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Tech Workers of the World Unite?
okidokedork writes "Wired News reports on the lack of unions in the IT workplace. If you could join a union in your workplace, would you?" From the article: "The rich get richer, the shareholder is valued more than the employee, jobs are eliminated in the name of bottom-line efficiency (remember when they called firing people 'right-sizing'?) and the gulf between the rich and the working class grows wider every year. You see this libertarian ethos everywhere, but nowhere more clearly than in the technology sector, where the number of union jobs can be counted on one hand. Tech is the Wild West as far as the job market goes and the robber barons on top of the pile aim to keep it that way. They'll offshore your job to save a few bucks or lay you off at the first sign of a slump, but they're the first to scream, 'You're stifling innovation!' at any attempt to control the industry or provide job security for the people who do the actual work."
If I heard about a tech workers union forming at my company, I"d leave. Plain and simple, I don't need anyone free loading on my abilities to negotiate a better salary for their stellar ability to sit on their ass and play WoW instead of writing decent code. Likewise, if I feel my company doesn't appreciate me, I'm outta there. I'm in this for me, not to help me "fellow man" (MY fellow men don't want my help anyway) or to give my company something they don't appreciate and compensate me for.
Perhaps you should look up the definition of communism.
Why are you trying to be insulting? I've never understood why some people have to resort to insults instead of talking about the topic. Are you concerned you don't have a basis to stand on? Is insulting the only way for you to feel good about yourself?
Labor unions don't fit it. Labor Unions are collective bargaining organizations that use the power of the collective to increase the leverage of the employees to be on a level playing field
and that leads to....? COMMUNISM!
Remove motivation, flatten salaries to be based on years of experience, remove ability to excel... what do you have? COMMUNISM. What don't you have? Productivity or efficiency? What does that lead you with? A failed business model. Which results in? Failure of the company.. Just like our auto industry. But yeah.. it's all the CEO's fault.
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
Why would I want the playing field artificially leveled?
What's artificial about a union? Artificial?
If on the other hand your job involves a high level of innovation and metal agility these attributes may well contribute to you rising through an organisation.
But it will probably lead to a layoff anyway.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
The folks who are really essential are those who have both seniority and skill. Someone who's been a QA lackey for five years isn't going to be more valuable than an individual who's been doing design and implementation for two years -- particularly if the latter is adept at maintaining others' code, which is a skill many have.
My current project just lost a QA lackey after 8 months that turned out to have skills we are finding very tough to replace.
Having the good people leave such that one has only the newbies and the idiots who've been around from the beginning because they were the CEO's college buddies is a pretty damn good way to kill a company, too.
Yes, it can be. But a union is a way to keep the good people around- if you write the contracts right.
You're using seniority as a sole measure of an individual's value to the company. Is it important? Sure! Is it the only thing that's important? Hell, no! A company should be free to assign values to its employees as it sees fit: If folks are important because they are one of the few who understand the design of some tool they wrote way-back-when that's still in production, or if folks are important because they're the ones who are coming up with the brilliant design leaps -- in any event, the company should have the flexibility to value them appropriately.
The average CEO isn't competent to assign value to tech people- from their point of view they're all equally worthless wastes of money.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If you cant afford to walk out the door at work right now then you really need to look at your lifestyle and start "tightening up" right now to keep yourself from following the road to stupidity that most americans are following in their finances.
I agree. Let's start with outlawing 28% credit card rates.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I don't know what kind of corporations you're talking about, but here in the US, corporations are perfectly democratic: one share, one vote. That's more democratic than the US gov't.
by your logic, it is immmoral for me to not give my money to the richest person I can find, because obviously, being so rich, it is "fully possible and even likely" they will have no use for the money and give it to charity.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ...have you ever met a rich person?
I work in various industries (music performance, business computer programmer, games programming, lecturer at a uni, phd student) and I can tell you, the richest people have ALWAYS been the ones who try to screw me and pay me peanuts (hence why they are rich, getting more for their money than they really should by using their power position as leverage.. yeah i know, just dont deal with them blah blah). Whenever I do a gig, the average pub owners are reasonable and try to pay a decent price, while the ones who are richer, owning more than one business etc, always try to pay me crap all. When busking, same story: rich looking business people are my worst audience, its your average worker type that is the most generous (obviously, this is all generalizations based on possibly prone manual observational statistical analysis, but I've been doing it long enough to believe it's valid)
my rich uncle always gives the cheapest presents, etc etc. Why the hell SHOULD shareholders and management types make SO MUCH more than the people who actually produce the goods/ services, add value to the raw materials etc. Having worked for a few large corporations, I can tell you that while in some businesses, the managers were inteligent and useful (also the corporation that paid the best and was the most enjoyable to work at ), most had managers who I wouldnt trust to make me a sandwitch without putting the butter on the outside, or perhaps just buttering their head and eating the filling.
Hmm rant over I guess, basically I cant believe you think there is a moral obligation to give rich shareholders more money for doing nothing but investing (yeah I know how important investing is in todays system, but it still doesnt count as work, and shouldnt be more valueable than the actual work done by the company workers) just on the offchance they will give it to charity? IF they deserved the money, then they shouldnt need to give it to charity, and if they dont deserve the money WHY GIVE IT TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, give it to those that earned it!
watch "the money masters" on google video
In that case, I see a growth market for companies that steal from the rich that aren't their shareholders to give to the rich that are their shareholders, since profitable is not the same as legal.