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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."
I certainly do not want to belong to an organization where I can only be guaranteed a salary increase across the board next to the same slacker programmer who didn't contribute. You know how I fight the big companies? If the job sucks or I don't think I am being treated fairly, I quit, simple as that. Let your feet do the talking and get the hell out of there.
The fact is, when the PHBs numbers aren't going to be favorable, then your job may be on the chopping block. But with the same sentiment, when it comes times for initial salary negotiations, take the gloves off, and _fight for every penny_. When the going gets tough, and your team may be part of the downsizing, be sure that you've accounted for such job insecurity/risk.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ - A workout plan that doesn't feel like homework.
Might be more applicable. Getting royalties to work produced has served the information industry as it exists in Los Angeles well to date. Might be time for Northern California (and other parts) to investigate this model further.
There used to be a Graphics guild back in the day, I wouldn't mind seeing that return either.
IT people are too mobile to be in a union. IT people like to change job more so than other professions I've seen. Unions depend a lot on Brotherhood, and office people generally just aren't like that. I would have no interest in being in a union. The IT sector is too fast paced for unions who can really hamper a company's desire for change. Also, the seniority thing is what I think would drive most workers away, as most IT workers like to be rewarded for their work and not how long they have been there. I was in a Union when I worked at a grocery store, and sadly most of the things I had heard about unions I found to be true.
Another thing is I love my job, and don't mind working 60 hours a week. Unions really like to supress that behavior. I work that much because computers are my hobby, and there are much better computers here at work just for testing than I could ever afford at home. Is it bad that I like to be here that much doing my hobby? I know others like me as well.
I know I'm going to sound like a totally insensitive capitalist pig, but I'm been a programmer for years and my experience is there are lots of challenging well-paying jobs for good, enthusiastic, productive programmers.
Every once in a while someone in a group mentions the idea of unions and -- no joke -- it's *always* the laziest, whiniest, least productive member of the group that brings up the idea.
So I vote no.
boxlight
Count in binary and you'll get a larger number.
Don't give the suits yet another reason why offshoring is a better alternative.
Maybe the employee should buy some shares.
Never! The job I work is not mine... it is my employer's and they are free to can me at any time for any reason... just as I am able to leave at any time and for any reason.
Now that... is true freedom!
One of my major beefs with unions (and one of the biggest reasons that I would never join one) is that they provide the ability for... dead weight. People who either are unable or unwilling to contribute to the bottom line are able to be carried along on the shoulders of those who are capable and do do the work.
Lets also not forget that in many unions, ones loyalties are to the union and the company you work for far behind.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
If you can somehow improve job security while maintaining the meritocracy that currently exists in technological fields, then it might be worth looking into. Clearly, companies have become too quick to lay off tech workers (and other types of workers as well) simply to bump up stock price. On the other hand, I don't want a system where seniority is the only (or the major) consideration when deciding raises and promotions.
In short, I want a system where skilled employees are not let go just because the CEO wants to skim off the top 10% of wage earners in every department in order to improve his bottom line, but I also don't want a system where a company is forced to hang on to morons just because they're in the union.
If so, then a labor union is a good idea. Otherwise, not. Unions help people get rights, yes. Then they start sucking the lifeblood out of everything they touch. You are guaranteed a job even if you don't do it, and that is bullshit.
With that said, the BOFH union local 666 would rule the fucking world, so from that standpoint, it might be fun...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And seeing the truth about what management thinks of IT (basically that you're all a bunch of losers who failed to get your MBA and deserve to be treated like shit), I won't work for a non-union shop ever again. Keeping your job on merits is fine- until you find out that they reward your hard work by kicking you out with as few $$$ as possible, so that they can justify their million-dollar McMansions and pools and Mazda Miatas.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I live in michigan... I'm no longer a fan of unions. They make it hard to fire the the worthless slacker even though he gets payed the same ammount as the hard working people. I mean $20 an hour to sweep a floor is briliant.
After seeing the joy of what unions have done to most major industries, no way would I want them invading IT. While working really sucks, I enjoy the fact that slacker developers that I've worked with have been culled, and that pay raises have been earned and not given because they have to.
Unions foster mediocrity.
- oZ
// i am here.
They were a necessary evil when the Industrial Revolution came about, but now they're just an unnecessary evil. The unions are nothign more than legal mafias. Just look at GM. I have 2 family members who work there. My brother-in-law is a toolmaker, and his job consists of playing cards, working out, watching TV, and taking naps. Oh, and for about an hour out of the day he actually has to do some actual work like reset a machine or something. Poor guy only makes $35/hour after being there for a year. He started at $28 an hour. He has no college degree either, so GM is paying for him to get his journeyman's card, and pays for him to attend school (pays for the school plus his hourly wage why he is there). Up until recently, he could take as much overtime as he wanted, including double and sometimes triple time on Sunday. Guess what he pays for family health insurance? $0.00 a month. I guess this is why GM is so financially sound, oh wait.......
I once saw a quote on Bash.org along these lines - Get all the tech-support people in the world to join together and form a kind of union. The union would have one purpose, and one purpose only: Every month, the members all pay a due. The dues go into one large pot. Now, anytime one of the members has to deal with a REALLY obnoxious/annoying (l)user who just doesn't get it, the money in the pot can be used to hire a hitman. Sounds good, no?
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
If there ever was an organization dedicated to mediocrity, impeding productivity and forcing people to be on strike and not earning money when they want to, a union would be it.
I've been a programmer for over ten years now. Keep your skills fresh, work hard, be a team player, and you'll tend to get further work (if one job dries up, someone you know and have impressed will pipeline you into another) and plan for contingencies like being out of work for a while. It's a nice indoor job with good benefits (I'm a contractor but I have been an employee enough times to know that) and good pay rates. Sure, you might get outsourced - that just means what you were doing is something somebody else *should* be doing since they can do it cheaper. Get into some part of the industry that is new and not likely to flow to parts of the world with poor infrastructure, language barriers, or non-existent IP laws. Or get into Defense or Security work, those won't likely offshore anytime soon.
In short, stop crying and start working towards the future you want. High-tech is still one of the best ways to get there for the middle class guy. Sure, the rich get richer, but if anyone can tell me when this wasn't the case, I'd be glad to cut the legs out from under them. Yes, you work hard. But if you enjoy the job, that's actually not a bad thing.
And if you don't like the field, get out. If you don't like your employer, move on. If you don't like the work, retrain, expend some of your resources readying yourself for something you do like.
It seems to me the article's poster expects the world owes him/her something. Get over yourself, I say. The world owes you nothing, isn't fair, and a Union won't do anything but take your money, impose restrictions that hamper the hard workers and the competent, and drive the work away faster. Oh, and add to that sometimes pull you out of work when you don't want to go. And consume your union dues along the way (like all bureaucracies).
Unions... no thanks. I'm doing just fine without them. The only people who need unions are lazy folks, people without foresight, or people without initiative. Do yourself a favour and go out and take the world on and beat it into the shape you want, don't wait for someone to fix it for you.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Did unions protect steel workers? Or textile workers or airline employees here in the US?
Steel and textiles are pretty much gone from the US. Why do you think an IT union would
stop offshoring?
Unions don't matter in that respect. What does matter is a legal/tax structure which
encourages corporations to ship work overseas. Not to mention a system that favors
large corporations over smaller ones.
If you want to protect jobs, then ban multi-national and even multi-state corporations.
Then put back the limits that a corporation can only work in the one field it was originally incorporated for.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
It's not like unionization is necessarily contradictory to free markets, nor is it necessarily aligned with the statism the author seems to think it demands. In a free market, workers can come up with whatever individual or group demands they want, and employers can take or leave them.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
One of the best classes I ever took in Engineering was Industrial Relations, delivered by an engineer who worked at GM for many years. His take was the best thing management could do to reduce a union's power is to treat employees well enough that they wouldn't want or need a union. What a concept! Give them good wages and benefits and don't screw them over, and they won't want to pay union dues.
Good management will think that way. The result is a talented, hard-working, happy, dedicated, and loyal work force. That's the step between 1. Steal Underpants and 3. Profit!
I don't know if I would join a union. I once belonged to one in a PPG glass factory -- we made Anderson Twindows (actually a pretty cool thing). But, the work wasn't too hard, and the pay (for that market) was pretty good.
You could argue the salary and conditions were a result of the union. That is probably true. But, as power grows, so does (did, seemingly) abuse.
We were up for new contract and the union came so close to putting us on the streets. They were demanding a cut back of the number of glass "lines" each worker ran per shift. As it was at the time, I was barely able to fill much more than four hours of real work in an 8-hour shift, and now I almost had to strike because the union wanted to bust balls with the company on this.
I know sometimes it's about putting a stake in the ground way out to reach certain compromises, but this seemed off the scale.
If IT wanted to unionize it would have to be with sanity. I'm not a big fan of seniority being the only yardstick for who stays and who goes when there are cutbacks (more on that in a moment). An IT union worth its salt would allow for hearings and maybe prevent arbitrary and massive layoffs.
Which brings me to an abuse I only figured out 2 years after getting laid off from a major telcom:
Part of my severance package was one months pay for every year I'd been there, with a maximum payout of 10 months. I'd been there for 21 years, so with my 60 day notice and severance, it might seem generous that I'd be getting one year of pay. But why would any employee with only ten years get the same benefit? That didn't seem fair.
Turns out, part of the contract for getting and keeping the severance requires the employee to honor what amounts to a gag order... no bad mouthing the company, and no legal proceedings against the company or they would take all of the money back.
Coincidentally it turns out that the statute of limitations for EEOC actions against a company is 300 days which conveniently happens to be 10 months. Aha! So, the company skates with what (IMO) amounts to hush money and looks generous at the same time. (for those who would claim these were generous terms, consider there are many hidden "costs" to the 20+ year employees, including but not limited to: health care coverage and costs, pension changes)
If unions had the power to change that kind of treatment, I'd consider them.
Empirical evidence in recent news suggests though (e.g., United Airlines, et al. where pensions have been handed over in default to the government) unions ultimately have little power to stem corporate abuse. The rich will continue to get richer, the poor will continue to have babies.
Sigh.
Frankly, in order for an IT union to get any real traction, you would have to unionize just about everyone in the world that's qualified, because outsourcing is so easy. Quality may suffer for a short period of time, but knowing what the IT people I know would try to demand, it would be cheaper to pour money into training of foreign workers than to cave to an IT union's demand.
Unions are organized and stay organized easier when the job cannot, at all, be exported. In-store workers, miners, hospitality workers, truck drivers, etc. I can't have someone in China clean my office in New York. I can employ a code monkey in China to code for my business in New York. In America, quality is job none, just look at the abysmal performance of our big car companies. Americans don't care about quality, they want cheap, and that's just what we'll be given. No IT union is going to be able to fight that.
i had this idea years ago, but i realized it won't work, because there are so many kinds of IT work, it would be impossible to come up with standards, and it wouldn't have the results we want.
the union would end up run my business guys anyway, then it would just be working for a company within a company. still all sorts of dumbass crap we'd be told to do.
no, the answer is just to work for people who have a recent IT background in the first place. that way at least they might understand what's worth doing, and what isn't.
we could form some form of labor organization, but the union style is not appropriate for us. coding anyway, is more like a production art discipline than anything else, maybe a guild? this was suggested before...more plausible than a union anyway.
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
I have been working in the IT field since before the boom. From field work to tech support desks.
The union idea comes up about every 2-3 years. Then it fades again. Most of the commentary here is from programmers who don't want to see some slacker next to them riding comfy while they work hard. Programming jobs should be contract for just that reason.
Unions would help the rank and file workers who are far more at the support and field engineer/help desk end of the spectrum. I have seen companies let people leave and not hire replacements for 2 and a half years while praising themselves for "never having a layoff", and review processes where your actual performance seems to affect the outcome about as much as telling your cat to fetch.
Just something to think about if you're only seeing this from the "leet coder" perspective.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
My mother's father was a member of his local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He was an officer and I still have his union seal stamp he used to mark union documents. It's one of the few momentoes I have of him, that his sailor's hat from his time in the Navy during WWII.
He grew up in a time when the unions were gaining power, forcing companies to make concessions, improve working conditions, and pay a decent wage to everybody. Unions served an important function in the early history of the industrialization of our nation. But their power is waning and frankly that's a good thing.
It might seem seductive -- hordes of geeks, banded together for the common good, but honestly, would it accomplish anything? In this day and age, workers are disposable. My IT job can be shipped off to India or China in a heartbeat and then what? Is the union going to shut down Microsoft or Oracle for unfair labor practices? Is it right that some other guy in my department gets as much as I do when he can't write code for sh*t?
Nope. I'm not for it, not in my industry, and not if it means I get dragged down by others who aren't interested in being competent programmers. I'm not walking a picket line for them and not striking when I know there's some guy in another country who makes one-third what I do and would be happy to punch keys for it.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The guy on the bottom doesn't have the balls to quit, create a company, and run it in the way they feel.
Name one company anyone can start that simply requires "balls".
Last time I checked, starting a company required money. Money to rent an office, pay for computers, employees, and a host of other operating expenses an idiot like you couldn't even appreciate it.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
You're not worth every penney- you're worth the $2.50/hr your job can be done in India for.
Oh yes, and if all of us tech workers in America join a union, I'm sure it'll make those folks in India look that much less attractive! That's what we need in this country -- make us even more expensive to hire.
So once all the good jobs get outsourced, which shift at Wal-Mart do you want to take? I assume you'll have to check with your manager down at Mickey D's first...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The power of a Union is directly proportional to how capital intensive its industry is. That's because capital-intensive firms suffer huge capital costs as a result of work stoppages, strikes, and disruptions at expensive factories.
Software, however, isn't capital-intensive at all. The total investment in a software house is a few thousand dollars for PCs and servers. If you struck, then your employer could move your PCs out of the building, outsource your jobs to India, and fire you all on the spot, with very little cost to himself.
Unions in IT would accomplish one thing only: an acceleration of the outsourcing trend.
I've been kicking it around for years. It has nothing to do with being lazy, it has everything to do with protecting yourself from managers who questionably violate labor laws without ending up with you being fired. Especially if you're right out of college and you have no idea what to do when your manager tries to work you 70-80 hours a week with no overtime. That's basically a sweatshop, but it definitely happens and I've been in that situation.
Of course, those who've been around the industry for years and have built up a reputation...and thus, have no difficulty switching jobs and/or maintaining work will obviously not see anything wrong. However, when I broke into the industry after college, I took a software development job with a Fortune 500 thinking it would be good experience...and I was paid like crap. And disposed of like crap after a year of hard work that generally met or surpassed most expectations. I mean, I got a good letter of recommendation out of it...which got me another job that lasted a year, and I was laid off (and even had that company try and contest my unemployment benefits).
I saw a lot of other guys fare much worse in the first few years, guys who I knew weren't bad engineers at all...maybe not the best suckups, but they got their work done. However, young engineers are seen as a dime a dozen by management, and are easily replaceable. Heck, even after working in the industry for years, I've had to get dirty in legal fights for paychecks with various telecommute contracts I've had.
Another thing unions can do is prevent companies from forcing employees to work ridiculous work weeks, so potentially, they can mate and reproduce. They can prevent managers from working visaholders like literal slaves, then holding them up as examples to force their citizenship holding employees into working similiar hours (many times for nothing). Instead of hiring engineers on full-time with the full intent of requiring them to work more than 40 hours a week, they would need to hire them on as contract or provide for overtime. (Or at least give the employee someone to report such behavior to other than the labor department...which can make things really ugly when it's you against your company.)
There are a lot of good benefits to being unionized, as long as the union isn't too horribly corrupt. Most engineers can join the AFL-CIO, however...well, that sort of fails that requirement.
Can I flag TFA as Troll?
My family has always been pretty pro-union, mostly on account of my grandfather:
-NOT being issued shop glasses (he was a drill press operator in automobile production)
-NOT being allowed to bring his own
-being injured on the job
-being administered by a substandard alcoholic 'company doctor' who promptly removed one of his eyes and hacked up the other one
-being fired without compensation
-eventually being re-hired at an ornamental job and given a $10,000 payoff to drop the whole thing.
In addition, there were stories of so-and-so's family having to buy the boss' groceries, or so-and-so's sister having to 'deliver' them, if you know what I mean. It was enough to make most of his kids go out and get their heads busted in fighting for the right to assemble a union.
I'm not going to get into where that particular institution has gotten itself today, but for this knucklehead to equate that with today's tech workers is ridiculous. Where was he when a crop of English majors called themselves 'programmers' and 'project managers' and started making $50-60k right out of college? When the company soda was flowing, foozball was an HR necessity, and the break room had a couch and a Playstation?
What exactly are the author's demands? That we be offered guaranteed jobs for life? That'll work, just ask GM and Delphi. With the possible exception of game developers, I don't think I've ever known a great programmer that felt 'exploited' for very long. Between my wife and I, we've been hit by one round of layoffs and dodged at least 6 others. If any of our past employers had been prevented from trimming the fat by union regulations, the entire operation would have folded up sooner.
And besides, some of my best freelance jobs were put together with fellow layoff victims...does that mean that I turned from a proletariat to a robber baron overnight?
There are plenty of problems with a handful of executives doing the insource/outsource swing every couple years, and playing games with people's careers in the process, but is a union going to fix that? Only if they break a bunch of other things in the process.
No you don't make your own, you have to bargain for it, and that's where collective bargaining comes in.
i know i may be the only yes vote here, but i see unions as a necassary evil. an evil to counter the greater evil of greedy management. yeah, there are side-effects like mediocrity and what not. but without unions, we would not have a middle class in this country. we would be stuck in the early days of the industrial revolution where workers were just rats to be killed off when the bottom line (or extra mansion) called for it. some argue that unions only protect the lazy, but they protect everyone. all you union haters should try working at a place like walmart. you will be thrilled by their anti-union stance.
Unions in their original form were great. They stopped literal abuse of the workers; unsafe working conditions, below-poverty wages, and more were eliminated because of unions. Most of the full-time IT population has health care, and is well paid in relation to the work they do.
So where are the abuses that need correcting in IT? At-will employment? Getting paid for the work you do, instead of some artificial number based on seniority? Oh, the humanity...
Why would I want the playing field artificially leveled? My playing field greatly favors me because I am better at my job than most people. A collective bargaining agreement would end that advantage. I could only do as well as anyone else.
Well said. I agree; the playing field looks just fine from where I'm sitting, and I damn well don't need anyone jiggering around and propping up the low end of it, thanks very much.
If I had wanted a lowest-common-denominator, unionized job, I would have gone to trade school, become a machinist, and made auto parts for a living. Oh wait -- all those companies, that whole freaking industry is going out of business in this country, because of the way the Unions have driven the cost of production through the roof. I hope they've had a good run, because they've collective-bargained themselves out of a job.
And that's exactly what would happen in the technology sector, except it wouldn't take half a century for the jobs to start to disappear, it would take half a decade -- and that's at the most. We already have a problem getting businesses to not outsource tech jobs to places where the cost-of-living is a lot lower, and now people want to unionize and make that even higher? It's insane.
Joining a union is about as appealing to me as chaining myself to a half a dozen people who can't swim and jumping into a lake.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
There's nothing libertarian about a disorganized labor sector. Unions are organizations among workers, not a government. Libertarians stand for freedom from government control - and corporate control, too, which unions can provide. Libertarians stand against unions which control people, but those are much less common than governments, corporation and other management that controls people. Especially in the absence of a union, disorganized laborers' liberty is defenseless in the world of corporate and government control.
--
make install -not war
IT workers could certainly benefit from strong, rank & file controlled unions, but I think culturally most are not ready for them. Employers have no problem banding together and exploiting every trick to maximize profitability for shareholders. And generally it's the workforce, we the people, who are downsized, mismanaged, have our benefits cut, jobs moved overseas, etc. Without unions of working people, the employers have no counterpoint to their own power (except the government, yeah right).
But most IT people believe the hype that the "free market" should not be interfered with. We, more than trade or unskilled breatheren tend to identify with the employers and internalize their culture. We ignore that workers banding together to improve their barganing position, in no way undermines the "free market" There's a free market for labor too. You're free to negotiate individually with your employer if you want to. But you'd clearly have more barganing power if you cooperated with your co-workers and negotiated together to protect the things that make a real difference in your lives, ie. working conditions, schedules, compensation, benefits, training, etc.
IT workers don't like to think of themselves as workers in the same way as a steel worker is a worker. We think our shit don't stink. We think we're somehow too smart to be members of the working class. But the working class is anyone who doesn't own the "means of production". This sense that we were somehow special was at a peak during the dot com bubble when it was a sellers market for labor, and should have died during the burst and outsourcing epidemic. IT people need to get a clue and realize that by aggregating our labor power, we would have so much more power to protect the things that are important to us, like the net neutrality, privacy, time with our families, patent reform, etc. It's one thing to have EFF out there fighting with whatever staff and budget they can scare up. It would be quite another to have an SEIU size Tech Workers Union wade into some of those debates with a pile of dues cash, and the threat of work stoppage or other on the job actions. Want to take away network neutrality SBC and Comcast? Well then, we can't be bothered to keep your routers patched.
At it's basic level, a union is merely a group of workers aggregating to advance common goals. In practice, trade unions have become big, often corupt bureaucracies. This is where unions get a bad name, well besides employer propaganda (which is huge). The solution to bad unions is rank and file control. Get rid of the bad bureaucrats. It's really that simple. American individualism really reaches it's zenith with IT workers. It's hard to imagine IT folks rare enough to see IT folks cooperating over lunch, much less their livelihoods. I think we're too lame to do it.
I used to be involved in Tech Worker organizing for the old school revolutionary union, the IWW (www.iww.org). That's the union that won the eight hour work day, which we dumb shits have voluntarily abandoned (so we can work 12 hour days, wheeee....) There are many cool strategies that can be tried. One we worked on, but didn't get very far, was a hiring hall for tech workers. It worked much like an employment agency, but everybody was in the union, and had a willingness to support each other's struggles. I've also started a unionized and worker owned web development business. I think workerer ownership is probably the smartest way to organize production so that it meets human needs, not arbitrary stockholder needs. In our business, we had a managment structure that people had to follow, so that the buck stopped with someone. But if that someone was really lame, workers could vote to remove them. We setup our processes how we wanted. We reaped all the profit from our work. We earned a base salary, and then yearly dividends based on what profit the company had made.
There are also all sorts of workplace solidarity actions that can be done even w
I have worked in tech. for over 15 years and it is filled with lazy, ignorant, prima donnas that entrench themselves in cozy little positions and act like the company would come unglued if they ever left. I've seen these people quit over silly management disputes and the company moves on without a hitch. I doubt highly that unions could make things any worse.
In fact it could potentialy make things better by working out a compensation package that is based on... _actual merrit_. Then your precious salary would be safe because clearly you will be in the top percental of valuable contributors and so take home most of the bacon.
Unions can actually work out solutions to problems so as to benefit a company and the people in it. It's about having the leverage to negotiate.
Yours and others line of opposition sounds firghteningly ignorant.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Every time my father's contract was up, the union would strike for weeks. Unemployment in Missouri wasn't very good, and I think it still probably stinks. They'd get a little pay raise, maybe a bit more paid time off. This was an every-year thing, because the union would never negotiate a multi-year contract -- no matter how much the local membership wanted one.
Then the union, seeing how it caused a strike around Christmas with January heating bills coming up and got us that little more money once they guys went back to work, would up the dues. Most of the raise went to the dues most times.
Then, one day the company couldn't turn a profit. They sold the plant, and the new company just wanted the name. They closed the plant and opened another in another state a few months later. Nearly 300 families had a breadwinner out of work -- mostly primary bread winners. My parents cancelled my plans to enroll in a private boarding school. My sister was worried how she'd afford to go to college. My father went back to work making one third what he had been making. That's because the union insisted he made three times as much as the non-union plant down the street before the closing instead of a mere twice as much.
Yes, the union did help someone financially -- the union bosses were well compensated, and probably went on to close bigger and better funded plants through other locals later.
In a capitalist system, employees have to recognize that their success depends on the success of the business, and the best employees will work hard to see their business is successful. This results in the best employees getting better pay, and a better lifestyle.
In a Marxist system, employees demand an artificial "equality" whether or not the company is successful, and thus don't work very hard to ensure the success of the business. Then when the business or the entire economy fails, they are left scratching their heads as their entire social structure turns on itself. The only equality they achieve is that everyone who subscribes to this delusion becomes equally impoverished.
Marxists believe that all economy is a zero sum game, if someone is overly successful, then they must be taking it from someone else. Just as they don't understand that a successful economy makes more money for everyone, they also don't understand that striving to damage that economy also causes damage to everyone.
The dramatic economic growth that has occured from technology has shown us that this economy is definitely NOT a zero-sum game. As technology expands, as new tools are developed, and as business is given the ability to grow, everyone who wishes to try and be a productive part of that society has the opportunity to get an ever-larger piece of the pie.
Cut the fiber optic cable? Is that really productive?
Slashdot, where you get modded down as redundant for stating an opposing viewpoint... Independent thought anyone?
Then put back the limits that a corporation can only work in the one field it was originally incorporated for.
Great idea (not)! If we did that, then we could go after Apple Computer for getting into that pesky "music" business. And we could go after Berkshire Hathaway for not being in the textile industry. And after those two go down, we can go after WD-40 for being in the lubrication business instead of the oil production business.
Forcing companies to "fit" into certain molds is not the way to go about this. There is too much derivative value and derivative success that stem from businesses "branching out" from their core competency. If you restrict the products and markets they can compete in, the you - by default - restrict the free market.
(note: I am not saying the free market shouldn't have restrictions - it should in certain places (monopolies). But doing it by industry is not the way to do it)
If you want to have the option of working 60 hours a week, put it into the contract.
If you want management to be able to fire people who don't adhear to best practices or meet their deadlines, put that into the contract.
If you want people to get promoted based on merit reviews instead of seniority, put that into the contract.
The attitude and tone some of you have in your posts, it wouldn't surprise me if a couple of you have been "laid off" because you just rub people the wrong way. You'd think you'd want some protection from that too.
I'm in my country's equivalent to IWW http://www.iww.org/...Being a wobbly techie type works absolutely fine...even better, you can stay in the "one big union" even if you change jobs or assignments..i get legal help (and supply some as i go along and learn labour law), i get camaraderie, and i get to meet'n chat with all sorts of people of all classes and professions, hell it even helped me get hints in employment opportunities. Nothing is stopping you from joining the union I realise i sound like a union-bot right about now, but it's that good, noone should stand alone, no matter their profession.
Here's a different example. Skilled construction jobs are way up, and they are largely union.
Therefore, unions create larger markets.
Fantastic! Not since my 9th grade health class have a heard such a good example of impaired mental ability demonstrating faulty logic. The example back then was:
"Jesus was a man with long hair. I have long hair. I must be Jesus."
Again, great job on ignoring the largest real estate bubble ever to hit a capitalist economy in your pro-union analysis.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I think the article pointed out a good contrast of social trend against actual sentiments. The dearth of anti-union comments on here is unsurprising, but also misleading. Never heard of WashTech before either, so that was very interesting. Just more proof that a union isn't all that of a toxic or alien concept in how people work.
My marketing teacher in college just busted out a very insightful comment one day on the subject of unions and whether it was right to be for or against them. She just looked at us all and said:
"You are going to have organized management, so you are going to have organized labor." Matter of fact it is just a part of everything.
Actually, having a Union is not all that bad. We ARE the new blue collar workforce in case you're wondering. We are the first cut, the first out the door when things go bad.
Having worked in several hi-tech companies, EDS, SHL-System House, MCI-Worldcom, and several dot-coms bombs, being unionized is a completely different environment.
The crap I saw at EDS and other tech companies would not be tolerated in my work place. As a service desk manager for a IT help-desk, I have to say I enjoy the union agreement that forces my managers not to make bad decisions. Outsource the IT? Good luck in convincing the union. Good luck trying to force someone to stay at work because their dad is dying of cancer, or their wife is having a kid. All the sheit I put up with in a non-union tech place is mind boggling. Face it guys, most IT managers are IQ smart, not EQ, and we suffer as a result. My niece was on her deathbed - my old IT manager was wondering if it was ok if I was there just for the funeral. In a union environment, even asking me to stay at work when I'm entitled to be there would quash the every-day bullshiet we put up with because we're IT.
We are generally underpaid, outsourced at 3X what they pay us in return, and are viewed as a cost-centre (meaning that we're also the first out the door during layoffs).
If my manager calls me at home when I'm sick, it costs him my time in return. No such thing as working extra and not being paid for it. How many times have you seen EA or other software game companies being sued by employees for working extra without being paid for it. No earned time off.
Managers treat us like crap, and it's about time faced the fact that as the new blue collar workforce, we are entitled to union rights.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Please join. At least get their newsletter. It's VERY informative. You don't have to give them money.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Your fault for not being financially solvent. So smug, so self assured. You know, bad things happen. And in an economy where wages are stagnant, gas and health care costs rise, and you can be outsourced in a second - financial solvency becomes much, much harder.
Here's some things that can blast your smugness damn fast:
And it's really easy to buy a cheap home after prices have gone up 9-10% per year for the last decade. Average price of a home is well over 200k across the country. Where should you live, a cardboard box? Don't say rent - in many areas you can't find a good home to rent.
Things are messed up, my friend. Your planning is at risk to economic fate. Don't judge everyone so quickly.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
I mean, the ones with families to feed? This Ann-Randian spewing is the sort to come from high school or Rush Limbaugh.
I certainly do not want to belong to an organization where I can only be guaranteed a salary increase across the board next to the same slacker programmer who didn't contribute.
Without a union, you have no say if the boss' lazy-assed nephew gets a raise while reading slashdot all day (ahem). With a union, you can vote any contract that allows this down. Nobody else wants to do a lazy man's work, either.
If the union negotiates a contract that lets this happen, you can vote againt it. The "union boss" is a myth: he works for YOU, not the other way around.
If the job sucks or I don't think I am being treated fairly, I quit, simple as that... But with the same sentiment, when it comes times for initial salary negotiations, take the gloves off, and _fight for every penny_.
Fight? No, unless your skill is so unusual nobody else can do it, you mean beg.
The company is organized, all the shareholders and board is against you, you all by yourself. A union evens the playing field. "United we bargain, divided we beg."
There is no such thing as a permanent job, and you're naive if you believed that.
Naive? Funny, most of the people I know from my elderly father's generation are retired, with a pension, after working at the same company all their lives. Why shouldn't you be able to as well?
And as a country, the LAST thing we need to be doing right now is making ourselves less competitive with regards to the rest of the world.
Where's my cluebat? There are no more American companies! At least, no publically traded ones. Crysler's profits don't help America a bit unless THEY HELP AMERICA'S WORKERS. I am an American, Sony and Disney and Crysler and Toyota aren't. I'm patriotic, a company cannot be.
How Toyota treats the workers in its North American plants affects America. Welcome to your new foreign overlords (I for one...)
If only we could make stupidity more painful...
Are you some kind of masochist?;)
"I've got a mortgage and a family to pay for." So? Your investment and choices in life are not your company's responsibility to deal with.
Which is precisely why if that company mistreats its workers it needs a union. They have no reason to give two shits about you or your needs.
It's better to loose *some* jobs than to have the entire company collapse like the auto industry is collapsing to foreign competition.
The unions haven't killed the American auto industry, its incompetent management has. Japan sells more cars (made in unionized American plants) because they make what is percieved (probably rightly) as better cars. Note before the '70s a foreign car was rare on the highways. Then the oil crunch came, but Big American Auto continued to sell big, badly designed and built pieces of shit. It wasn't the unions that made the decision to ignore the Japanese.
Why would I want the playing field artificially leveled? My playing field greatly favors me because I am better at my job than most people.
So long as your employer treats you fairlly there is indeed no reason for a union. In the '80s, the head of the then non-union Eastern Airlines rightly stated that "any company that gets a union deserves one."
Folks only unionize when management comes from a Dilbert cartoon.
Oh yes I loved being in new york when the trains werent running. 60K a year retire at 55 and they wanted to retire at 50.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I see a lot of threads on here smack-talking the idea that we should unionize based on arguments like "It rewards lazy programmers", "Just quit if you don't like your job, etc." ... I'm a little sad to see this narrow and corporate view of what unions are and what they do coming from you guys; Unions are more than just collective bargaining-bins - They offer a way for people who have a common interest to communicate and organize around those interests - to take *action* to see that those interests are protected...A way to communicate with each other. That's why it makes me so sad to see my brothers here, who I think are the best communicators and organizers in the world - if not always the most eloquent, trash-talking the idea that we should have a system...a network...through which we can share information to our mutual benefit. We don't have try to strong-arm companies or force anyone to join...but what the hell is wrong with sharing information with each other? Isn't that what are core competency really is, at the heart of it? We've created this huge internet..we maintain the channels through which everyone else communicates...So why shouldn't *we* use those channels to share information about what employers do to us...not strongarm them...but just to make sure that our brothers are aware when someone treats us poorly...promotes the bad programmers over the good ones...offshores our jobs and then tries to hire us back to fix the mess...Shouldn't we be telling each other this stuff? Maybe just to give those companies something to think about? (i.e. "If I treat my programmers like crap, I won't be able to hire good programmers because they'll all know about me") Wouldn't that help all of us?
You know, I think that Slashdot *is* our union in a way...We're all here reading and posting at the same place and we should start communicating with each other about this kind of stuff; It could be a force that doesn't just *punish* companies that treat their IT workers badly, but *rewards* the ones that treat them well (i.e. "If I treat my programmers well, all the good programmers will want to work for me.) That's not "communist"...in fact, I would argue that it doesn't get more "free market" than that in any flavor.
I said before I found work in the *IT* field. That was what I was referring to when I made the unemployed statement. I didn't consider temp work to be employed. It was shit money for shit jobs but (mostly) paid the bills.
I did temp work in factories, in offices, in wherever work could be found and money made.
I had a feeling that the lay off was coming and had started firing resumes off well before it actually happened.
I'm not dumb or lazy. I work my ass off and I'm damn good at what I do. The fact of the matter was that there were very few positions in my area and many other unemployed people in my position who likely had more experience than I.
I hate to call someone I don't know an asshole, but your entire reply was flip and condescending without even a hint of thought that someone could legitimately just fall into some bad luck at some point in their life.
Please, consider yourself lucky to have (obviously) never been in such a situation and may you never find yourself in it.
A union doesn't work for IT. What we need is what the doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants have - a decent Professional Association.
:-) ).
We don't need a Union to help with collective bargaining of base pay rates and do the other things Unions do well, because we're professionals, and generally don't have the problems underpaid blue collar workers have.
However we could very much use a Professional Association to help with dodgy employers, legal aid for badly treated members (think all those stories of people fired for showing security flaws), bulk rate bargaining on things like indemnity insurance, advising government on IT issues, and (and this is the biggie; think doctors) enforcing professional standards.
In Australia we have the 'Australian Computing Society', but as far as I can tell it's been subverted by industry sources such as recruitment agencies and large IT employers, and does sod all with regards to representing IT workers. However a ground swell take over bid and a bit of branch stacking could probably get it back on track. Follow that up with an act of parliment (like with lawyers, doctors etc.) to set standards and you're on the gravy train.
Then, if you're evil, you insist that all 'security related' IT work can only be done by an 'ACS approved IT security worker', and your off-shoring worries go out the window. (It's a scam, but one used very successfully by other professions - cf all the stuff in the states about not buying cheap scripts from those naughty cheap Canadian doctors...
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
I'm not saying that physicians are "under-paid." However, it's a long road before they start collecting "real-doctor" pay. Physicians do have substantial job security and we are reimbursed well. The AMA has had something to do with that, but it is not a sine que non relationship. That organization is hemorrhaging members and it certainly cannot call a strike. Docs have job security because of demographics, disease, and the third-party payer system (which, as currently structured, essentially destroys the supply demand relationship). As you rightly point out, the cost of health care has been rising substantially. However, utilization has been increasing faster! In such a market, how could one NOT have job security?!!
Finally, this is not some kind of gravy train. This too will end. You can bet that there will come a reckoning. No union will be able to prevent that, and, to the extent that unions inject rigidity when flexibility is necessary, one could almost certainly make it worse.
Diagnosis: you are paranoid. As luck would have it, you're also being followed.
Let me get this straight: IT jobs are already going overseas to reduce costs, and you're suggesting I should try to make it even more expensive and inefficient to employ me? Riiiight!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A Union is good for taking your money. Here in Brazil registered workers are obliged to join their professional unions.
Result #1: All the small unions do is to get from their "members" one pay day per year. This payment cannot be avoided. By law it's discounted from you paycheck by your employer. Needless to say, union owners do not have financial problems.
Result #2: All the big unions do is to grant to their members that they have a fair chance of losing their jobs, since companies burdened by crazy colective contracts are choosing to leave the country in search of less regulated places.
Result #3: Both big and small unions together managed to stablish this great concept, the "minimum wage". So, every one of the lowly skilled people whose services aren't worth this "minimum" are confortably unemployed, having to work under illegal terms to get any payment at all. And of course these illegal jobs pay these people far less than what they would get in case the magic "minimum wage" didn't exist.
Now, I won't say unions weren't usefull when they appeared in the XIX century. The point is: for most of the industrialized world their time has come and gone. Unions are an historical solution for an historical reality, namely, the sub-human work conditions under the pre-scientific management of pre-information age industrial plants. Those are extinct almost everywhere. And they are extict precisely because the unions accomplished the goals they were set to reach.
The globalized post-industrial, service-based, information age is a whole different beast. Trying to apply to it something that worked 150 years ago is nothing more than being a "conservative" in the depreciative meaning of the word, i.e., trying to "conserve" some old idea simply because it was good one day, not because it remains good today. Unions, as they now exist, are past, and must be left in the past. The modern world demands a modern solution, not a deficient model whose utility is long lost.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Organize to the point that you can raise enough money to lobby congress. Then, insist that, for the good of the public, certain jobs must legally require: USA citizenship, certifications, degrees, clearances, licenses, etc.
Remember, officially, it is *always* for the good of the public. For example: argue that software used in medical system, or for air traffic control, or whatever; can be life and death critical. People who work on that software must, by law, be USA citizens, have a degree in software engineering, and be HIPAA certified. Use your imagination, think of all the software, and networks, that somehow might relate to national security, or are economically cricital, or something along those lines.
Remember: it always must be for the good of the public - not just for the IT workers. Real professions: like medician, law, and even construction, have been using this scam for a century.
Another upside to this: it would help eliminate some of the real bozos in IT. I know, a degree or cert, doesn't really prove anything. Some people without degrees or certs are actually better. But, at least, degres and certs prove some level of knowledge. Would you want a doctor or lawyer who never went to school?
I started a Union once for IT Geeks. The Consolidated Union of Network Technologists, Didn't get to far as the acronym was found to be offensive....
and if I don't like my job, I quit and get/make a new one. I went to school to learn how to think -- not to be a sheep.
Unions are for unskilled workers who can't compete in the open market because of their lack of marketable abilities.
We have unions for many jobs nowdays that don't meet tese qualifications, yet unionize anyway. Never, IMHO, to their better. I'd rather tech not be one.
Heck man, a Union just makes it hard to get bonuses and raises!
Like, wow dude, when's the last time you got a bonus or a raise?
If I joined a union, I wouldn't be able to rise on my own merits!
Geee, I sure do appreciate my being promoted twice in the last four years! NOT
Unions are anti-business!
If being anti-business means I want more of the share of the value I add to the business process, more protection from losing my job to a college or high school drop out that works for less than my gas bill, then I'm all for being anti-business. You are an expert at what you do. What did it cost you to be an expert? Time and money, I'll bet. Now, if the dropout knows his stuff, I'm not against him. But too many times have I seen qualified senior positions eleminated and management runs in three or four people to take the place of one person. The former employee get shafted, the new ones don't make squat, the job suffers, and the customers are left in the lurch.
Unions stifle innovation!
Like when was the last time you got to innovate? More likely you were tasked with yet another crap death march project for more PHB eye-candy.
I do better without a Union involved!
Chances are, if you look around, you can pick out two other people that get paid more than you do and don't do as much. So where does that leave you? With all the other programmers flipping burgers because a Paki works for $8,000 USD and likes it?
I HATE unions! There's no room for being me!
I was in a union. We didn't critize or belittle people for being unique, able to do things with flair, or were better at their jobs than we were.
Unions will prevent me from going management!
No, they won't. I went management (which is why I'm no longer union), and simply wrote a letter 30 days in advance informing them I was leaving the union. Note that it did not ask permission, it simply informed them of my upcoming new status.
Unions are almost like commie pinko communists!
I double dog dare you to go up to a union member and call him a communist.
Unions run a business into the ground and force them into bankrupcy!
Let me ask you, are you are reasonable person? Will you demand your employer give you so much that it will bankrupt them? Will you make unreasonable demands on health, life, retirement? Why do you assume a union will? Who told you they did? What agenda were they hiding?
Unions keep the deadwood in place and won't let management fire them.
Not in my experience. When I was union, the shop steward repremanded people for job failings much more often than management did, and twice called a vote at the request of the membership to refer another member to Management that wasn't pulling his weight. One was drinking too much (went to rehab and did ok afterward) and one was smoking crack (couldn't hack rehab and was fired.)
Unions contribute to Liberals, and I don't like the Liberals!
Depending on the union, that may be. In the IBEW, my local did not make contributions to political parties from their own funds, but only from funds specially earmarked by the member over and above the dues to be given to a particular party. There were Dems', Repubs', Sociliasts, Communists, Libertarian, Green, and a slew of others listed.
Dues! Why should I pay dues?!
For the same reason you pay a cable bill. You get a service that benifits you. And let me add that while making 45K+, my dues were about $20USD month. A lot less than I paid for cable at the time.
Let me just say, I've spoken to a lot of people about a union. Most have a horrible misunderstanding of what a union is, does, or is responsiable for. Since almost all of the people have the same misunderstandings, I have to think that it isn't an accident they hold those misconceptions. A business would rather not to have to deal with a union, because then if they
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
"If the conditions are too oppressive, the company will not find labor to perform under it. "
The problem with your reasoning here is that when every company can negotiate with employees individually, they can all put the squeeze on the employees because their conditions will all deteriorate together. The employee won't quit because everywhere else is the same, or not different enough to make it worth the sometimes significant costs of quitting, moving, etc.
Employees won't quit unless there is a better job to go to. If there is a better job, they'll quit and go there, but then that employer has every incentive to simply put the squeeze on. What's the employee going to do, go back to his previous employer? So there's a tendency toward squeezing the employees which can only be countered by collective bargaining, law, or companies that are not run by rational wealth-maximizers, i.e., socially conscious companies.