choice. Unfortunately, the story of many trade unions in the UK in the 1970s and in certain other places is that what they like to do is to gain enough power to control whether a business can function or not. The history of unions is not exactly great in terms of where they yielded strong power, in what then eventually happened to those businesses.

Re:Biased headline

[cranos]

Umm, of course the unions are involved with Wages, that's one of the main reasons for their existance. If the unions weren't involved do you think that big business would allow the free market to go up or down when it comes to wages? As to why unions have trouble getting IT people, I think it's more to do with the fact that when you get more than two geeks in a room you have an argument.

Re:Biased headline

[cranos]

The problem, as I see it, is too many unions look only to short term gains and not to long term ones. It is the difference between viewing things in terms of "win-win" or "win-lose".

Hmm so it is true, Unions HAVE become like big business.

Re:Biased headline

[cranos]

Idiot managers and a culture that says that employees should just shutup and take whatever they are given. Don't blame the employees if management subscribes to the "Gouge em until they give and the gouge em some more" theory of workplace relations.

Re:Biased headline

[MartinB]

The problem, as I see it, is too many unions look only to short term gains and not to long term ones.

Aye, because too many long term deals have been reneged on by employers looking for short term and long term gains.

Re:Biased headline

[Scudsucker]

that's the thing I hate when it comes to unions, everyone blames the company for outsourcing or just outright closing, yet the Union that was a MAJOR factor in it just walks away like nothing happened.

Walked away without their jobs, you mean. Think back to any contract dispute you've heard of where a union was asked to accept cuts in pay and/or benefits to help a struggling company. Okay, now how many of those times has any mention been made of what cuts management is taking?

Unions are willing to take cuts if it honeslty means the difference between having lower paying jobs or no jobs because the company went under. See the cuts the United Auto Workers union made back in the 80's to keep Detroit afloat. What unions aren't willing to do, is do a round of bloodletting so the CEO can keep his 20% annual payraise. See the deal that fell through in the airline industry where the workers accepted cuts while management were secretly securing golden parachutes behind their backs.

A couple months later while still on strike the company said they had no choice but to outsource overseas if they wanted to stay in buisness

Of course they said that. But much offshoring has very little to do with maintaining a healthy business, and a lot to do with massive executive greed.

Re:Biased headline

[Scudsucker]

Unions are "bad" because they free the individual of responsibility.

Of being fired without cause, you mean.

The union mindset is similar to liberals with their reliance on government and on others to support them.

No. The "liberal mindset" is that any system should be as fair to the people on the bottom as it is to those at the top. CEO's make several hundred times the amount of the average worker but don't do several hundered times as much work.

An individual should study hard, work hard, and acheive their goals on their own merits. Your compensation should be based on work ethic, productivity, and position, not on political pressure and scare tactics.

Which guarantees you nothing in today's worker-expendable market. Besides, there's nothing about a union that prevents you elitists from climbing the mountain if you are actually as good as your ego tells you.

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

[mister_tim]

That's actually a bit misleading - the Queensland Government is of the opposite political persuasion to our Federal Government, and so put a different political spin on it (Queensland has a Labor Government while the Federal Government is mainly formed by our Liberal/Conservative party - somewhat analagous to Democrats vs Republicans in the USA).

Anyway, that comment pulled from the Queensland website is mostly spin - notice the common use of the words 'can' and 'may'. Nobody really knows yet exactly what practical impact these new laws are going to have.

Now, I'm not a real supporter of these new laws, but some of those comments quoted are FUD. It's true that these laws will give more power to employers, but it won't mean that employyees can't bargain at all for better conditions - and in a highly competitive industry like IT, it shouldn't be too bad. Also, most of the comments imply that workers on an industrial award might lose conditions, but there are only a couple of States in which IT workers are actually covered by awards.

In summary: yes, these new laws are a bit dodgy from an employee/union perspective - but beware FUD.

Re:Biased headline

[Urzumph]

In the intrests of fairness, I should point out that the Queensland government is Labor (closely associated with unions) and the federal government (who are trying to introduce workchoices) are Liberal (liberal conservatives).

That said, I am definately with Labor on this one - workchoices requires individual negotiations between the company and the employee, which is never fair. (Employers are harder to find than employees, hence the imbalance)

That said, workchoices has enough problems of it's own - Howard (prime minister, head of liberals) has tried to slide this through on some special exception to the rule that workplace relations are the states' to control. As far as I know, there are 2 High court challanges (from state governments) still running against it.

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]

Unions don't have a sterling record for actually caring about what is good for the union members, only what is good for the union.

And what do you think unions are made up of? Members. How do things get decided in a union? Voting. Your statement makes no sense whatsoever.

Re:Biased headline

[JollyFinn]

In Finland it was earned by civil war. Which the unionized workers lost, and got plenty of them executed. But basicly after that experience the employers decided that there would be some improvements required to keep workers raising in straight revolt again. Communists losts simply because farmers where also mostly landowners and the "working class" wasn't majority of population. Too bad russian farmers where practicly slaves to landowners.

Re:Biased headline

[Fulcrum of Evil]

It distorts the market by creating a free rider problem. Consider the average VC. He funds 10 companies, knowing that (on average) 7 will go bust, 2 will toddle along, and one will strike it it big. He will make his money out of the last one. But the 7 bankruptcies will cost other people money. In a perfect market, he would have to bear the full risk of his investments.

In your example, the VC is only an investor - if corporations didn't exist, he'd still be out his money on company 1-7, but the people who started those companies would be in personal BK, which means they'd have trouble starting another company. This, in turn, shrinks the pool of successful companies, as a lot of successful companies are founded after one or two failures.

Re:Biased headline

[LeonGeeste]

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.

Sorry, I should have said "refuse to show up for work en masse" instead of "quit en masse". But merely refusing to show up for work isn't "striking" -- it's a "sick out" or something to that effect. "Strike" refers to when they refuse to leave and actively harass replacement workers. And unions don't exactly "give them the option" of hiring replacement workers. They actively harass such "scabs". (Which is a term that should be regard as on the same level as the n-, s-, or k-words.)

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

you:Okay, how many times has this actually happened in the last 50 years.

It happens *every* time. Name me one time it *didn't* happen -- a time when the union members merely refused to show up for work and never sued of threatend to sue the employer for hiring replacement workers. I'm not holding my breath.

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?

lol, as if you've bothered with the facts yourself.

Since you asked:

Between 1860 and 1890, real (inflation adjusted) wages grew 50 percent in America. The shortening of the workweek made real per-hour earnings increase about 60%. Source: Walton, Gary and Rockoff, Hugh, History of the American Economy. New York: Dryden Press, 1998, p. 408.

It doesn't give the specific figures for Europe but adds that they were a small fraction of this.

And what's your fetish with ratio to executive pay? If workers are enjoying an ever-higher standard of living, who the fuck cares is others are too?

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

you:And you seriously asked why you got modded down?

Yes, please explain. Strikes are deliberately chosed to be at critical times when the will have management "by the balls". The problem though is that where such unionization or tactics become commonplace, investors learn to *anticipate* such actions and only create jobs there in which they offer wages discounted to account for such disturbances, just like, in the example you failed to grasp, why you would only shop at the described supermarket if they offered lower prices to begin with.

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

[Scudsucker]

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.

Which would be fine if the market decided a CEO was only worth $200, but obviously that's not the case. Wages and benefits have been cut for the middle and lower classes while executive pay has exploded.

All a labor union can eventually do is drive the company out of business.

Nonsense. There isn't a union that wont take honest cuts if it means keeping the business, and their jobs, alive. What they wont do is willing make massive sacrifices so the company stays afloat AND the CEO gets to keep his 20% annual pay raise and golden parachute.

Look at auto workers in the US. We will not be making cars in the US much longer because of labor costs.

Again, nonsense. American car comapnies are in trouble because Americans don't want to buy their vehicles. Detroit was too busy wallowing in the SUV bonanza and fighting regulations to make more fuel efficient cars, and got creamed when Katrina sent fuel prices through the roof. If GM had the Prius, they would be in vastly better shape.

Transportation has reached the point where labor will move to the cheapest location, worldwide. No union is going to be able to prevent that.

Rising fuel prices will.

Re:Biased headline

[Scudsucker]

Please.

No.

CEO's make pay and bonuses in the low millions where as the cost of an entire workforce costs in the low to mid billions.

And makes a few hundered times as much, on average. But there's not just the CEO - there's COO, the CFO, the board of directors, a gaggle of vice presidents, and the rest of senior management.

Whether we like to admit it or not, CEO's and other senior managers are special people with a special skill set.

Well...duh. No one says CEO's should't be highly compensated; it's one of the most demanding and stressful jobs one can have. However, no CEO is worth 300 times what his average worker makes, especially since upper management scews that average.

If workers are expected to do more for less, then management can do the same, or else it is total hypocracy. More so since a 20% cut to a worker making $60k a year has a much greater impact than a 20% cut to a CEO getting $20 million a year. If workers are getting cut while upper management is getting large raises and bonses, then that is completly inexcusable, butt-fucking hypocracy and they should burn in hell.

Re:Biased headline

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Labour Day in Victoria tomorrow, the 150th anniversary of the 8-hour day, a public holiday... and Telstra has rostered all staff as if it were a normal work day. After the recent gutting of industrial relations law they obviously feel comfortable with the idea of going back to the middle of the 19th century.

Re:Biased headline

[Scudsucker]

Strike" refers to when they refuse to leave and actively harass replacement workers.

Wrong. A strike is merely refusing to work - what you are referring to is a sit-down strike.

lol, as if you've bothered with the facts yourself.

None of my assertions required citations. Your's do. For example:

It happens *every* time. Name me one time it *didn't* happen -- a time when the union members merely refused to show up for work and never sued of threatend to sue the employer for hiring replacement workers. I'm not holding my breath.

The workers are certianally entitled to sueing if the company broke contract or labor laws. But back to my origional point: name me some examples of sit-downs where the workers got violent.

And what's your fetish with ratio to executive pay? If workers are enjoying an ever-higher standard of living, who the fuck cares is others are too?

Anyone who's not an idiot? You can hardly fault the company for paying dirt wages if the owner is also making dirt profits. You can fault the company if you and the CEO are both working 60 hour weeks, except your pay and benefits keep getting cut while he makes 500 times as much as you do while still getting massive raises and stock options every year.

Strikes are deliberately chosed to be at critical times when the will have management "by the balls".

No, they're usually done during negotiations for new contracts.

The problem though is that where such unionization or tactics become commonplace, investors learn to *anticipate* such actions and only create jobs there in which they offer wages discounted to account for such disturbances, just like, in the example you failed to grasp, why you would only shop at the described supermarket if they offered lower prices to begin with.

Or whatever crap your anus tells you to believe. I find it comical when people blame workers who (gasp) fight for a fair, livable wage for higher prices but not only ignore but actually defend massive executive greed. You want some facts, why don't you try reading up on the subject before someone mods you down, again.

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

[wyohman]

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

Just like with the pay I receive, the payment should be sent to my pension at the same time my salary is sent to my bank account.

I still don't understand how a company could "BILLIONS" behind in pension payments?

Re:Biased headline

[pete-classic]

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

Is it possible that "tech workers" have it relatively good because the demand outstrips the supply, driving the price curve up? (And by extension because it is cheaper to retain employees with a decent salary and a decent work environment than my paying them enough to tolerate working in a shithole.)

-Peter

Re:Biased headline

[paulthomas]

You will note in my original comment that my only focus was whether unions in their current condition qualified as creations of a free market. I was adding this on account of the fact that the parent to my original response made the assertion that they are free market entities.

Indeed, corporations too are not entirely free market entities in consideration of the "corporate veil." However, that wasn't the question I was addressing.

Best,
Paul

Re:Biased headline

[rtb61]

It all relates to positions of trust. Salaried vs wage workers. Obviously tech positions are positions of high trust and unfortunately this kind of industrial action is counter to that trust.

I used to be employed in a similar position of trust as an estimator, a strike would have been out of the question, as it was for that position an unacceptable betrayal of trust. When negotiations fail in this kind of position, the only choice is to find employment elsewhere. Whether fair or unfair it is just the way it is. As for employees from this company, having it in your employment history will straight away be a black mark.

With the big bucks and the easier working life style come some responsibilities and a level of maturity plus a long term view of your future career, otherwise don't be surprised when you have a lack of it. Not to to hard on these tech employees but I am sure they have very little sympathy for workers doing it much harder, food services, factories, labourers etc. (who do really require all the support and labour protection laws that are available as their ability to negotiate with out striking as a group is virtually nil)

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

I call bullshit union workers are not one bit less "trustworthy" than non union workers. A non union individual can easily go postal, flip out, change all the pass words and disappear very easily I'm sure it happens every day. In fact I would say a union employee is likely to be more trustworthy is they know they have some job security and that they are going to receive fair compensation for their labor.

There is nothing "mature" about letting a few unaccountable CEOs accumulate billions while they simultaneously exert downward pressure on wages both here in the U.S. and abroad. There is nothing virtuous or admirable in supporting raw rank greed. All the major philosophies secular and religious universally condemn greed and avarice as vices. And no economics is not a philosophy it's a non empirical "science," i.e. a pseudo science like psychology. If economics were a true science we would have figured out how to prevent bubbles a long time ago.

Re:Biased headline

[rtb61]

It has nothing to do with union or non-union, it only relates to the employment position. Maturity comes into play when it comes to accepting the employment conditions of your chosen career (you want the bigger salary and easier work, the people that employ you want something back for it).

There is nothing to stop them from doing what they will do, they will just get stuck with the consequences, pretending they are not there, does not make them go away, nor does complaining about them, in this case make them go away.

Tech companies that push to hard, end up only with dud staff and self destruct in the long run. Word soon spreads for employers as well as staff, quality people end up at quality employers and both prosper as a result.

I thought I made it categorically clear, that I support group negotiating for union employees, workers working together in a cohesive manner. When it comes to off shoring, that is for improved legislation and a Fair Basis of Trade laws, to ensure local companies compete upon an equal basis with offshore companies (in terms of minimum wage, workers compensation, safety conditions, environmental restrictions and even taxation - as higher taxation supports improved social services and these should be preserved and expanded, as they create a healthier and happier society for everybody).

Re:Biased headline

[killjoe]

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

100% of the organized crime ofganizations in the world have at least one corporate face to them.

The association between corporations and organized crime is well known.

Re:Biased headline

[ultranova]

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.

Because if the government doesn't enforce the rules, then the unions will. First, workers go on strike, then the company tries to break the strike with outside workforce, then the workers try to stop that workforce, and then you have a full-scale riot complete with corpses ready.

Government is doing its job and enforcing order, in a way that doesn't favor one side of the conflict over the other - simply sending government troops to stop the workers from using force would put them into an impossible situation, unfairly favor financial might of companies over the physical might of workers, and, since it would lead to lots of people getting desperate, could easily spark massive rioting, possibly even a civil war.

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.

Unions without government intervention lead to large-scale violent riots. That's why the rules are government-enforced nowadays; before, when unions were just starting, there was constant fighting and associated ill effects.

I'm a bit uncertain about why you think it would make things any better to organize unions as for-profits companies - they aren't for profits, they are for defending their members.

Re:Biased headline

[ultranova]

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

The association with corporations and mass, murder is well known.

Mafia is a bunch of choirboys compared to either IBM ("We made the Holocaust possible") or Nestle ("We poisoned 1.5 millions babies"). Hell, Osama is a choirboy compared to them...

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:Biased headline

[ultranova]

Labor unions were necessary in the past. 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.

Without unions, what's stopping corporations from lobbying and paying politicians to get all labor laws repealed and returning to child labor and 16-hour workday (and telling the worker that he has to spend the 8 "free" hours near the factory, so he is available if things like fires need to be put out) ?

And the reason why employees don't mind shafting companies for their benefit is that companies regularly fire people just to get their stocks up a few pennies. Give no loyalty, get no loyalty. Simple as that.

Re:Biased headline

[ultranova]

However, and it is a fundamental however, practices such as "union only" sites, secondary boycotts, cross site organisations, intimidation, branch stacking and a criminal lack of democratic responsibility are facets of the labour movement that make them abhorrent to many libertarians.

Why ? Aren't libertarians for removing all government intervention and letting people solve all their problems however they wish, as long as they don't use physical force ? What you described is what happens in such circumstances - blackmail through boycotts, power groups (voluntary association) rising and taking the reins of power. Why is this abhorrent to libertarians - it is the word they wanted, after all ?

Or did libertarians perhaps think that the common people would be nice and lay at the bottom ladder of economic pyramid, letting the libertarian elite sit on the top, instead of uniting to meet their common goals ?

Re:Biased headline

[ultranova]

The "Liberal" mindset says that everyone is equal. This is NOT TRUE! Liberals just cant handle unequal outcomes for whatever reason. Whether we like to admit it or not, there are those among us who are elietes and become so through a combination of talent, luck, and effort.

Am I the only one who finds it absolutely hilarious that an elitist troll can't spell the word "elitist" ?-)

CEO's and senior management is paid a lot because the skill set and experience required to do the job is a very scarse resource. It takes a unique person to manage any business, let a lone a very large one.

The CEO and the senior management are paid a lot because, well, who is going to cut their wages ?

I challenge anyone who thinks that running a business is so easy to go out and start one. If you can make it even on a small scale, then you are way above average.

Starting a business is a lot more difficult than running an existing multibillion business. No matter how bad decisions you make, you simply cannot make a multibillion business go out of business fast, since it takes a while to lose billions.

A startup needs competent leadership, while a multibillion business can run for years on sheer inertia.

Re:Biased headline

[paulthomas]

You offer some interesting and seemingly valid points even though we differ I think on where the point of enforcement should be. (You've provided me with something to think about)

As for for-profit, I actually meant either for-profit, or organized as a mutual insurance company. Essentially there has to be some benefit to the organizers to make it worthwhile. If the organizers are the members, then you end up with a mutual company which would (you're right) better align the interests of the union.

Had history taken a different course it would have been interesting to see which structure would be favored by labor organizers.

Best,
Paul

Re:Biased headline

[Mateito]

The problem, as I see it, is too many unions look only to short term gains and not to long term ones.

Everybody these days - corperations, politicians, unions and even workers - thinks "short term".

Plenty of listed companies cut staff at the insistance of Wall-Street "analysts" so that they make the share price looks good for end-of-quarter. 3-months isn't exactly long-term planning. Look at the "new" HP - basically the old HP with all the good bits either wound down or sold-off.

How many people in their 30s are planning for retirement? How many politicians give a damn about what will happen after the next election?

Re:Biased headline

[kentfowl]

There is nothing wrong with unions. There is also nothing wrong with their employers firing all their asses and replacing them with non-union labor. If my pay ever gets down to the prevailing wage in India and China, I will be looking for another field just like every other American who would have trouble supporting himself on $3 USD/hr. For this reason there will never be Americans working for Indian wages. Just my dumb luck for picking a profession that Indians and Chinese can kick my ass in.

Re:Biased headline

[husher]

"there are only a couple of States in which IT workers are actually covered by awards" Actually, that isn't true. There are IT workers in Australia working in just about every industry - local government, public service, banking systems, mining, agriculture, etc etc. Therefore they are covered by any awards that operate in those industries. To take just one example, there is a Federal (ie. nation wide) Local Govt Officers Award that will cover, alongside everyone else in local government, all the IT workers who are employees in local government. Same for banks. Same for both state and federal public service. Same in just about every industry that has Award coverage (in Australia - most of them, but with Howard's laws - well, give it time). Can I make another comment, which is I really don't like the 'I'm alright Jack' tone of some of these emails. 'We're IT workers, we'll be alright'. Even if that were true (and I think some of you are in for a rude shock, sooner or later), what about the rest of the country? Its okay for everyone else to be paid peanuts? Its okay for those less clever and exclusive than us to not have enough to hold family, mortgage, and wellbeing together? What about the day when, perhaps, IT people are the only ones left with decent wages (assuming it happens like that), and everything else around you is a deflationary smoking economic ruin? How long will it be before every IT person's job is looked at, employers say (and remember these are not sympathetic IT people) 'why the hell are they paid more than anyone else?', and start BENCHMARKING your jobs against other equally skilled workers, outside of IT, who earn half what you get? How long, do you think? And indeed, thats before we take outsourcing to India into account... Finally - go look at the actual legislation - its easy enough to find, just go on the Commonwealth Govt website - and decide for yourself, if you think the Qld govt website is so damn biased. I have, and I know that what they have to say is a fairly reasonable interpretation. Mind you, some of those from overseas may or may not understand just what it is that is being dismantled here by our Government. It ain't pretty.

Re:Biased headline

[LeonGeeste]

Yeah, that's what I thought, bitch. Go run and hide. Your ass is probably still bleeding from that rhetorical assfuck I just handed you. Well, with your moronic comments, someone was bound to call you on it at some point or another, right?

Re:Biased headline

[mrraven]

Kentfowl sed: "Just my dumb luck for picking a profession that Indians and Chinese can kick my ass in."

That would be EVERY field as there are literally 7 times as many Chinese and Indians than Americans. Until we organize to lift wages back up ALL fields are going to experience downward wage pressure after all without any countervailing force all the incentives of owners and managers are to reduce labor costs. The flip side of reduced labor cost means YOUR wage goes down my friend.

Headline after the strike

[Pao|o]

More Australian Companies Outsource to India & the Philippines

Re:Headline after the strike

[Pao|o]

idiot. you just dont know anything. you may as well destroy your account here. shesh

Re:We should do that in the US

[E IS mC(Square)]

What a better way to further the need of H1-B workers?

"Thanks you very much for the strike. Now you all are fired. Please hand over your knowledge and terminals to Mr. Venkat and his company arriving from India on H1-B this morning to take over you jobs. They have promised not to bitch about how less they get, while agreed to work 60 hours a week without even a lunch break."

Re:We should do that in the US

[Travoltus]

"Hello, this is the Government. Due to the results of the last election, we've got a mandate to block new H1B's from arriving, and to heavily tax your for your offshoring. That imported product will get taxed at 150%. Have a nice day!"

Aussie Techs Warn Of Year 2007 Bug

[Doomedsnowball]

In an attempt to strengthen their position, NCR employees released a statement to the press that if negotiations take too long, customers may be subject to a devastating year 2007 bug. One technician explained in an interview, "We never saw our clients hardware lasting that long without constant updates and visits by technicians. Who knows what will happen in a few months? Something could break and no one will be able to fix it, 'cause we're the only technicians on the planet that understand the year 2007 bug. I mean hey, we created the bug after hiring the designers of the storm leevees in New Orleans. Who could have anticipated this?" Aussies have responded by emptying store shelves of duct tape and bottled water.

solidarity!

[berseken]

I propose a strike of all techies in the US to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters down under. The days off work would only be ancillary benefits.

Re:If workers want more money

[Xiroth]

Australia has a huge history of labour unions, and they've traditionally been quite powerful, including links to the strongest political party in the nation (the opposing party to them is actually a coalition of two parties which had to band together to compete federally and in almost all states). It's due to them that the working conditions in Australia have historically been pretty good. These days the unions are no longer as strong, but they still certainly have a place.

Re:Unionized IT?

[Bushido Hacks]

You mean Biiiiiiiizzzzzzzaaaaaarrrrrrrrrroooooooooo!!!!! O_o ;-)

Anyway, That does sound like a good idea. I mean, they average big business man has as much respect for the white collar worker as he does with blue collar workers. To add on to of that, exporting jobs to countries they know the people will not object or have the free will to unionize and stand up against their shortchanging employers.

I say America should do the same thing as the Austrialian. RISE and UNITE!

Another type of "Geek Strike"

[vudufixit]

How about we announce that we will never, ever do another "computer favor" for a gal that we like, in hopes of "hooking up with them."
    One day, when their machines are hopelessly infected with spyware and their rockhead boyfriends can't do a damned thing, they'll finally value us... right???

Re:Another type of "Geek Strike"

[buddahfool]

hmmm... No. They will just get thier rich boyfriend to buy them a new computer.

(Wish this was a joke. At the price point of a new PC now a days, many doctors at my hospital find it easier and more convenient to just buy a $400 computer now; than to pay a shop 300$ for a spyware clean up that take a few days...)

Re:Another type of "Geek Strike"

[timelessroguestar]

No...they'll just get their "rockhead" boyfriends to buy them a new computer every few weeks :(

Re:Another type of "Geek Strike"

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How about we announce that we will never, ever do another "computer favor" for a gal that we like, in hopes of "hooking up with them."

How about you grow a set, take her dancing and have her rip your pants off afterwards?

Re:Another type of "Geek Strike"

[pchan-]

My policy, and I recommend this to anyone, is no computer repair/advise/help of any kind until after we have been having sex on a regular basis (the official stated policy is "only my girlfriend gets tech support"). Sometimes it's hard to resist, but don't give in. She will never go out with you in appreciation for what you've done for her, or realize what a great guy you are or bullshit like that. She will just use you as the guy who's willing to fix her computer anytime she asks, with nothing in return. She will respect you for refusing (even if she is indignant about it when you actually tell her).

It works, try it. No girl is going to like you for your computer fixing / car repairing / math homework helping. She will like you for who you are. If you're relying on these skills to help you out (or even get your foot in the door), you need to reevalute your strategy.

Re:Another type of "Geek Strike"

[linzeal]

Because dancing takes practice. I suggest dancing by yourself in front of a mirror first so you don't embarass yourself. Also stretching your calf muscles is important if you are dancing on hard floors like concrete, trust me.

Re:Another type of "Geek Strike"

[Mateito]

If she's already hopelessly infected with spyware, chances are she'll sleep with you for a bunch of roses and a box of chocolates.

Fight Club Reference

[HangingChad]

We run your financial networks, your ATM's, schools, airports and supermarkets. Every system, no matter how important or secure, has to trust someone and we're it.

Do not fuck with us.

Not too late

[slowbad]

few people in the general community will care about the plight of the palest workforce

There are still 9 more days to work on that tan, until summers endsin Australia.
Maybe a strike is the best way to get a day off.

Re:Not too late

[Oztechreich]

Sorry, but summer is already over here. Australian summer ends at the end of February. (And starts at the beginning of December.)

Re:We should do that in the US

[Austerity Empowers]

I'm not sure H1-Bs are something to get too angry about, they at least have to pay the same rent we do. But the rest I sympathize with.

There are many critical industries and professions that are suffering from the offshoring craze, if enough people could organize a walkout, something would get fixed. It's not just IT, but software engineers, electricical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. all over the country are pissed off. We can't be replaced quickly, and companies will suffer incredible losses.

I hate unions, I don't advocate forming one, but they do have one tactic that gets the attention of the rich: turning off the money machine.

Its about time tech. workers walk the line!

[aisnota]

Tech. is treated pretty bad in some organizations
and needs some respect in addition to pay scale.

Friends of mine have contemplated group resignations.

So more than one leaves that organization in the
same week or even day. When one individual resigns,
some managers go ho hum, when two go it is hum hum,
when three or more announce they are out of here,
that manager deserves to be sacked right up the line.

Re:Its about time tech. workers walk the line!

[scotters]

Was involved in a similar situation with a small company that had new ownership. I finally had enough and resigned last fall. Within about a week and a half, another long-time employee resigned. And another did, but was persuaded to stay for a couple of months. Then left. Then another left. Had a huge impact on the company in the community--despite explanations to the contrary, clients know that when these things happen, there are reasons. What's even more interesting is the number of former clients that have kept in touch to let me know what's been said and done.

Good on you, mates

[Catbeller]

We in the U.S. will see what used to be called a "strike", which for you younger folks is a work stoppage by a self-organized workforce for better working conditions or pay, which management will not grant so they can keep more profits.

These "strikes" are effectively illegal in the United States. Get some popcorn and watch Olde Tyme organized labour in action. Hope they don't shoot them.

Obviously they need Gates

[Baldrson]

If they'd just remove the cap on foreign worker visas like Gates tells them to do they wouldn't have these problems with uppity geeks trying to destroy civilization by demanding enough money to attract a decent mate, reliably pay a mortgate and have a couple of kids they can afford to send to college.

NCR?

[celephaix]

National Catholic Reporter's going offline!?

geeks of the world - UNITE!

[bizitch]

Unionized tech workers? - How fucked up is that?

Tech workers can work in just about any industry and can work just about anywhere.

Here's a clue - IF YOUR JOBS SUCKS, QUIT! Or at least post up on Monster fer-cry-eye

Tech workers are not like a bunch of UAW factory workers who really have no options other than strike when the company they work for pisses them off.

UAW workers can't post up on Dice or Monster and expect any offers

I don't get it, WTF?

Re:geeks of the world - UNITE!

[cranos]

Unionized [Insert Job Title Here]? - How fucked up is that?

[Insert Industry] workers can work in just about any industry and can work just about anywhere.

Here's a clue - IF YOUR JOBS SUCKS, QUIT! Or at least post up on Monster fer-cry-eye

Thankyou sir for purchasing "Anti-Union 2006". This package will enable you to ignore realities to whatever degree you require.

Realities such as:

• Depressed Employment Markets
• Immoral if not illegal employment practices
• A culture that demands that employees suffer in silence

"Aussie techs threaten chaos"

[Flying pig]

Nowhere in the article did I find out what they were threatening chaos with. To be credible, such a threat requires a means. How are they going to threaten chaos? Do they know it's address? Will they send out Maxwell's Demons to reduce the chaos to order?

Ah, apparently they're threatening to cause chaos. Just another headline to annoy syntax Nazis.

Re:"Aussie techs threaten chaos"

[TubeSteak]

To be credible, such a threat requires a means. How are they going to threaten chaos? Do they know it's address?

A postcard addressed to "Chaos, Australia" should do the trick.

You could also have some fun mail-bombing, Chaos. Sign them up for lots of useless magazine subscriptions.

Who would the union co workers use?

[Overzeetop]

So, would the workers in such union companies be able to, um, unionize? I mean, if they chose a competitor union company for organization, that would seem to be a vote of no confidence in the management of their own company, but if they chose their own company and ever had to walk out or strike, who would be left to negotiate the return?

Re:Who would the union co workers use?

[paulthomas]

An interesting question that I can't at the moment find a good answer to. I'll be thinking about it.

I had imagined that such a company would require minimal manpower and that it would all be skilled work... this might not be the case though.

Thanks for the challenge.

Best,
Paul

Re:NCR! They still exist?

[randyjg2]

It almost happened. Mark Hurd turned NCR back into a powerhouse, though, then he left.

NCR has always been a company with tons of potential that few managers had the talent to bring out. Apparently none of those managers made it to the land down under.

The strength of NCR, at least here in the states, has always been in it's employee's. During the breakup of AT&T, the worst performing employees were transferred to NCR, average rated employees to Lucent, and the best employees remained with AT&T.

We all know the result; NCR has been by far the best performing company of the three, reliably delivering on their contracts, mainly due to a workforce that underpromises and overdelivers.

I can't see something like this happening under Hurd, he would have never allowed something so nutty to get to this stage. those employees ARE NCR's chief assets. I just hope some activist investors talk some sense into NCR management before it's too late.

rise of the machines

[jhackworth]

All Your Cash Register Are Belong To Us!

politically incorrect

[ralphclark]

> NCR's general manager thinks few people in the general community will care about the plight of the palest workforce,

What, they won't care about the _slightly_darker_ workforce?

Re:We should do that in the US

[jhackworth]

In Washington state there is an organization called WashTech that aims to do just this by performing collective bargaining in as many workplaces as they can on behalf of tech workers. They've already done this at Cingular.

One problem though is that they weren't bringing in enough money through dues to pay staff so they were forced to affiliate with CWA (communications workers of america) which is a lot more like an old style union.

The other problem is that traiditional unions lack a key component for success - ensuring workers can still earn while fighting their employers. A high-tech union needs to have a strong job network component so that displaced workers can do consulting or other work and avoid feeling the pinch while negotiating for better pay, conditions, etc.

well, in my case...

[YesIAmAScript]

I subscribe to this "unions=bad" "meme" because I grew up in Flint, Michigan (birthplace of the modern labor movement in the US) and experienced first hand unions driving the city into the ground and the UAW driving GM into the ground. You may have heard of this time and place in Michael Moore's "Roger and Me".

Every union struck every workplace as often as possible. In the mall, there would be at least one store which was being struck every time you went. The workers didn't seem to notice that a strike is a (legal) act of industrial sabotage, one which will hurt your employer and thus you also. It should be used as rarely as possible, or else you'll just put the company you work for out of business.

GM workers were apparently in need of new contracts, despite having work rules so lax that many would show up to work drunk, or not show up at all. Workers would clock each other in, then work their own job plus that of another, then next week the roles would reverse. This of course led to awful product quality. I do realize there was also a good dose of poor engineering going on at GM at the time too, but that wasn't why you'd get a car with the windshield wipers not properly attached or a wrench thrown into a closed space before it is welded shut.

It was during this time that the UAW agreed to changes which should have changed things so that the most desireable job occupied by the highest-paid workers wasn't a chip handler (floor sweeper). And so that it didn't take 13 people just to repair a press (the mechanical-expert repairman would not be allowed to even flip the switch to turn it back on afer he was done, that was against work rules, it required an electrical specialist). See, the union liked it when a press couldn't be repaired, because then the workers on the line still had to be paid, but didn't have to do any work. Because of this, often equipment would break on Friday, right when some services became unavailable until Monday. If the line was behind on production, the workers would sometimes be paid overtime to man the presses all weekend so that when it was repaired (which it couldn't be), the line could be restarted to catch up.

It was during this time that the UAW extracted the concessions from GM that are strangling them right now. Those are very very high-levels of expensive health care, and the "jobs bank" which pays workers 92% of their salary for up to two years to do nothing but show up at the union hall and not work. GM knew these would be expensive, but the UAW's side of the deal was to work toward a Jobs Classification Reduction to fix the problems I mentioned above. Well, as soon as the contract was signed, the UAW forgot about what they were supposed to do, and GM took it in the shorts badly. They know how much this would cost them in the future, and so they were trying to move out of union strongholds like Michigan and to the south. Meanwhile, Michael Moore reports why is GM closing plants in Michigan when they are profitable (on a current account basis)?

And as to the government not being involved? It's just not true at all. Unions are exempt from anti-trust laws so they can work across state lines and company lines to extract higher wages and benefits. Whereas employers cannot collude to maintain their end (see the rulings against major sports leagues, even though one of them is exempt). Also, some states (Michigan being one of them) have a "union shop" law that says that if a workplace is declared a union shop, you must join the union to work there whether you want to or not. Every grocery store is a union shop in Michigan.

Finally, if there actually is a strike, the unions employ thuggery and illegal sabotage. My grandfather personally beat up replacement workers (called "scabs" even though many aren't even replacement workers, just people who want to continue working) on the strike lines against Westinghouse in Ohio (of course, Ohio doesn't do nearly as much manufacturing now, and Westinghouse is destroyed as a manufacturing company and the last useful

Re:well, in my case...

[bheer]

> Wrapping up, I would mention that unions are most useful for unskilled and semi-skilled labor.

I realize this may sound like flamebait, but _most_ of the people asking for unionizaion of IT come from the least skilled end of the curve. You won't see the guys who run Google's data centers sweating it over unionization -- they don't care, they're irreplaceable (apart from HR violations, I guess) and they know it.

Now, most IT guys aren't irreplaceable -- hard to admit but it's true, especially in a company for which IT is a core/strategic area. 50 years ago a punch card operator used to be a big deal. Today they have been replaced by people who keep our networks running, our OSes patched, our backup tapes safe. They are the equivalent of clerical staff in an 1880s office (being a clerk then was a big deal, btw) -- not key to the business but essential to keeping things moving.

Ultimately, the issue is also one of trust. IT has to necessarily deal with some of the biggest secrets of the company. They get access to the CEO's laptop, they get to guard the salary database, the works. I don't know if managers would be comfortable having unionized employees in those roles.

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...

[jez9999]

Now, most IT guys aren't irreplaceable -- hard to admit but it's true, especially in a company for which IT is a core/strategic area.

You seem to be implying that anyone but the 'creme de la creme' of IT workers doesn't deserve job security, reasonable income, or a decent standard of living. I don't wanna live in your world.

Re:well, in my case...

[NitroWolf]

Man, I wish I could mod you higher than 5. You wrote basically everything I was going to write about why I dislike unions. To me, they are the embodiment of laziness and get paid ridiculous amounts of money for doing little to no work.

Re:well, in my case...

[mrraven]

Nice rhetoric but the reason GM is going broke is that they are trying to sell glorified early 50s inefficient V8 trucks (SUVs) as commuter vehicles in an age of declining petroleum resources. I.e. management and the owners made terrible and I do mean terrible marketing and design decisions thus leading to their companies downfall.

The same thing BTW with Ford and Chrysler, I too am from Michigan and have watched this all go down for years in disgust. Don't try to blame the unions for bad decisions by management that shit doesn't fly. The big 3 auto makers had 35 years to figure out how to make fuel efficent vehicles and they blew it and coasted on bad engineering and now they are paying the price.

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.

Re:well, in my case...

[MartinB]

That's why I don't like unions, because I've seen the end game,

No, you don't like unions because you've seen one example, and have committed a schoolboy logical error in assuming that that is universally true.

Re:well, in my case...

[Squirmy McPhee]

Every grocery store is a union shop in Michigan.

That's simply not true. I lived in Michigan for 25 years and I have quite a few friends and relatives who work in grocery stores there. Not a single one of them has ever been a union member.

That's why I don't like unions, because I've seen the end game,

I have to agree with the others who pointed out that you're forming your opinion on the basis of a single example. Furthermore, your example doesn't even embody the entire UAW, just the very aggressive stance of the UAW locals in the Flint area. Eventually, GM decided that it couldn't afford the demands of those locals and closed its plants in Flint. One of those plants, as I recall, was relocated to Lansing -- just a few counties away, but with a much less aggressive local. Not long after that, you may recall, the UAW forged a new contract with Ford that sacrificed cash in exchange for guarantees of job security. Chrysler also never had the problems the GM had in Flint.

You might also recall the long, multi-union strike against the Detroit Newspaper Agency in the mid-'90s. The unions were resistant to modernization and figured that in Michigan they'd find sympathy amongst the newspapers' readers. However, the Detroit Newspaper Agency so convincingly made its case -- that the newspapers would soon go out of business if they didn't modernize (e.g., use computers to lay out the newspaper) their production facilities -- that many union members, particularly amongst the writers, quit their unions and continued going to work. Officially the strike lasted many years, but most people forgot all about it within a couple of months. In the end, the unions essentially gave up.

Most unions understand that their survival depends on their employers' survival. Your example is one of the few cases where the union cut off its nose to spite its face.

Re:well, in my case...

[Scudsucker]

I realize this may sound like flamebait, but _most_ of the people asking for unionizaion of IT come from the least skilled end of the curve.

Sure, but unions were never about protecting the elite. They are about sticking up for the common worker, and there's no reason you should have to be extrodinary just to make a decent living.

They get access to the CEO's laptop, they get to guard the salary database, the works. I don't know if managers would be comfortable having unionized employees in those roles.

And the reason for that would be...? Unions provide stability, but don't prevent anyone from being fired if there is cause. Which would you worry about more - the livelong union employee messing with company assets, or a burned out at-will worker who's just found out his job has been outsourced to India?

Re:well, in my case...

[10101001 10101001]

While you've brought up many good points of unions gone bad, the funny thing is the number of things you list which seem to apply equally well to corporations. For example, corporations are more interested in short term profits than the survivability of the company. Further, a lot of the illegal actions that are performed by a corporation are rarely punished or when they are they are treated more as civil matters as it's virtually impossible to prove any individual at fault for systematic negligence. As even as unions can be, I think the problem isn't unions themselves (or corporations themselves, for that matter). The problem is that the law takes steps to support the existance of such organizations through direct enforcement at times (closed shop/subsidies/tax breaks) as well as ignoring infringement of the law (bullying/negligence/anti-trusts). You even hint at this, noting a firm problem is that unions cannot compete against each other, since everyone is forced to join that one that exists for a company.

So, I believe that unions and corporations should exist, but not under any special privileges. And I think anti-trust laws should only be invoked over cabals, not the open union of people or companies. It is when information is closed off that the free market can fail to function properly. And using force to force people to join or not join organizations is an obvious interference in the market place. The biggest issue throughout history between employers and labor has seemed to be ignoring the law for one or the other. Perhaps recognizing it for both would solve most problems.

Re:well, in my case...

[Biomechanical]

Don't come to Australia to do IT work then.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - The IT industry in Australia is big fucking joke.

Upper-management generally knows less about computers than a grandmother, anyone's grandmother, even a dead one. Middle-management generally knows enough to fool upper management, but doesn't know enough to fool the techs beneath them, and therefore aren't respected by those techs. The techs on the ground floor, the guys that actually do the work, are ignored until something breaks, and then answers are demanded to certain questions, expensive questions, with expensive answers, that management wants made cheap.

If you're in IT in Australia, either work for yourself or get into another industry. The way things are going at the moment, IT is only going to get worse as more ignorant people get into it either directly - management - or indirectly - customers who want appliances instead of computers.

The humble janitor gets paid more than common IT people - help desk, assembly and repair, the usual grunt work - and the minimum award for IT is about $484 per week for full-timers, or $12.11 per hour for part timers.

Re:well, in my case...

[Scudsucker]

The problem with most anti-union arguments is that they are almost always based on annecdotes, and in your case, one sided and emotional ones. This is foolish, because we don't go around smearing ALL businesses as being bad because some cheat on their taxes and dump toxic waste into rivers.

Re:well, in my case...

[DigiShaman]

...have committed a schoolboy logical error in assuming that that is universally true

No he hasn't. Unions are a form of Socialism at the micro scale. For a macro version, look to Italy, France, and Spain where they unemployment rate is much higher than say the US and UK.

But don't take my word for it. Have fun with these data sets from LOBORSTA http://laborsta.ilo.org/

Repeat after me. SOCIALISM SUCKS!

Re:well, in my case...

[boomfart]

I used to agree with you but then had the misforture to work for a power company that would regularly screw the workers. A new pay deal negotiated to start as of January gets to Easter "we don't want to pay it" they offered half and no back pay. They were regularly in breach of the law regarding some employee payments and would delay for months, the only way to get the employer to even negotiate was to strike and get them into court then while the reason for the strike was their breach of the law they would bitch that power workers should not be allowed to strike as power was an essential service.

Re:well, in my case...

[Anonymous Coward]

A picture is worth a thousand words. Here are some photos of modern day Flint, Michigan. A direct result of what the union problems described by the above poster:

http://gregcumberford.com/pics/2002/flint/

(Please mod this up, so that the folks who don't want to read a long post, will still get the point)

Re:well, in my case...

[mrraven]

In your case I will give you the virtues of being civil, thoughtful, and polite (yes qualities I could use as well :)) unlike the parent poster, however I think your facts are a bit off the mark. According to a Washington Post article called SUV sales drop sharply on December 2nd:

"Sales of all new vehicles in the United States were off 2.8 percent in November from a year ago, with Detroit automakers bearing the brunt of the industry slowdown, according to Autodata Corp. Sales of some SUVs were off more than 50 percent from last year. Meanwhile, U.S. sales by Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. continued to surge.

At General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, sales were down 7.6 percent. The slump coincided with the company's announcement last month that it would cut 30,000 jobs by 2008 and close several plants. GM sales have lagged since it ended "employee pricing" discounts in September.

Ford Motor Co., the No. 2 automaker, said sales fell 15 percent. In response, GM and Ford announced yesterday that they will make fewer trucks in coming months while boosting car output. Ford said it will increase first-quarter car production by 21 percent from a year earlier."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/12/01/AR2005120100737.html

Thus for now I'll maintain an SUV sales slump is a large part of the big 3s troubles.

Re:well, in my case...

[spacebird]

I don't doubt that it is a big part of the problem; I just think its very far from the only problem. I'd guess that union interference is just as big a problem overall, if not bigger, over the last several years.

Re:well, in my case...

[freedom_india]

I agree with you. However what do you have to say in response to what my ex-employer's HR Chief says: "IT is one area where there are no unions. With the kind of salaries these guys recieve asking them to work for 14-18 hours is well worth it."

The best fact is, there was no retaliation against this guy. And he had given this statement to the Press who seemed to nod their dumb heads.

Just because we are sitting in an a/c room and just twiddling our thumbs, and drowning jolt colas, doesn't mean we are machines.

If this guy had made the same statement against UAW, you know where he would be.

Such companies bitch about paying high salaries, conveniently forgetting that they earn a return of about 50-60% on their investment, waaay higher than Auto on a puny investment on servers and stupid software. Intellectual property is not understood by these air-heads.

It is high-time IT workers formed a proper union.

Re: Corrective tech. workers walk the line!

[aisnota]

The other employees should encourage or recruit
those they are permitted to sooner than later.

It interferes with the corrective actions of
the marketplace by having these companies
keep hanging on and hanging on. Those workers
should quit as soon as they possibly can
with personal considerations understood.

Those companies need to go away if they are
bad. It is the free market method to fix the
problem of idiotic management. They are just
co-dependant to the point of enabling weaker
managements to squander their hard earned works!

Screw international law

[Travoltus]

at least, when it comes to how we manage our own affairs.

I'm also opposed to telling other nations how to run theirs.

The funny thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the sheer number of laws you'll have to pass (read: guns you'll have to stick in peoples' backs) to preserve your nationalist Utopia.

The Indian workers who replace your sorry ass won't be here on H1-Bs. They won't be here at all. They'll be in, gee, guess what, India, doing your job remotely.

More power to 'em, I say. If capitalism is good for the goose, it's good for the gander.

You would have traded with Hitler

[Travoltus]

if he offered you free trade.

And I don't need a lot of laws. All I have to do is make one law. "If you are producing goods for America in countries where wages are low and working conditions are crap, there is a big, BIG tax on it."

That covers those jobs moving to India.

BTW I like how you equate patriotism with nationalism.

I care about my country more than yours. My family more than yours. Without even a shred of apology.

Re:You would have traded with Hitler

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, sure, I would have traded with Hitler. A country with a healthy, trade-based economy doesn't commit genocide or start world wars. A country that does its level best to isolate its internal interests from those of the world around it, on the other hand.... well, history tells us what to expect in that case.

I would have traded with Nazi Germany, while the measures you're advocating would turn us into Nazi Germany. Again: if free trade is good externally, it's good internally, too. There's no cosmic mandate that entitles you to live better than five hundred million equally-qualified Indians. If you can sustain your current position only at the point of a gun, that's a problem for all of us.

Re:You would have traded with Hitler

[Travoltus]

Well, sure, I would have traded with Hitler. A country with a healthy, trade-based economy doesn't commit genocide or start world wars.

ROTFLMAO!!! I can think of one such country that killed millions of Africans and native Americans, and is involved in an invastion of a foreign nation that wasn't threatening us. Can you guess which one that is?

I can also think of another such country that kills millions of baby girls a year in the name of its one-child policy. Can you tell me which one that is?

A country that does its level best to isolate its internal interests from those of the world around it, on the other hand.... well, history tells us what to expect in that case.

Brazil. So how many Jews did they gas?

I would have traded with Nazi Germany, while the measures you're advocating would turn us into Nazi Germany.

You know, we trade with a country right now that kills political dissidents, forces abortions, kills baby girls, and even kills political prisoners for organ donations. Ever since we started trading with them, they have refused to soften their policies. In fact, they've added to the mix some new technology, courtesy of American corporations: DIGITAL CENSORSHIP.

FACT: free trade has set that nation's citizens BACK because they've used our technology to censor even more information than before.

Question: Do you know what nation that is?

Again: if free trade is good externally, it's good internally, too.

BZZT. Wrong. You have no facts to back this up.

There's no cosmic mandate that entitles you to live better than five hundred million equally-qualified Indians.

There's no cosmic mandate that entitles five hundred equally qualified Indians to have America's jobs. If they want to prosper then they can do it the same way America did: develop their own industry!

And America has a God given right to tax anything that comes into this country from beyond its borders. If you disagree, feel free to invade us and see if we lack the firepower to stop you. Hint: I bet we have more nukes to repel invaders than you have invading troops to send.

If you can sustain your current position only at the point of a gun, that's a problem for all of us.

Tough titties. I'm all for protecting my nation's livelihood. If you don't like it, then invade. Or better yet, cut your exports to us. But remember, there's no God given right for you and your poor Indians to make a living either, and if we stop buying your stuff, then what will you do?

Offshoring is depleting the American consumer's ability to buy stuff. The middle class is shrinking as we speak. http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249
Eventually East India's God given right to a better living, will go away when our buying power is no longer sustainable by credit debt.

Re:You would have traded with Hitler

[Anonymous Coward]

And America has a God given right...

Funny, we used to hear that a lot back when all those Native Americans were being exterminated, too. (I don't know about "millions of Africans," though. They've arguably been the beneficiaries, not the victims, of American imperialism.)

News flash: America has a God-given right to do two things: jack and shit. Again, you need to read a history book or three. Even with the questionable wisdom of using nukes to repel "invaders," you might as well be trying to steer your ship of state by nudging the Moon around in its orbit.

Expect change, friend. Nukes or no nukes, Nazis or no Nazis. Our country is not the unique and beautiful snowflake that you think it is... except in the literal, evanescent sense. Look to your own family; mine is the world of humanity at large.

Re:You would have traded with Hitler

[mycall]

"our buying power is no longer sustainable by credit debt."
how many trillions are we in debt? what about the bank's switching from petro-dollars to petro-euros soon?

Re:You would have traded with Hitler

[Travoltus]

You don't have a God given right to our jobs, either. You forgot that conveniently.

And don't talk in one breath about how America's market economy prevents mass genocide and then dis America for its mass genocide in the next breath. You're talking out of both sides of your face now.

And we have a God given right to do whatever is necessary to defend our livelihoods. What power are you proposing is available to stop us? No history book will refute that fact. We asserted our God given rights against Germany, Japan and the USSR. Who are you to say what our rights are? Are you stronger than all of them? If America gets mad enough and decides we want to keep our jobs and our middle class, what power do you have to stop them? Are you some omnipotent being that I haven't seen before, that will bring your most holy hand down and stop us?

Yes, expect change. Expect your God given right to have our jobs suddenly disappear when our consumer market collapses due to shrinking incomes and exploding debt. Expect America to get pissed off and demand that you build your economy on your own domestic blood sweat and tears instead of taking our jobs and stolen IP to do it. Laws against offshoring are cropping up in places like Arizona and state legislatures around the country, starting with offshoring Government jobs. Next we'll be looking at the financial industry and consumer personal data.

Things will change.
The result is American jobs will stop coming to you.
Because our consumer dollars will stop coming.

You want tech jobs? Then make your own industry. Don't sit there with your hand out begging for us to send our jobs to you. We do not owe you that.

And a man's duty is to his family before his country, and to his country before the world. The only way your "my family is the world of humanity at large" can ever be sensibly true is if we have a one world government.

By the way I'm going to now remind you of a key point that you got scared of and did not address:

You know, we trade with a country right now that kills political dissidents, forces abortions, kills baby girls, and even kills political prisoners for organ donations. Ever since we started trading with them, they have refused to soften their policies. In fact, they've added to the mix some new technology, courtesy of American corporations: DIGITAL CENSORSHIP.

FACT: free trade has set that nation's citizens BACK because they've used our technology to censor even more information than before.

Question: Do you know what nation that is?

Most free trade advocates - AKA cheap labor conservatives - such as you - don't like to be reminded of that basic fact.

Re:You would have traded with Hitler

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no cosmic mandate that entitles you to live better than five hundred million equally-qualified Indians.

Yes there is. I don't smell, and I don't do that snot-sucking-up thing.

Re:You would have traded with Hitler

[Travoltus]

I was born in Olathe, Kansas and currently work in Coarsegold, California. Perhaps you're mistaking me for someone else.

That's hardly material. You talk like East Indians have some God given right to economic progress at the expense of your own fellow countrymen's jobs. East Indians have two rights - Jack and Shit. Actually, three - the third is to provide for themselves.

When one is dying of thirst, one does not reject the offer of a leaky cup.

Except in this case the leaky cup is laced with cyanide.

Why is that overrated?

[Travoltus]

I'd say that is informative and it's a fair warning, too.

It should happen in the USA as well

[Orion Blastar]

Just remember to change the administrative password, take away administrative access from manager accounts, and shut down the servers before doing the walkout.

US Management abuses IT workers and has H1B/L1 Visaed and offshored a lot of IT work putting a lot of native IT workers out of work. Then only paying a fraction of what IT slaries used to be paid, and taking away benfits and forcing native IT workers to work 60 to 80 hours a week with no overtime pay.

Screw them, change the passwords, remove administrator access, and shut down the servers and then leave for a week. See what happens.

Re:It should happen in the USA as well

[quanticle]

Screw them, change the passwords, remove administrator access, and shut down the servers and then leave for a week. See what happens.

They fire you and hire someone else to clean up the mess and take your job. Or they offshore the work to India.

In both cases, the company is hurt a lot less than you are.

Re:We should do that in the US

[erick99]

Well, yes. That is exactly how it works. Not bad when you consider the alternatives.

Re:We should do that in the US

[Bloke down the pub]

Should the US impose restrictive tariffs on imports from WTO members the result is that all WTO members get to impose restrictive tariffs on the US, and we may need to pay fines to the WTO.

If Sydney's suddenly floated across the Pacific and anchored off 'Frisco Bay, there might be other things to worry about.

Re:We should do that in the US

[sjames]

Sadly, that is now against International Law. Should the US impose restrictive tariffs on imports from WTO members the result is that all WTO members get to impose restrictive tariffs on the US, and we may need to pay fines to the WTO.

Ask Iraq about that international law thingy.

Re:If workers want more money

[sjames]

Then they are free to start their own company, no person is stopping them.

In a sense, they did! A union can (generally) be seen as a legal entity which sells labor to employers for a comission. Employers do business with them because the union has a needed resource. Sometimes, a union forces employers to sign an exclusive contract (that is, be a union shop).

I won't claim unions are all good, some are quite a problem. However, as long as there are large companies where the employment bargaining power is nearly 100% in their favor, unions are a necessary corrective measure.

Re:A labor dispute and no mention of healthcare?

[VJ42]

Not really, Australia is probably like us here in the UK (and the rest of Europe, Canada, New Zealand and just about every other Western country I can think of bar the USA) and has a Universal health service; free at the point of use.

How ironic...

[jamrock]

...that the quote at the bottom of this page is:

"If we all work together, we can totally disrupt the system."

Re:A labor dispute and no mention of healthcare?

[rabbitfood]

Australia is probably like us here in the UK

Except that, unlike us buttoned-up Brits, when Australians go on strike they take offence if anyone notices.

Re:Unionized IT?

[16K Ram Pack]

Maybe the people in those countries are just glad to have the work.

Resisting global free markets is like pissing in the wind. If you can organise to stop your company outsourcing jobs, the result is that your company's products will cost more than the company in that country producing things, and the company will hit the wall.

The real answers are: reskill, live in a cheaper country or accept that your salary is not going to get the sort of rises you had before. I doubt you'll hear a trade union offering these up as solutions.

The way to solve the H1-B "problem"

[tkrotchko]

As soon as an H1-B is employed for a 90 days he/she gets their green card.

Voila. Problem solved.

Before you criticize, think about why this would be a terrific for everybody except companies who lie about why they want to import workers.

Re:The way to solve the H1-B "problem"

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as an H1-B is employed for a 90 days he/she gets their green card.

Voila. Problem solved.

Before you criticize, think about why this would be a terrific for everybody except companies who lie about why they want to import workers.

Close, but no cigar. Once the H1-B gets a permanent visa, then that will open up an H1-B slot. The market will still be flooded with cheap labor, which is exactly what the companies who lie about why they want to import workers really want. Yes, allowing the green card in 90 days will reduce the companies' ability to treat H1-Bs like slave labor, but they'd still love your plan, because it would open the floodgates.

Far, far better would be to allow H1-Bs to switch employers after 90 days, while holding the quota steady. Skilled workers would be wooed by companies in need of talent, and the overal wage depressing effect of the H1-B program would be greatly reduced. It will, of course, never happen.

Really, the best solution is to end the H1-B program altogether. If companies want to export jobs, let them go right ahead and try. They know damn well it doesn't always work, which is why they are pushing so hard for visas. Think about it for a moment. Any labor that can successfully be offshored for a cost savings has already been offshored, and then some. But the companies continue with their hollow threat of "either allow H1-Bs or we will offshore more jobs!" They know it's a lie, but they want to frighten the weak-minding into accepting the bargain.

Re:The way to solve the H1-B "problem"

[tkrotchko]

Well, yes that would be fine as well. The main thing to do is allow these H1-B's to really get hired at prevailing rates. Take away the threat that they'll be sent back if they get fired and you reduce most of the incentive for the H1-B program to begin with.

And as a national issue, I'd rather have motivated technical people coming to the U.S.

What nobody wants (well, except big multi-nationals) is for really qualified people being lured to this country forced to work 80 hour weeks for $30K per year with the threat of deportment hanging over their head if they complain about conditions.

Re:The way to solve the H1-B "problem"

[Bloke down the pub]

The problem is that the worker doesn't own the visa, employer does. Hence, the employer owns the worker, at least for the time he's in the US.

If the worker could leave his employer & take his visa with him (or sell it to someone else) you wouldn't have the distortion in the market that currently exists because the bodyshops can bring in cheap, tied labour.

Long Term

[tkrotchko]

"no government or labor union is going to be able to change this, at least over a long term."

Define "long term" and then we can have a discussion.

Because in the "long term" so many things change that you may be completely right... or you might be completely wrong. Or the question may even be irrelevant.

Yeah we all support your strike.

[JollyFinn]

Your actions towards improving working conditions and living quality of all techworkers have been noted. We all should hail the australian techies for their great actions improving the living quality of us all.
- Indian Techworkers.

Re:Unionized IT?

[Bushido Hacks]

I'm afraid you are so VERY wrong.

Why should I relearn everything I that have learned over the past 15 years and devaluate my living conditions because some rich bastard want 7 yachts for Christmas and not 5?

Besides, theres already an ideology of reskilling and downshifting. It's called BUDDISM. As much as I respect the Buddah, I do not wish to be "enlightened" in my income.

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.

This is payback long overdue, NCR.

[sethstorm]

This is the same company that decided to mess with healthcare and retirement in the mid-90s on its own workers in the US, yet preserving the modern day Executive Golden Parachute.

Given all that happened over here in the Rust Belt with NCR, this is action worthy of a salute. They were once a company that actually gived a damn about their workers, and it showed through the quality of the products - only to be killed by their early use of India in the 1980s, later dealings with AT&T, and their aforementioned transition into a pioneer of worker inhumanity. Now the only thing you readily see that looks like quality work is their ATMs.

Everything else from Old River to in its hometown is demolished or sold off to landgrabbing exclusionists.

Serves them about right to have this kind of justice happen, even if it's Down Under. If this strike happens, and the downtime is as predicted by the employees, there is no wrong they have done.

Re:Unionized IT?

[16K Ram Pack]

Why should you? Because you don't have a choice. The world moves on.

I spent my first 10 years working on mainframes. That market died, and I moved on. The traditional contracting market is less than it was 5 years ago, because any large team project gets shipped to India. So, I do a lot more small client work that isn't just coding, but I've had to learn more about negotiation, pricing, marketing and so forth.

In the 1980s, there used to be a lot of work for typesetters, people who put together newspapers, and it was actually very well paid work. The word processor came along, and the unions in the UK fought the change. If I'd have been a phototypsetter, the moment I saw the word processor, I'd have been going to college to find something else to do, because I'd have realised I was toast.

one example?

[YesIAmAScript]

Pardon me? Does the UAW run the shops at the mall? They don't run the Teamsters! They don't run the various construction unions (like the IBEW). Why not ask a general contractor on a large construction project about union work rules and how they affect the work that is actually done?

How about the Screen Writer's Guild? SAG? Look at global rule one.

I've seen a lot of examples of unions in action. I have seen many bad ones, and no good ones yet. My experiences are very broad here, much more than 98% of the people on Slashdot. So I'm going to go with them.

Re:one example?

[ScrewMaster]

I've spent the better part of twenty-five years in and out of manufacturing plants around the country, developing and installing industrial data acquisition and control systems. I've had run-ins with unions on more than one occasion, generally having nothing to do with what I was trying to accomplish other than that it "wasn't the way we do things around here." This is what happens when overempowered employees decide that they get to decide how a company operates. I once had a 7-foot NEMA-12 air-conditioned enclosure with some thousands of dollars of computer and interface hardware inside impaled by a pair of forklift tines. Nobody knew anything about it, of course ... the report I got on the phone was, "your compouter ain't workin' right." Sure ... when you jam a pair of forklift tines front-to-back through your 19" rackmount CPU it don't work right. This was a stamping plant for one of the Big Three, as it happens. And I agree with the original poster: the laziness and general inefficiency I've seen at major union shops was absolutely appalling. Granted, that's not true of all unions but it certainly seems to apply to the big ones.

Another aspect to this that I haven't seen mentioned yet is the origin of the labor union. A century and a half ago, there were no labor laws, no workers' rights, no OSHA, no government busybodies of any kind doing anything for the worker. Working children 'til they dropped (or died) was perfectly acceptable. In that environment it would have been surprising if the workers hadn't banded together to form a mutual defense. But times change, and whether unions are still deserving of the power they currently wield is a question that needs to be answered.

Re:one example?

[killjoe]

In the olden days corporations would besically put people into indentured servitude. These days they don't do that anymore. They outsource to countries where there is indentured servitude and prison labor.

Re:one example?

[ScrewMaster]

They don't do that anymore because the United States (and other industrialized nations) made indentured servitude illegal, not because of some evolution in the moral fiber of corporate leadership. Look at situations where a single large corporation provides the only employment for a town: when given that level of control there tend to be abuses. In America's case, when corporations managed to subvert the tariff system to the point where outsourcing of finished goods became profitable, yes, they had no problem with using other nations' slave labor, or something very close to that. In other words, nothing really has changed other than the level of corporate influence in government.

Re:one example?

[killjoe]

"they don't do that anymore because the United States (and other industrialized nations) made indentured servitude illegal, "

Right, now the corporations ship work to india, china, vietnam, and africa where it's not illegal.

"In other words, nothing really has changed other than the level of corporate influence in government."

I disagree a bit. In the olden days corporation usually ran a town (a company town they used to say). These days the corporations run the whole countries.

I can't completely agree...

[YesIAmAScript]

Where you say Flint area, I would say Michigan area. Look at the head of the CAW's comments to GM (and GM's response closing plants there the next day). Canada is not the Flint area, and the UAW's foolishness isn't limited to Flint.

I'll agree it gets better as you get farther from Michigan. GM, Toyota and the UAW get along just fine at NUMMI, and in many southern states also.

I don't know your reference to when the UAW gave money away in order to keep jobs. I don't recall that happening. The mass relocation of plants was in the 80s and it wasn't to Lansing, it was out of state. In the 80s, the UAW pretended they were giving money, but it was GM that was giving money away, through the Jobs Bank program, and in reinvesting in Flint because the UAW said they would cooperate to make rules better (and did not).

I have no idea how you can say Ford and Chrysler never had problems with the UAW. The last time the UAW made contracts, they settled with Ford first (and took them to the cleaners) and that was (as is usual) used as the model for the GM contract that was signed right after.

As to the union shops, maybe I don't know enough about Western or Upper Michigan to speak for the whole state. I'll say every grocery in Southeast Lower Michigan is a union shop. My friends working in Meijer first told me of the union shop law, baggers and checkers were unionized. You do remember the unions versus Kroger in the 90s, right?

Re:I can't completely agree...

[Squirmy McPhee]

the UAW's foolishness isn't limited to Flint.

I didn't say it was -- I was only addressing the specific case you brought up.

I have no idea how you can say Ford and Chrysler never had problems with the UAW.

Again, I never said they didn't. My example using Ford was only a single case, but I was using to show that the UAW's relationship with other auto companies was not as bad as it was with GM in the late '80s-early '90s.

My friends working in Meijer first told me of the union shop law, baggers and checkers were unionized.

I'd forgotten about Meijer -- I did have one friend who was a member of the union at Meijer. And while I realize that many of Kroger's employees are unionized, I don't think all of them are. I don't recall my cousin being a union member when he worked there. But there are plenty of non-union places to buy groceries in Michigan; if that's what you want, just avoid Meijer, Kroger, and Farmer Jack.

Re:If workers want more money

[Wild Wizard]

including links to the strongest political party in the nation (the opposing party to them is actually a coalition of two parties which had to band together to compete federally and in almost all states)

You haven't seen the makeup of the Australian Federal Parliament recently have you, or the infighting and factional problems that the ALP is having.

The ALP has been out of power for a decade now.

FYI current makeup

Liberal 73
National 11
ALP 60
Other 4

typical...

[YesIAmAScript]

If you're gonna go on a rant, at least be right.

GM has an excellent record on fuel economy. They've only ever made one car that had a gas guzzler tax. They've never fell below the CAFE regulations, in fact have built up credits for doing better than necessary. There's a stat, it goes something like GM sells the most efficient or 2nd most efficent vehicle in over 85% of the car categories they compete in.

Now, I agree, they are making a lot of guzzling SUVs. But that's mainly because PEOPLE BUY THEM. It's the same reason Toyota makes 6 SUVs (5 if you don't count the Matrix). This is the same as the number of cars Toyota makes (5, 6 if you count the Matrix, 7 if you consider the Solara as a different car than the Camry).

If you're gonna say you don't like the domestic cars, fine. That's a personal decision. But your reasons don't seem valid given the product mixes of other, more successful companies. I would suggest there is a different reason.

Re:typical...

[mrraven]

1. The CAFE standards are very low considering what we could accomplish with current technology, for example a 157 mpg NON HYBRID that is going to be released in Germany for 13,000 dollars (U.S.)

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1000

2. The reason they "sell a lot of them," is they advertised the hell out of them and in "clever" ways to make pencil necked pointy haired bosses feel insecure about their masculinity if they didn't commute to work on perfectly flat pavement in a 4000 pound 4 wd truck that can do 120 mph when the speed limit is 70 tops. Yes tee vee advertising propaganda and group think do work for a while until it costs too much to be "cool." Then suddenly last years "cool" becomes "un cool" finally, thankfully a Prius is "cool." As we inch closer to peak oil and 3/gallon gas those German diesels will win and the big 3 will lose and that has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with short sighted marketing and design decisions.

Re:typical...

[mrraven]

GM might make a couple of efficient show cars they sell a few thousand copies of, however the vast majority of their marketing effort went into SUVs and "light" (pickup) trucks. A couple years ago well over 50% percent of U.S. car sales were SUVs and light trucks due to this aggressive marketing.

Toyota is the opposite of this case they sell a few SUVs but most of the cars they actually sell have fuel efficient engines like the Corallas, 4 cylinder trucks, Priuses and to a lesser extent the Camery but even they are more efficient than V8 SUVs with a 32 mpg highway rating and ranking very good in C02 emissions.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/17759.shtm l

Do I wish the big 3s management had made wiser decisions? Obviously as someone who supports the idea of U.S. union labor I wish the big 3 auto makers had made smarter decisions but they didn't and now they (and all of us in Michigan) are going to pay the price.

And no I'm not an auto worker, or even in a union job, I'm a free lance web designer and landscaper, but I sincerely wish there were union IT jobs available as I think it would blunt the influence of over bearing pointy haired bosses and I would prefer a job with good benefits and job security over free lancing.

great non-response response

[YesIAmAScript]

Go check out that stupid car you point out. Wait until you see it. If you take everything off a car (like safety measures) and put in an anemic engine, you'll get great mpg. That doesn't meant it's a good car, that anyone will buy it or that it can even be legally offered for sale.

As to your second comment, it's completely non-responsive. I say again, Toyota makes a ton of SUVs. They didn't get into the market to lose money, they got into it to make money, just like GM and Ford.

You may not like SUVs, I don't either. But there are plenty of people who like them. GM sells them for the same reason as Toyota.

Note that a barrel of oil yields 19.2 gallons of gas and only 10 gallons of Diesel. Since Diesels don't get twice the mpg of gas cars, I'm not sure peak oil favors Diesels.

And as the owner of a German car, I'm pretty sure it doesn't favor German cars either. And additionally, CAFE regulations may not be as high as you'd hope, but I assure you GM is doing a lot better on the CAFE regulations than Mercedes and BMW are.

GM's fastest car as fast as M-B's and gets 16/26mpg too (0-60 3.7secs, 0-100 7.9 secs). It incurs no gas guzzler tax. M-Bs fastest? 13/17mpg (0-60 in 3.9secs, 0-100 in 8.2secs) and lots of guzzler tax.

Re:great non-response response

[mrraven]

Within the lifetime of people writing these responses peak oil is going to kick our asses, then that "stupid car," will look very smart indeed.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/3/1/3402/6342 0#more

And diesel doesn't just have to come from oil, ever heard of bio diesel. Bio diesel also lowers C02 output by 75% because when the plants grow they take up nearly the amount of C02 that is burned. Face it sooner or later the U.S. bug car juggernaut will end, we can do it now and have a smooth transition, or later when it will really hurt.

again, not even to the point

[YesIAmAScript]

Yeah, the time of big cars might end soon. That has NOTHING to do with the discussion at hand. The point was GM is making big-ass cars that no one wants and that is why they are in financial trouble. Except Toyota makes big-ass cars and does well at it.

Try to actually discuss the point at hand, please.

And you don't have to have a Diesel to use non-petrol fuels. Jeez.

They need to get smart...

[davidsyes]

If they threaten KAOS, then SOMEone will threaten Control.

Maybe they won't be satisfied until Hymie:

http://www.tvacres.com/robots_hymie.htm

comes along and takes their jobs.

Maybe they should bunch up under the cone of silence?

Maybe they'll trade in their cell phones for shoe phones and PDAs for spiral-bound notepads?

Seems to me that IT and unions are like water and oil: They'll only under EXTREMELY harsh conditions and not be a normal mix. I TWICE was in unions and didn't know: once as a 411 operator and another time, before that, in retail sales at a now-defunct formerly-major chain. In each case I was NOT told I was in one until AFTER I was hired, and I was paying money to self-serving entities. My take (a limited one) is this: If I'm FIREABLE, FIRE me. I don't need some org covering my ass when I should be fired. I don't need the costs of goods going thru the fucking roof to the point that I can't afford to buy what I make or sale for the company. I like speaking for MYSELF; I don't need some org talking for me (I don't even let the current occupant of the oval office speak for me; I do my OWN speaking!) and telling me not to cross a line, and so on.

Now, I realize the goods I purchase probably all went thru union hands, from raw goods to WIP to FG, to shipped product and shelved, and even rung at the cash register. But, that doesn't mean I need to join one. Seems like IT is of the last bastions not skimmed/dipped into. Imagine if IT workers went into a union: We'd be PISSED. It's one thing going thru a temp agency, costing a would-be employere TWICE (sometimes twice) what we're getting paid. Now, if IT were unionized, WHO'D get that money, even if our checks are scraped of $100 to $300 per month: Charity? No, some org preserving itself. Hell, if I'm going to lose $300 a month from my check it's going to be in a direction of MY goddam choosing, not just because, "Well, those are the dues...."

Imagine if militaries were unionized. I remember when I joined the "Nav" and we were told that in the Navy there is NO SUCH THING AS STRIKING. Hell, in war time (hopefully a REAL war, not this half-baked shit scam were foisting on the world right now...) "going on strike" could be punishable by death. To some extent, massive strikes are a massive destructive act: downline SOMEbody's gonna eat those costs, usually the consumer. Anybody remember the cost of the Long Beach strikes a few years ago? BILL-F*KING-IONS. COG UP. COLA?

Probably said too much here... might come back to haunt my ass one day...

NCR bashing commence

[ThesQuid]

If anyone here has ever worked as a field tech for NCR, for gawd's sake speak up. I worked in the trenches for 3 years doing the exact same these things these guys do. And the mismanagement is INCREDIBLE. I was in the USA, but I'm pretty sure NCR is exactly the same down there.
In a nutshell: use half the techs necessary, promise twice as fast service, hustle up double the number of customers. Looks great for the sales dept., but they usually EXTREMELY overpromise what the techs can deliver. They SHOULD strike if it's anything like what I personally experienced working for NCR.

Re:NCR bashing commence

[Scagnetty]

I did work for NCR for 3 years from 2000 to 2003. There was a layoff coming and I volunteered for it. You are right, they overpromise what they could deliver. We managed though, but I believe many SLA times were modified by managers. I don't believe in Strikes or Unions... the technician should just walk and go find a better job... which I did.

that's interesting...

[YesIAmAScript]

People in marketing are often in conundrums trying to prove their marketing even works. Yet you have it nailed. People bought SUVs because of the strong marketing. That is far from a foregone conclusion.

Toyota's product mix is nice. The Prius specifically is in a class GM doesn't even bother to enter yet. But to compare the mpg of Toyota's cars versus GM SUVs is just stupid. Again, Toyota sells a TON of SUVs. How do theirs do compared to other's SUVs? And 4-cylinder trucks? Like GM doesn't sell 4-cylinder trucks? Note that GM sells 5 cylinder trucks in the same market space everyone else sells 6 cylinder and 8 cylinder trucks. Even the Hummer H3 is a 5 cylinder.

You crow about the Camry L4 fuel economy? How about the Pontiac G6 L4? It's not actually in the same car class, although the G6 has only 6% less space inside.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/21848.shtm l

GM does well on MPG. If you want to crap on a company for making inefficient SUVs and trucks, start with Ford.

But either way, none of this at all proves the point that domestic concentration on SUV sales is the reason they aren't selling cars now. Porsche sells SUVs now! Try blaming GM's profit problems on that!

GM's problems primarily come from labor costs, especially stupid contracts they signed with the UAW over a dozen years ago. And they're not even alone. Suppliers everywhere are having major problems, VW is speaking of laying off 20,000 (1/5th of their European workforce!).

And Japan isn't excempt either. Nissan failed as a company and was bought and revived by Renault. Mazda failed as a company and was bought and revived by Ford. Isuzu is near death. Mitsubishi used to be the #2 auto maker in Japan and is now very near failure.

The auto industry is nearing some serious consolidation, and not just in the US.

China

[Circlotron]

I wonder whether the trade union phenomena will ever get a toe-hold in China? I've never been there but many have said that low pay, occupational health & safety issues, and sweatshop conditions abound. Of course, the desire to lord it over other people more than likely exists there as well. We'll see what the future brings.

Re:China

[Shajenko42]

Doubtful. China is far more willing to roll out tanks and murder its citizens than the US is. Which is what will happen the very first time workers try to strike against any important company.

Positive US employee rights ?

[dbcad7]

If you from one of these countries feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

By law, annual MINIMUM paid vacation (not holidays those are paid too)...
Argentina.... 14 days
Belgium...... 20 days
Bulgaria..... 20 days
Canada....... 14 days
Chech Rep.... 28 days
Estonia...... 28 days
France....... 35 days
Hungary...... 20 days
Ireland...... 28 days
Israel....... 14 days
Latvia....... 28 days
Lithuania.... 28 days
Poland....... 18 days
Spain........ 30 days
US........... 0 days

Generaly the law to qualify is working 6 months (a year in some cases). Starting a new non government job in the US, how long before you get to the Argintine minimum level ?.. 5 years on avg ?
The average american has no idea how much he works in comparison to these other countries.

Re:Positive US employee rights ?

[paulthomas]

Just to clarify, I meant "positive rights," in the sense of a right that requires the action of another, also called an entitlement. I was making a distinction versus negative rights which do not require counterparties to do any action.

It is the difference between "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and "Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you."

And now I'm moving on to more current things that command my attention.

Re:Positive US employee rights ?

[mrraven]

I hope you enjoy your Scandinavian cell phone asswipe. Nokia ring a bell? Linux ring a bell? Guess where both Linux and Nokia come from, that's right European countries with vacation benefits. Oops...

I think those figures are total holidays+vacation

[blorg]

...for Ireland anyway, we get a minimum of 20 days "annual leave" plus 9 public holidays (Christmas, New Year's Day, etc.) So it's 29 in total.

GM SUV sales are way up...

[YesIAmAScript]

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/03/03/chevy-tahoe-tak es-off-while-full-size-suv-sales-fall-in-february/

So how are dropping SUV sales the thing that is killing GM again?

Just for the record again, I don't like SUVs. I'm not trying to say I like what GM is doing here, but it isn't hurting them nearly as badly as you make out. The real problem isn't the number of vehicles sold, but the profit per-vehicle.

Balance of Power

[gidds]

Agreed.

Look at it this way: power corrupts. (Or, as someone once said, power attracts the corruptible. Or maybe power exposes people's corruption. You get the point, anyway: power and corruption tend to go together.)

If an employer has a huge amount of power over its employees, then (eventually) it's likely to abuse that power in some way; possibly lots of ways. So to start with, a union is a good way to reduce the employer's power and the abuses that go with it.

Trouble is, when a union gets big, it starts to get lots of power itself. And that power tends to get abused, leading to the sort of excesses discussed here. (Also seen here in the UK in the '70s: the three-day week, etc. That was so bad the inevitable backlash led to Thatcherism and all that...)

So the best situation would seem to be a balance, where a union is powerful enough to curb an employer's worst excesses, without causing too many of its own.

(And there's probably a Nobel Price for Industrial Relations awaiting anyone who works out how to achieve that...)

As an Australian IT worker...

[Geminii]

I work IT in Australia. I've been in and out of unions, which were always noncompulsory, at my own whim. When I was a low-paid paper pusher, I was in the union because otherwise we got pushed around a lot. When I moved to a higher-paid position and became effectively unfireable, I still supported unionism of the lower ranks because I had experienced it myself and didn't trust the management not to fall back into their old habits. The upper echelons and IT didn't really need to be in a union, but the people on the front lines did. With noncompulsory unionism, I think we were something like a 70% union shop. Yes, we occasionally went on strike. The strikes were also noncompulsory, so union employees at high-union-percentage sites could arrange to leave offices running on a skeleton staff and tailor the response at each site as they saw fit. The 30% was mostly management and HQ, of course. When I had learned enough to stand on my own two feet in an industrial situation, and could browbeat any manager into submission by correct application of red tape, I became one of the 30%. I don't need any of the services the union offers any more - I can fight my own battles. I do, however, remain on good terms with the local reps and will back the work they do, because I remember what it was like when I did need them.

Re:We should do that in the US

[husher]

'Traditional unions' generally establish things like 'fighting funds' where donations from members from other parts of the union, the general public, and sometimes the pooling of union assets, are used to support workers and their families who are taking industrial action and thus not earning money. Sure, any 'traditional union' can set up job networks - and many do - to support their members in this way, whether the circumstance is industrial action, or redundancy, or whatever. I don't see how there is anything additional to that, that some other, somehow 'funkier' hypothetical union would do, that hasn't been done or tried. I also have some doubts about the reality horizons and intestinal fortitude of workers who will only take action if there is absolutely no short term cost to them. Having said that, there are lots of very effective forms of industrial action workers can take that don't entail stopping work, but do put pressure on the employer to shift their position. Watch the stress levels in management rise, for instance, when each and every worker sends a fax three times a day, every day, to the CEOs fax machine, for two weeks. 10 seconds of your time, complete chaos at the other end. Harder to 'filter away' than mass emails (although they too can be effective, depending on the campaign). I know, I've helped people do it.

Re:Queensland Government view

[husher]

Hmm. So the Commonwealth Govt is not to be seen through 'propaganda filters' because they are 'conservative'? I think we should read your remarks through 'propaganda filters'!

NCR was the company to which people Outsourced

[compuniverse]

NCR won the ATM contracts many years ago - taking IBM out of Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank. They have put the squeeze on techies for a long time - it is hard to make a living wage working for the likes of them. Flat-rate $80 jobs with large travel involved. Everywhere is so lean now - NCR is lean and cheap. I wish the techies well.

here's another.

[YesIAmAScript]

I did mention the vandalizing, right?

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/03/14/uaw-tells-m embers-to-stop-vandalizing-competitors-cars/

This is not just Flint. And it isn't GM.