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Should IT Unionize?
snydeq writes "Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you actually do — all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?' InfoWorld's Dan Tynan asks. To some, the odds against IT unions are long, in large part because the 'lone gunman' culture is pervasive. Diversity of skills and job objectives is another hurdle for rallying around common goals. But that has not dissuaded several union-minded groups from cropping up across the industry as of late, Tynan reports. In the end, the best bet for IT may be a professional organization modeled after the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association, one that could give IT professionals a single voice for speaking out on issues that affect everyone — such as H-1B visa limits or tax incentives to keep IT jobs onshore."
Well, gee, lets see. Setting aside the economic issues, the inertia and sloppy work that comes with systems where "seniority" is more important than "ability", lets talk about the Bar thing.
What does the American Bar Association do? Primarily it sets standards for it's members, and enforces them. Almost all professional associations do this, whether it's lawyers, accountants, or plumbers, you can't practice your trade unless they say you can...In Union strong states, you aren't allowed to hire plumbers and electricians who haven't jumped through the hoops, regardless of qualifications...Which is to say Joe Bob with his Master Electrician badge is more fit to wire your house than a guy with a PhD in electrical engineering who has 20 years experience in the field. Not only is he more fit, but you can't even hire the other guy because he can't get licensed without jumping through the union hoops.
Now, how many people get into IT through "non standard" channels? How many self-taught pros are there out there? How many people have a non-IT educational background? How many people from other countries?
Do you really want a bunch of senior people telling you what qualifications you need to have? This is a young industry, and it's changing all the time. What you need to know changes all the time. And they think setting up a professional organization is a good thing? Instead of clueless PHBs, we'll have 30 year vets telling us that our modern methods are crap compared to the work they did, back in the day, with punchcards.
Jesus. If you want to drive offshoring, that's the way to do it. Make American IT more expensive and less efficient than everywhere else in the world, and the work will flee this country and leave us longing for the days of H1-Bs and mere outsourcing.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This article answers it's own question. "... all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow." What better way to ensure you don't have a job than to make yourself more expensive than a contractor?
Whale
IT unions would turn Silicon Valley into the next Detroit.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
If you unionize, your employer has far less rights regarding workmanship and professionalism than if he can simply fire someone who displays neither. He also has fewer options come hiring time.
By all means, lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper, rather than the actual ability. In my experience the people who want the former, are the people who lack the latter.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Is that one of its first tasks will be to lobby for a law requiring that membership in it become mandatory for anybody practicing in the field. No thank you.
Unions are broken for very similar reasons. Basically, any large organization that claims to 'represent' you actually represents itself and only has your interests as a peripheral matter because appearing to cater to them is how it gets political power.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I don't like political parties. I don't unions. I don't think either organization should have a long life span. They should create, fight for a cause and then disband. Standing unions I think become evil, like many large organizations.
Unions or bar associations would become money sucking parasites on the backs of the workers, as if the workers didn't have enough problems. Having said that, uniting against clueless management seems like a good idea, just don't call it a union, and don't charge dues.
Think Deeply.
...or comp time sounds like it's time to change jobs, not unionize. Unions correct for errors in the free market, and are not effective in situations where the market already has checks and balances in place. And in any case, there are few companies with large enough IT workforces to make unionizing a viable idea.
I think what you need to look at is the fact that IT jobs are becoming a blue collar skill. Just about anyone with a computer can pick up enough training to do the majority of desktop and server support work that the market demands. On-Site support for mission critical machines are increasingly being moved to co-location centers who have highly trained staff available. What this means is that there is an overabundance of workers in the field, thus decreasing the value of the service.
If you want to get more respect in the IT field, I recommend that you move to large data center work rather than desktop or small server support. Another idea is to develop industry-standard certification programs (not MSCE) that show qualifications for work in sophisticated environments, thus further helping differentiate desktop support from high-end IT support. These certifications would work a bit like the Engineering or Electrician certifications that differentiate true professionals from the trade-school material entering the field.
That being said, let me turn this thing on its head. Has anyone thought of addressing the reasons behind why you work 60 hour work weeks? Is it truly because the field demands it or is it because your environment needs improvement? Whether it be greater automation, additional help, or better procedures, you need to be making an effort to help reshape your environment so that you can accomplish your job more effectively. Not only will it help reduce the hours you work each week, but shaping your environment displays the true mark of a professional.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Isn't this really what is comes to? You're just paying money out of your check for someone else to tell you what to do.
I already give money to one protection racket: the government. Why should I give money to another, run eventually by the mafia?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I'm going to take a purely myopic, personal stance on this. I got into IT because I was interested in technology. I have seen more burnout and sacrifices by coworkers in this industry than any other. I have seen people responding to Blackberry messages at 2 AM (when they work 9 to 5), spend their days freezing their bodies slowly in server rooms and watched IT managers lose their hair trying to explain that "technology" doesn't mean "magic all the time" to executives.
I always thought there were worse occupations out there. Surely the garbage man or coal miner has a less satisfying/harder job than me. However, at the end of the shift, these guys go home. The garbage man doesn't need to pick up heavy cans in his living room. The coal miner doesn't need to chip away at the walls in his bedroom. In no other industry is the disconnect between work and life non-existent like in IT. Hell, even doctors have calling services.
The joy of learning new things was quickly squashed by the nature of this industry. Even when I'm programming or building new hardware, I'm connected to the responsibility of maintaining 24/7 systems on a 24/7 schedule.
I know some are saying "You don't need to have a job like this. There are other jobs in the IT industry that don't demand this kind of schedule." Bullshit. We brought this unto ourselves. We were the ones arguing for telecommuting. We were the proponents of portable tech. And now we have to "eat the dog food". We sold people on it, we have to bow to it ourselves.
I was thinking about this the other day. I'm almost 30. The internet came about in my generation. IT has been going on much longer. How was it done before "always-on", "always-connected"? Surely it was less efficient. And yet, you hear about IT people from that time staying in their jobs for decades, loving what they do, etc. Nowadays you're surprised to see someone stick around 3 years in a "permanent" job.
What did we do to our industry? How bad have we fucked it up? Can we change it by unionizing? I'll do anything at this point.
Let me fix that -
1) Unionize and loose your job to outsourcing or contractors in a few years
2) Continue to be abused, until you work with your employer to fix the situation, or quit and go work somewhere else
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
"By all means, lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper, rather than the actual ability. In my experience the people who want the former, are the people who lack the latter."
So what are you saying? That people with the ability couldn't get the piece of paper?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
All those posting here believe that they are of above average quality and that their job is not going to go away merely because they are so damn important. The only people who would lose their jobs are those incompetent anyway.
... just too inconvenient to consider ... so no unions or trade association. Only *losers* would need those things after all
The fact that they have no bargaining power or that their skills are irrelevant when it comes to cutbacks
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I cannot think of a single thing that would make employers and customers abandon US IT more than if we unionized. We'd be signing our own death warrants. It's _already_ incredibly easy to fire up e-lance, and grab a Romanian and Indian developer, even if there are the quality and language issues. If we unionize, we'll only increase their incentive to do so by burdening them with all of the baggage that comes along with having unionized employees.
Unions rely on the ability to have a monopoly on labor (and violence, and backing from the government for their violence, but those aren't relevant to my point). With manufacturing jobs, where the physical presence of the employee is a requirement, their hold over an industry is far greater than it would be over IT services, since it's very very easy to utilize non-local labor that doesn't care about the fact that there's a union that went on strike.
Furthermore, I think that it'd be a straight up financially bad idea for almost everyone. In addition to making the barriers to entry for new developers and IT professionals higher, we'd all suffer in terms of the actual money we take home. Union contracts base pay around seniority, not productivity. In fact, most unions violently oppose productivity-based pay scales. That'd remove a lot of the incentive for new, young developers who are just _better_ than their older co-workers to excel at their jobs. They'd be locked into their pay level. It'd also make it MUCH harder to fire shitty employees.
I also reject the concept that there CAN be a single IT voice to represent us all. We're a fairly diverse group of people, from all backgrounds and with all goals in life. The incentives of, say, a sysadmin working for a NOC are not the same as a web developer working for a small business. They have different sets of priorities, both of which are completely valid to their particular situation. Say, for example, that the NOC guy is a little older, has some kids, and wants benefits, while the young kid doesn't care, and just wants as fat of a paycheck as he can get. How do you resolve those competing, equally valid desires? As it stands now, we negotiate our own contracts according to our desires. With unions, we'd be locked into the choices made by other people.
Another problem with unions, highlighted by this article, is that they're often ideological tools of the leadership. I don't have a problem with H1-B visas (except that I think they're too restrictive) or offshoring. I think both things are awesome. It's the market at work, and forces us all to be competitive at SOME level, whether that be on quality or price or reliability or whatever. Competing against a guy in India or a new Chinese H1-B immigrant is no different than competing against a college kid. The idea that we need political protection from that is absurd.
We also shouldn't ignore the negative impact that unionization of IT would have on the economy. You want to see the long-term effects of unionization? Take a look at the auto industry. Completely saddled with legacy labor costs imposed by union contracts, they're in many cases simply unable to compete on price. Unions are little more than mechanisms for imposing arbitrary minimums and caps on the costs of doing business, which decreases the flexibility of businesses when responding to changing market conditions. The only reason that Japanese automakers hire anyone over here is because we force them to by law.
There's nothing that a union can give you that you can't achieve for yourself by paying attention to your contract. Do you want a guarantee that you'll never be asked to work more than 40 hours in a week? Put it in your contract. Do you want cash instead of benefits? Put it in your contract. Do you want to get paid better? Don't work for less. You make the choices that you want to make, and don't impose them on the rest of us. We'll do likewise, and we'll all be happier.
Ignorant you may be, but you hit the nail on the head.
Unions don't make any industry more efficient, and that loss of efficiency can mean the difference between a successful company and an unsuccessful company. If the work can be done more efficiently by non-union employees, it will be, and IT work is very portable...You can't do the old Union trick of changing the laws in a geographic area when someone across the world could be doing your job remotely.
It comes down to market issues. If you're top notch at what you do, and there is demand for that skill, you'll have work. If your skills are dated, if you're not qualified, you could have problems. Lot of people jumped into the industry in the 90's with extremely limited skillsets. If you can't roll with the changes, you're going to get pushed out.
The industry is really volatile right now, and that makes people crave the sort of stability that Unions seem to provide, but there is a difference between stability and stagnation.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Yes. It is the corporate DNA to pay workers as little as the can get away with and produce as much work from workers as possible. That's just the nature of capitalism. By joining a union, workers can push back against being treated as nothing more than a disposable tool.
Are unions perfect? Of course not. But neither is anything institution run by mortals. But like anything, you have to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages.
There's no question unions have brought more balance to laissez faire capitalism. Unfortunately, they have become victims of their own success. Health care, vacation pay, pensions, 40 hour work weeks, overttime, health and safet regs, etc. All of these were the result of workers pooling their money and getting themselves political muscle. Believe me, it wasn't given to them. Ask you grandfather or great grandfather who got his head cracked open with a club for participating in a strike.
Unfortunately, it's in most people's nature to be sheep and be complacent to try to protect what they have. Why risk your job by going against the company's wishes to remain union free. It won't be until workers really feel the sting of boots on their necks grinding them into the pavement will workers actually get pissed off enough to fight back.
So, look for your hours to get even longer, your paychecks to shrink even more, and lose more benefits before unions can become a reality.
But ff they were smart, and could learn to stick together (get over that rugged individualism bullshit they like to believe), techs could do a lot for themselves here and now.
I should know. I'm a union guy working in the tech industry.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Given that the whole point of a union is to create a monopoly on one form of labour, I'd have to say the idea is laughable.
I think most slashdotters agree that monopolies=bad, and in a field as fluid and as locationally independent as IT, I'd add that monopoly of labour = impossible, as well. This isn't coal mining or manufacturing, where it might be feasible to completely control the labour supply in a city.
As a provider of IT services, I'm quite content to sell my services to the highest bidder, and I've had no problems funding a comfortable lifestyle doing so.
As a consumer of IT services, I glad when I have the freedom to choose the best individual or company for the services I want. It's bad enough when there's only a single provider of, say, operating systems or cable internet available. Restricting the supply of labour further would not improve things.
But our parents and grandparents had jobs back then. Now that all factory workers are unionized, they're kids and grandkids out of a jobs because the factory moved to places less expensive and less complainy.
If you're abused at your job, go and find another one. This can be done in any field. If you see that your field is always being abused, go to another field. There is no shortage of jobs in the US. I drive around times and it seems like everybody is hiring from small stores that anyone can do, forklift operators at big box stores, drivers for all types of vehicles, cashiers, desk and management jobs and even medical and IT. People are afraid of change and seem to want to hang around in an "abusive" environment too long and then they complain. I'm a young IT guy without any type of meaningful degree and I haven't been out of a job for more than 30 days. Sure, sometimes I have to move to a better place but I'm open to do that.
If our grandparents and parents would've walked out of their factory where they were "abused", management would've changed it after the first 10 left because without workers, there is no product. Those 10 would be either out of a job for a while but eventually they would get into another job. I know my grandfather did it, he refused to get unionized instead he stood up to management, took his experience elsewhere and earned a good penny being a foreman in a chemical factory until he retired.
I see the problem where I currently work too much. The facility people are unionized which makes it that they can't get fired. But our offices are never clean and nobody can help it, everything is leaking and we're out of heat or airconditioning at least twice a month. And they're definitely not short-staffed, they consist of about 10-15% of the workforce. On the other hand, they have recently reduced part of that workforce because it's apparently cheaper to get a contractor to renovate an office for $120,000 than let the paid-for facilities people screw it up (they renovated that same office 3 times and every time something was wrong).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Unionization is very important in broken markets. If there is one steel mill in town, and it's the only big employer, it can be exploitive. IT jobs are so liquid that an uncompetitive employer will not retain any staff. IT is not a broken market, as there is a lot of competition from both sides. Unions would just introduce more complexity and middlemen.
Most of what you said is spot on, but something about your comment is bugging me.
You're one of those managers that looks for a CS degree when you're hiring admin and support staff, aren't you? I don't know why, but many managers can't seem to figure out what the differences between an IT worker, a programmer, and a Computer Scientist are. And they are three *very* distinct things.
When all those people were getting CS degrees, they didn't learn how to fix your computer. They didn't learn how to set up your servers. They didn't learn how to manage your datacenter. They may have picked up a little of that along the way, because they need to use servers, computers, and datacenters as tools. But what they learned was math, and probably a little programming. If you need to scope a project, or design an application, a Computer Scientist is for you. If you want to build a website, you probably want IT workers and programmers. Not Computer Scientists.
If you refuse to hire people for IT type positions unless they have a CS degree (which is a ridiculously common practice these days), you're limiting yourself to a very small pool of people who learned the math, but also have IT skills, and are willing to use them professionally. You also bumped your costs way up, because you're hiring overqualified people in to a commodity position. Meanwhile there are plenty of people out there in the labor pool who are as good or better at the tasks you need done, have been trained speciffically for those tasks, and they won't cost you as much because you're not paying for their degree.
Also, let's not forget that Unions helped bring about the 40 hour workweek, overtime, and other such. They help even non-members when they have enough push to get labor-friendly legislation passed.
And yes, unions exert pressure (or harm, if you prefer) on businesses WHEN THEY'RE ON STRIKE. That's the effing point. Striking is a response to management harming the workers through failing to provide a decent work environment. If a business is "hurt" by a demand for a living wage, well, it deserves the pain.
Certainly it's possible to go overboard the other way, and destroy the ability of businesses to function... in theory. In PRACTICE, right now, businesses have more rights and power than the citizenry, and it's catastrophically not good.
No. I like working longer hours some days and spending the odd afternoon at the pool. I like having a non-adversarial relationship with management and playing foosball with my boss. I like being free to negotiate my OWN salary. I like participating in an industry where free thought reigns, not a mob mentality.
It's the union members who are sheep and do whatever the union tells them to do.
Unions don't care about the people they care about keeping the Union strong.
1. They will agree to Layoff 100 High Paid and skilled programmers to hire 500 low paid and low skilled programmers. (as more people and more union dues and strong union)
2. They work on averages. On average Union employees do get paid more then non-union. However the trimming of pay cuts both ends of the bell curve. That includes getting paid more for a better job.
3. Less American Jobs. What Unions are suppose to try to keep American jobs? Yes but companies are smarter then that. Oh gee it looks like we are going forced to unionize... That is going to be a big overhead. Lets outsource now before the Union formalizes. Even if it does and a company can have enough infrastructure outsourced they can survive and thrive on the outsourced employees, or foreign devisions of their company as they strike for as long as they wont until they starve, give up, or get a new job.
4. Loss political power. You are Unioned and you are aligned with the Democrats. That means the Democrats don't need to worry about pleasing you as you will help them anyways as they focus on swing voters. And Republicans will see you as a hopeless cause and ignore you. Besides your voice will have to go threw extra layers of beurocrasy just to get your personal voice heard.
5. All Management hands are tied. Even the good ones. So they cant fire the bad employees and promote the good ones.
6. An other layer to please. You are no longer allowed to take the torch and get it done. As if you do too good of a job you make the poor employees feel bad and then you need to explain yourself to the union.
7. Unable to get outside help. Gasp hiring a consultant or someone else to help brings up the question what can this scab do that a Unioned employee can't. Heck for some jobs you need temporary people to do some work and then let them go when they are done. Hiring for Max productivity is stupid.
I will give them credit for many things they have done. But for many jobs they have outdone their usefulness. IT is too of a diverse area to Unionize.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Bingo.
One reason we moan about lawyers is the artificially protected fees. For simple filings the level of knowledge "should cost" some $50 an hour tops, and small cases could escape under a grand.
Then Orgs. like the RIAA reverse-leverage this fact to pull their copyright stunts.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I consider myself an IT professional, and I got my degree in Japanese Literature.
Awesome. I too consider myself an IT professional, and have a degree in Philosophy. I thought this was rare until last week... had interviews for 2 seperate positions where I met 2 Philosophy grads working in IT. I, for one, think Computer Science grads should stick to the Science (or development or the CIO, CTO, or Chief Archetecture slots) and leave the 'practice' of computers to the experts. They are devaluing their expensive education and helping to drive our salaries down. Do lawyers work as paralegals? Do sugeons take jobs as nurses? Get out of my field, you stupid geniuses!
The Admin and the Engineer
> Unions don't make any industry more efficient, and that loss of efficiency can mean the difference between a successful company and an unsuccessful company.
Gonna burn some karma here...
In fairness, efficiency is not the goal of unions. The theory is that the collective bargaining means the workers can get a better deal for themselves, because they're in a stronger negotiating position as a group than any of them is individually. Of course the company will be less efficient.
Protecting people is always inefficient. The leading example in this topic was about electrical codes, and I think it was interesting that the virtue of electrical codes was assumed in that discussion right alongside the demonization of unions.
But if we really value efficiency, shouldn't we dispense with electrical codes? Real electrical experts will use their knowledge to wire things safely, and people who do dangerous work will be weeded out by their bad reputation, and everything will work better and cost less, right?
Enforcing electrical codes compromises efficiency in the name of safety, so people's lives are protected.
Collective bargaining asks for a similar trade-off, compromising efficiency in order to better protect worker's livelihoods and worker investments in their careers.
That isn't to say that an IT union is necessarily a good idea or a bad idea. I'm just trying to get across the radical idea that "it reduces efficiency", concentrating on the cost and ignoring the benefit, isn't a compelling, or even sufficient, argument.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
If you want to make real change and not remain insignificant, you need to be HEAD of a group that has influence. Otherwise, you're just working your tail off making someone else's changes.