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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 people tend to be of the political slant where "Unions = Bad". (Which they are.)
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.
I used to do coding as an intern in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and from that vantage point the union was an incredibly interesting monster. The Union and Management constantly had an adversarial "us versus them" attitude that caused very little to get accomplished on both sides. To management the union was a bunch of lazy greedy bastards, and to the union management was a bunch of lazy, greedy bastards. This created a very hostile environment and at the end of the day, this hostility costed both sides a lot more than they realized.
However, while traditional unions cause problems, going alone can cause issues to. IT workers really need to be able to sit down as a group with management and come up with a consensus about working conditions, pay etc. However, trying to "unionize" and speak with a single voice is pointless and stupid and will probably only cause management to become even more hostile towards the workers, and lets face it, more apt to just ship the work overseas.
Monstar L
We already have an association: ACM.org -Loren
1) Unionize or 2) Continue to be abused. Its that simple. BTW, our parents and grandparents were smarter, and formed unions.
all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow.
Although I am admittedly ignorant over the whole concept, it didn't really seem to help real blue collared workers from having their jobs outsourced. How will it help us?
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.
No thanks. I'd rather stand on my two feet.
Imag0
The only way this would work is if it was implemented like the way effing lawyers do it.
"No I will not fix your computer for free."
"It's $1000 a hour and the clock starts ticking now."
"No I will not give you free computer advice."
"Oh, and we need to get that retainer agreement signed before we proceed further."
Now if we could figure out a way to make the IT equivalent of ambulance chasers, we'd be on to something. "Did you or any member of your third-cousin twice removed family get the Britney Spears virus? Call the IT offices of James Suck-A-Glove. And we only speak english, dammit."
Trouble is that it's way too late for this. There are too many people willing to prostitute their geekdom for free.
need to become a bit more business savvy. contract workers tend to get tacitly screwed (speaking from experience) in that if management says "we dont do overtime," they tend to hope we believe them.
unpaid overtime for hourly workers is bad in IT, because youre usually on call when a blackberry even when youre not in the office.
or flat out asked to be on call in that "keep your phone on you/near you" sort of way.
blackberry during your off hours=billable hours for each call/page/message you check. no exceptions.
i was burned once by a fortune 500, but never again.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I don't agree with that assertion at all. In my experience, IT people are scattered all over the political spectrum. Sure, the libertarian types tend to yell the loudest, but the libertarian types yell the loudest everywhere.
Personally, I think unions are a good thing for a lot of industries. However, I don't think they're good for IT. Management in many places already see IT as nothing more than an expensive but necessary burden, and putting a union on top of that just makes the perception worse. In places where IT is seen as a vital component to the overall health of the company, techs tend to be treated much better.
The bottom line is that for most positions within IT other than the low-level button pushers, demand and pay are still high. However, it always has been and still remains to a large extent a meritocracy, so all the people who got into the field in the late 90s because they heard it was easy money now find themselves working the grunt jobs at the bottom of the totem pole with no hope of advancement. Unions may give these people opportunity to advance based on seniority alone, but doing so would be bad for the industry as a whole.
The current Indian Government pre-empted such a move by classifying IT as a "Profession", meaning no fixed working hours, no overtime pay, no benefits, but, we do need to pay close to $50 a year as Profession Tax.
Plus major indian IT cos have gone on record stating that long hours are simply "fiction" and each employee works only 8 hours a day: The last time i checked my team was working 14 hours a day.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I understand. You found paradise in America, you had a good ping times, you made a good connections. The firewalls protected you. And you didn't need a friend like me. But uh, now you come to me and you say - 'Give me bandwidth.' But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me System Administrator. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you, uh, ask me to take down some servers for money.
All the above will by deducted from your paychecks. You'll NEVER notice because I will be getting you BIG BUCKS!
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
Can he be our Jimmy Hoffa style chairman?
Depends... How long would we have to wait before we get to make him disappear?
If you're a fan of being "surplussed", sure, it's a great thing.
Article is flamebait.
-10 stupid.
Sent from your iPad.
Not going to happen until IT actually becomes "professional".
When an architect is hired, he designs a building that does what his client wants. That's professional.
When you go to a doctor, there are actual standards of performance and consequences for being wrong. That's professional.
Labeling your toy PHP web site a "work of art"? Thinking you know better than your boss what your job is?
Not so professional.
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
"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."
The only thing they have in common is electricity. Otherwise different fields. Just like a nurse isn't a doctor even though they both have the human body in common.
Back in The Day (early '90s) when I worked as a senior tech manager in a very forward-thinking company, I hired one of that industry's first "webmasters." We had to pay the dude six figures, cuz we had to be ahead of the curve, and we were bargaining that an early net presence would give us an edge. I hired this guy from a very small selection of very expensive candidates, all of whom had a sense they had the right skills at the right time.
That time, of course, has past.
"Web Mastery" skills, and to a lesser extent (but one on the same curve) IT skills have become almost a commodity in the HR market. Every kid with half a brain and PC Hobbyist's enthusiasm grabbed a CS degree at some Uni or another in the late 90's, and now I can walk out on the street corner on Broadway, swing a baseball bat over my head, and hit three of them, any time of the day or night.
Of course, the *good* sys admins are worth their weight in gold, they know it, and most likely their managers know it and take proper care of them. Sort of like good Executive Secretaries, whom I suspect would have as much luck as IT guys unionizing...
Ah, yes-- the siren song of unionization, born out of the early 20th century labor struggles where socialism was still an idyllic future utopia, and factory conditions were truly brutal.
Collective labor bargaining has a brinksmanship game at its very core: give us what we demand or we all quit. The problem is that this brinksmanship is all too easy to call bluff now: globalized workforce, wider literacy, part time contractors, etc. Beyond the obvious changes to the labor pool, the idea that IT work-- one of the most portable sectors in the economy-- could be unionized is laughable.
The AMA and ABA are possible because the inflow of labor is restricted from the beginning: one must graduate Med School or Law School from an accredited university. The AMA and ABA have very strict tests before one gets into these schools, and even harder tests at the end of them before they'll let you in the club. In that way, each association has monopolized the labor force by severely restricting membership. Would such a scheme be possible with IT?
An ITPA (IT Professionals Association) would require specific graduate schools and horrendous tests. The last thing IT needs is an officially ordained priesthood about what is IT and what is not IT. This would restrict the labor pool so tightly that businesses would freak out, the hopeful students would freak out, then the government, and the whole thing would fall apart before it got started.
I consider myself an IT professional, and I got my degree in Japanese Literature.
davejenkins.com |
Unions themselves aren't "bad". They are just bad for all who aren't members.....
Business are hurt by unions because of higher pay demands, strikes, etc.
Other businesses are hurt when they rely on businesses subject to unions (manufacturers impacted by shipping industry unions that are on strike).
Customers are hurt by unions in that higher business costs are then transferred to them in terms of higher prices.
Employees who aren't members are hurt by exclusion of job potential.
The Union members benefit from higher pay, better benefits, etc. For them, Unions are good.
Layne
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.
Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7
So if you don't like this, why didn't you negotiate this when you started? No one forced you to take the job. If you didn't like the requirements, go somewhere else.
Oh wait, we live an a culture of 'someone take care of me'. Don't take responsibility for you own choices, let someone else fix it for you.
<sigh>
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
This has been brought up since the late 90's and shot down for good reason. The other larger unions are the ones who would love to capture the IT 'hands.' But they can't, why? Too much education IMO. Track record of Unions suck. Corruption, etc.
Just because you job is going to be outsourced screaming "This is why we need a union" won't bring your job back. If there is no demand for your chosen profession, move to a location that has demand, or switch professions. And I hate to be harsh, but why the fuck are we so lazy and want to scream Union when our jobs are threatened? It's not the 1950's anymore. You adapt or you no longer work.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
"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"
Are we talking about sysadmins, application developers, support staff, programmers, testers, system analysts, etc.?
That's because it's only a specific selection of writers. It's not like there's a union for all writers (fiction authors, non-fiction authors, columnists, manual authors, speech writers, journalists, etc.).
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.
Unions do nothing but destroy. They are run by people who know nothing about businesses but insist on 'having a say'. Here in England, unions were responsible for destroying both the coal mining industry and the ship building industry (a lot of people will tell you it was the government but they lie; unions created rules wherein it was impossible for management to function then they blamed management when it all went tits up).
IT workers are, supposedly, more intelligent and do not need to be told what to think and how to vote.
Stay away from unions.
such as H-1B visa limits or tax incentives to keep IT jobs onshore.
Oh its a protectionist thing. The Bar and the AMA are because its a regulated industry with agree entry criteria. As long as you are happy for IT to be subject to the same criteria (hint of the day, more people in India probably have pure IT degrees as a percentage than people in the US) then that is great. If what you mean is some type of Union negotiation on wages then no thank-you I'd like to have my salary dictated by my abilities and ability to negotiate rather than via a Union group bargining.
What this reads as is "we want to be a like the Bar, but without the qualification requirements and we want to act like a Union for waiters in the way we negotiate".
The IEEE would be a good avenue, or the ACM. Unless you really do want the professional qualification bar at which point I'm all in for it and lets compete on a global basis for the best talent and let the less talented become the IT equivalents of Legal Clerks with their salary negotiating Union.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...just don't come crying to me when the union--after having gladly taken your money every two weeks in return for getting you a paltry night shift differential--tells you to fuck off when you ask about job placement options after the company lays off 60% of its workforce in an effort to bolster failing stock prices.
Hi, Lucent and Communications Workers of America! Not that I'm naming names or anything. At least, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention Carly Fiorina in there anywhere.
An organization that gives "a single voice for speaking out on issues that affects everyone"?
Uh, what?
The ABA does play many important roles in the practice of law, but it is hardly the only body to which lawyers belong, and a great many attorneys are recoiling away from the ABA based on its continuing politicization of virtually everything it touches - everything from who law schools must admit to what recruiters should have open access to law students, etc.
If you're looking for an example, the ABA is probably not the best one.
The only way workers can have any bargaining power is if they organize. Particularly when management sees employees as "fungible" where it doesn't matter if the work is done here or in Bangalore, unionization is the only way to protect workers. This is especially true for IT and support departments where techs are expected to provide 24x7 support for bargain basement wages, limited time off and laughable job security. Engineering jobs probably aren't there yet (for needing a union), but in a lot of places it's getting close.
The UK has some very strong employee rights - but I would still recommend that anyone join a union.
I'm a member of Connect which is a specialist union for professionals in the Telecoms sector.
The way I look at it is like this: my employer has several floors of lawyers - how many do I have? I hope never to have to fight my employer for my rights (sick leave, working time directive, disciplinary etc) but if I do - I want a team of lawyers on my side.
I realise that the situation in the USA is different - the corruption and ties to organised crime that you see doesn't seem to have affected unions over here.
It's important to draw a distinction between "You can't do that - it's not your job" unions and "You can't do that to me - it's illegal" unions. The former are usually found with low-paying, blue collar works who have a vested interest in protecting their job at the expense of all else - including the company. The latter are usually composed of professional members who own shares in their employer and who want reassurance that should the worst happen, they're legally protected.
I view my union dues (less than £10 per month) on the same level as life assurance, building insurance etc. I don't want to pay them - but I realise it's probably a good idea. In fact, as well as all the legal help, my union also provide me with sickness and death benefit as well as good deals on general insurance etc.
Basically, if you think your employer is perfect and would never shit on you from a great height - don't join a union. If you live in the real world - sign up.
T
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
In Italy, some IT workers are unionized.
Also, there is a logical split between workers who "manage their own time" like programmers and some network administrators, and those who are told what to do such as some lower-level help desk technicians.
The latter are much better candidates for unionization.
As a general rule of thumb, the more you get paid before the union comes to town, the less you need a union, everything else being equal.
I do like the idea of professional associations, as long as they don't do like the bar association or even barbers do and bar entry to those without specific training or other "you must do this to get a job in the field" criteria. Unless public safety or breach of public trust is an issue, there's no reason for that kind of thing: Let employers hire who they will, and let independent consultants fight for clients in the open market.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've seen the way unions run in a scienc-ey type background. My gf is an immunohemotologist for a large non-profit organization. She's a lab scientist that tests blood for matches with specialized requests from hospitals.
Because the blood bank uses a manufacturing component to bag the blood and ship it to area hospitals, the lab workers are forced to be unionized. She can't earn a larger raise for doing better work than her peers because the union sets the pay increases during negotiation. She is the last in line for a day shift position since she was the last to join 2 years ago. Senior people have transferred departments at will, opening a day shift position up, yet she's unable to apply for the position since it's pretty much held open until the person who left decides to come back (which they usually do). That leaves them both short staffed on the day shift as well as relatively disgruntled on the second and evening shifts.
Pay is based on years in the union, not on merit. Vacation is not negotiable. Promotions grant increased responsibility without pay jumping along for the ride. Incompetent people within the lab are still continuing on just fine since the non-profit can't fire them. Union dues are about $60 a month, plus the union actively endorses (and this is a personal gripe, I know) political candidates that are the polar opposite of our personal politics.
Long ago unionizing helped workers and looked out for their best interests. I don't think it would be a fit at all for our industry.
The thing about unions is that they require basically 100% participation in order to function. The monopoly on labor is where a union's power comes from; without it, companies can simply look elsewhere for employees.
In the past, this has not been so much of a problem, because most jobs have required the worker to be physically present at the work site. This makes the process of maintaining a monopoly much easier, because you only have to focus on one region. The employer can't feasibly move elsewhere, and so if you have a lock on the region then you have a lock on the employer.
The problem with unionizing IT is that you can't do this. IT jobs, by their nature, no longer require the worker to be present at the work site, and in fact much IT effort has gone into making this a reality. This effectively expands "the region" out to the whole world, and so you would need a worldwide union that all IT workers are required to join. This is not going to happen; not now, not in the near-term future, and likely not ever.
None of this is to say that IT workers don't need better working conditions. We clearly do. But the nature of our field makes the union approach impractical: those who fear outsourcing are correct in that. What we need to do is find another way.
What's the answer? I don't know. But we need something that works for us, and something that requires a monopoly we can't obtain is not it.
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.
...all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union[?]
You can do the latter if you desire to hasten the former.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/01/23/ibm_techies_get_pay_cut_overtime/
No thanks.
Even though I occasionally work long hours, I enjoy the flex time I'm granted. I like being well paid based on the merits of my work and not the union pay scale.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
I'm in IT and in the public sector represented by the CWA. The pay is crap but I work 5 days a week seven hours a day (plus an hour lunch) and get paid OT or time and a half back for extra work hours. I make more than enough to live.
a teenager could be more knowledgable and do a better job at a certain technology than a guy in his 30s
meanwhile, if you are talking acting, or steelworking, fields that are unionized, your set of methods is pretty standard and unchanging
what this means is that barriers to entry can be established, means to control who gets in and out of the workforce, seniority can take hold, and unionization becomes effective
unionization is not effective when who you are hiring for what is still such a fluid skillset in IT work. today's buzzword technology is tomorrow's joke
comparisons to associations such as in law or medicine are not applicable either, because again, these fields are ossified into pretty rigid standardizations of education and certification
no one is going to lecture the guy on intellectual property law who works in the field, and certainly not a nonlawyer. but a teenager could very much lecture a thirty year old on the properties and methods of a new toolset library
therefore, without any rigid system of seniority, unionization is frutless
which is kind fo good i guess. IT, at least until (if ever) its technology skillset hardens, is a pure meritocracy. and that will be reflected in payscale as well, so there is no need to unionize, just get very good very quick at the next big thing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
You only have to make yourself responsible of your work, as its done in every other career. I don't see medics, architects or civil engeeners working with highly mutable specifications, changing departament every two weeks or excusing a bug because "it's impossible to make a program bug-free". And they are respected and suffer near zero intrusion in their work (until something goes terrible wrong, of course)
Until somebody took responsabilities for an IT work, bussineses will not have any reason to not outsourcing or hire just-left-college guys to get the work done. It's simply cheaper and they get the same chances that nobody will make responsible of failures.
PS: obviously there are experienced workers that could make a difference in a project, but they are highly outnumbered by those who couldn't, and unions only give advantages for the later ones.
The only way you can be taken advantage of, is if you allow it. Keep your skills current and your resume brushed up and put the crap behind you. Just sure you you identify the reason you are leaving so the industry as a whole wises up.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
Personally, I believe that *trade* unions, as such, are often misunderstood and trash-talked in the U.S. Everyone seems to have a story about the "lazy cousin/uncle" they knew that collected a fat check every month for doing nothing because of a "big bad union"; And they use that anecdote to justify their idea that unions should be abolished - conveninetly forgetting that were it not for other Americans that literally gave their lives for the right to organize as workers - *they* would have started working in a sweat shop at the age of 9, probably not had the opportunity to go attend college, and been subjected to dangerous and long hours to eek out a living in abject poverty.
I want to make it abundantly clear that I am not a member of that intelectually myopic camp. That being said, however, I don't believe that the model of the trade union really fits I.T. that well. I think we would be better served by a professional organization...let's call it a *skill* union; It would primarily exist so that I.T. workers could share information about employers...We would be so much more respected if employers knew that when they pulled the "We're going to replace you with offshoring" crap that others in the I.T. field would learn about it - that they would not be able to do this with impunity with regards to the opinions of other I.T. professionals without whom their operations would ground to a halt.
Unions aren't a good idea any more. When they first started up, employee's had very few rights. Now the rights unions fought for are enshrined in law.
A union won't save your job, and to be frank, if you're job is at a high risk of being outsourced, or management is being retarded then you need to get a new job, because just as you have the 'right' to walk out in protest, an employee has the right to save their business by dropping you as an employee for any reason and going elsewhere.
Unfair dismissal doesn't work if you put their business at risk by striking, even if you have a union telling you to do it, not any more.
There is also the fact that employers need not employ anyone who is in a union. Join/form one if you like, but after the first time you 'punish' a company, I'd bet actual English pounds that none of your members will work in the IT industry again.
I was a member of a union when I was a teenager. The damn thing nearly fucked me by saying we had to go on strike. I didn't want to, I had rent and a bike to pay for, and the last thing I needed was no pay for a week, or even a few days.
Luckily the strike was averted because the management pretty much said 'sure, go ahead and leave, but you won't get the pay rise anyway, and you put your jobs at risk if the factory closes for long'. Seemed fair to me.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
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.
I'm a white, Republican American and I'm in favor of H1-B immigration as it raises the overall American experience.
My experience with unions is that they culturally favor the least capable workers at the expense of the most... unions are about, people who "put in the most time" are the ones that should get the most pay... even when they are honestly run, and I think they aren't. I just unions as a stupid and useless voice for collective action in IT and we are being babies.
You know, those of us who complain about working conditions need to take a look at those around us who don't sit in an air conditioned office and type stuff into a box. Go walk into a car plant or a coal mine, and you'll see what jobs do suck.
We're spoiled, and we're lazy, and that's why people are finding people that can do our jobs cheaper than we can, and our jobs are -easy-, which is why everyone in the world with half a brain wants one.
This is my sig.
Unions are good for industries where workers are easily interchangeable -- assembly-line stuff, for example. In order to protect employees from being treated like interchangeable parts, you need some level of collective ability.
Not so great for jobs that require a high degree of independent, creative thought, tend to have projects that go into crunch time, and have advanced skill sets. I'm not against unions in principle; in the employer-employee relationship, employers invariably have significantly more power, and there's no reason why employees shouldn't be able to come up with ways to tip the balance in their favor (or at least, less in the employer's favor). But American-style unionization isn't always the way to go, and I believe especially not for IT workers.
In fact, especially at my company I'd be against tech unionization. I make really good money and rarely have to deal with significant overtime or crunch time. My company (a giant media conglomerate) is very good to its employees. None of the issues I have with the company would be even remotely addressed by unionization.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Ah the union parasites are at it again, trying to latch on to a new industry because they've sucked the existing ones dry.
This question has already been posted on Slashdot and already answered a resounding no.
It's a shame unions have preyed on our poor for over a century; IT is too educated and informed to fall for the union bullshit.
lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper
HR Departments do that just fine without needing a union.
My personal view of unions is that too often they cease to be a "voice" for the employers and just suck up money for the political ambitions of the "boss".
I suspect that the "techie" solution to this is to pass around a hat and hire a lawyer when it comes time to renegotiate a contract, rather than trying to create and fund an entire perpetual organization that is only needed once in a while.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Well, in most states, you don't need a union to deal with that. You need a state AG who doesn't have his head up his ass when it comes to enforcing work laws.
Of course you might live in a "right to work" state, a term that has darkly ironic undertones.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Thus, unions are bad for everyone, by your good logic. (Especially since no one is a member of every union...)
Unions mean that lazy senior waste of payroll is never going to get fired.
Unions mean that there's one more reason to outsource your technical staff.
"IT" workers are already paid higher than average, and enjoy many peculiarities of their industry that are missing from unionized jobs.
Sure, some members of an IT union would benefit from it. Many of the wouldn't.
All this kind of stuff has been observed by me with my father who was a loyal union man his entire career.
What happened to him? He was forced to retire early because the people above him either just didn't like him for some reason or were indifferent to the fact that others didn't care for him and were consistently fucking him out of decent positions, and couldn't get another position in a reasonable amount of time before various major bills came due. Now he gets to sit and anticipate how much his benefits get slashed every year. It's almost to the point that he may as well have worked at a job with NO retirement benefits now. And I get my grandfather, who was also a union man trying to rationalize my father's treatment because "he" was treated OK.
So you know what I have to say to "should IT unionize"?
FUCK THAT NOISE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Shrug. Usually if you have the ability, you can get the paper. But what if you don't already have the paper?
I used to work for a guy, wholly self-educated, who was one of the best IT guys I've ever seen. He lived and breathed it, spent all his free time doing more IT work, just because he loved it that much. When some of the big Universities started putting classes out in podcast form, he'd walk around listening to university lectures on his iPod, just totally stoked about it.
I have more than 7 years of formal education, and I'm not even half as good as this guy who got his GED at 16, and went straight to work. Means nothing today, because if we were competing for the same job he'd crush me for any position where they actually talked to him.
But if it depended only on the paper? He'd never have a chance.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I have been an employee in several unionized shops and have to say; that is isn't the end of an industry like a lot of posters have said. Granted, the unions (Cal School Employees Association; San Bernardino Public Employees Association), are not as overarching as lets say what most people are familar with in the Transport/Manufacturing settings.
In my experience while the union was beneficial in negotiating contracts; etc... the real benefit was having a vocal, accessible body when the entity (in this case; a school or county) was in clear violation of the labor contract or Fair Hiring Processes. The union also had the benefit of ensuring we got OT for work done after hours; which because we were "more expensive" managers set more realistic deadlines and expectations, because they did not want us working more than 40 hours. In essense we worked OT when something critical was down; but not to try to get something to market faster.
Secondly, the union helped establish a system where employees were not constantly worried that one slip up would end up being on their asses. It's bound to happen that someone is accidentally going to stop a service or have a Patch Tuesday go poorly; so it is really nice to know that the PHB can toss you out without a history of negligence.
Not only that but for the most part, hiring was a fair practice (to greater or lesser extents) and IT positions tended to have minimal education/training standards; but required a practical and/or written and oral examination, followed by a 6-9 month probationary/training period to verify you had the ability to do your job. This is wonderful for the self-trained or uncertified employees (e.g. me, who thinks most vendor certifications are a joke) who can demonstrate job worthiness rather than lose out de facto to the applicant with an MS CIS who has no experience to speak of. Thats why I would argue for a union; rather than a trade organization or going it alone. For me; the union was never as powerful as I thought it should be, and some shadyness did still go on, but in the end, they did a lot more good than bad for the IT department; and gov't officials as it did bad.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
- all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow -
What part of that fragment in the very /. tease do these Pro Union idiots miss? Listen up maggots, a 'union' in the modern sense of the word is nothing more and nothing less than a government granted monopoly designed to reduce the supply of labor (barriers to entry) and thus increase demand. Didn't work out for Detroit where the cost of moving production overseas simply killed the US automakers in favor of foreign ones and it really won't work out in an industry that is ALREADY offshoring as many functions as possible. The monopoly simply doesn't hold unless it either applys worldwide or we cut the US out of the Internet.
And even if it did a Union[1] is a horrible thing. Name ONE that has been a net positive for it's members let along for society at large. They extort more pay for it's members but look at the total COST and put it into a cost/benefit calculation. The loss of dignity where individuals become smashed into interchangable cogs, the endless strikes, the organized crime and Democrats (but I repeat myself) that always attach themselves to unions. And there is the eventual destruction of the industry to consider. Even in industries where the work done by a union isn't totally replacable, by grossly increasing the cost of labor it pushes for new tech that reduces the need. Teh only growth area for organized labor today is in an area they shouldn't even be permitted, government workers; and if the reasons for that needs explaining to you well.... you are probably waiting for absentee voting to begin so you can be one of the first to vote for Obama.
[1] Note I'm still referring to the modern government monopoly unions. The origional trade union movement was a reaction to a totally out of control situation in labor/management relations that did need correction. But like most moral crusades it kept going long after it succeeded and itself became the enemy of labor it was supposed to be fighting.
Democrat delenda est
I'm deathly afraid that I'll be carrying a Blackberry, being on call, and working 60 hour weeks without compensation when I graduate.
During my first internship I'd occasionally ask my coworkers how their weekend went. Often they'd say that they either spent Saturday or Sunday at work. I thought they were crazy. And then I started being pressured to work past my 9 to 5 schedule. I'd get chewed out because I left a problem unresolved when I went home at 5. I'd be the only person in the office that left after 8 hours of work. I never worked weekends. And yet my coworkers were always talking about how much they believed in this project. They believed in it so much that they were willing to do all this overtime. I was the pariah because I wanted to do something besides work!
Is this really my fate when I get to the workplace?
H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US. Unfortunately, as they stand, H1B's are a lucrative source of cheaper labor.
One simple change. Allow employers to hire H1B's but they must pay 10% over prevailing US wages.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
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. N
We stayed at the office late. I used to stay at work until 1 in the morning in my twenties and leave just in time to catch last call at the pub and go home. Now I just do it from home. It's easier.
Part of the culture comes from the belief that in the 1980s we were not working hard enough to compete with the rest of the world. We talk about working 60 hours a week in the USA but in some parts of the world they are working all the time and they are pulling ahead of us. So people in IT, sensing the wealth and opportunity, sorta got it into their culture that Americans need to work that much too, and I think where the disconnect is, is that, we pulled out to such an early tech lead world wide that we thought we'd actually not have to work as much or could let up in the pace and slow down to smell the roses, but that is not the case.
It's pretty simple actually. Who do you get to cut your lawn? The guy that cuts the lawn and leaves, or the guy that cuts the lawn, bags the mulch and does the leaves and trims? You opt for the latter. Look at how many Obama stickers are on the backs of Toyotas... even globalisms self appointed victims are just as much as perps as the corporations they hate.
The thing is, you aren't going to be able to tell the rest of the world not to work 60 hours a week. They are going to do it because IT is a pretty cushy job and it beats the heck out of waiting for a monsoon in India. They want the work and they are going to offer their services aggressively and we have to compete for the work that is out there, both in their market or in ours. Even if we did, say, ban Indian outsourcing, we would only delay the inevitable destruction of industries that rely on IT, in favor of those countries who do not ban outsourcing - sorta like, how Bush's attempted steel tariffs wound up screwing Detroit.
This is my sig.
I worked for a university where IT was unionized.
Firstly, the IT folk made the same amount of money as the dishwashers in the student kitchen. All part of the same union, so they had the same payscales.
Secondly, *nothing* ever got done. Projects that would have taken 2-3 months at other companies I've worked for have stretched on for *years* at this university. People take monthly sick days because they have better things to do than their jobs. Incompetence runs rampant, and there is nothing management can do about it because of the union.
I once heard an older female coworker say that she was glad unions existed, otherwise her two daughters would never get jobs. Her daughters were 6 and 9 years old. Nice to have confidence in their future abilities.
Unions had a place in history, but today they are outmoded and outdated and have no place in IT. If you're being asked to do unreasonable amounts of work, push back yourself. Worked for me.
I don't agree with that assertion at all. In my experience, IT people are scattered all over the political spectrum. Sure, the libertarian types tend to yell the loudest, but the libertarian types yell the loudest everywhere.
Personally, I think unions are a good thing for a lot of industries. However, I don't think they're good for IT. Management in many places already see IT as nothing more than an expensive but necessary burden, and putting a union on top of that just makes the perception worse. In places where IT is seen as a vital component to the overall health of the company, techs tend to be treated much better.
The bottom line is that for most positions within IT other than the low-level button pushers, demand and pay are still high. However, it always has been and still remains to a large extent a meritocracy, so all the people who got into the field in the late 90s because they heard it was easy money now find themselves working the grunt jobs at the bottom of the totem pole with no hope of advancement. Unions may give these people opportunity to advance based on seniority alone, but doing so would be bad for the industry as a whole.
Personally I prefer to be backed by some sort of Union or professional association which will help me if I get into an argument with my employer. It is all to easy for companies to walk all over employees these days and there is no reason to make it any easier. Having access to legal services to do contract reviews, to exchange nasty letter with the employers legal weasel and even represent you in court is a good thing in my book. Another point is that where I live it is basically each employees business to negotiate his pay. It helps you a lot to get a better deal that the Unions do anonymous surveys of pay levels and publish them to give people an idea of what demands to make. I'm sure Unions have a number of shortcomings but dismissing them as useless like some people do is pretty stupid.
Of course IT should unionize. If you unionize you'd get overtime pay. Most IT people don't even get overtime that they are legally entitled to.
And if we don't like outsourcing we can stop it with strikes. It'll work because they can't stop the company from functioning this year just to save money for next year.
Will IT unionize? Probably not. There are plenty of shrill libertarian types who all think they are headed for upper management. Even on this site, you see tech workers cheering for lay-offs and fewer job opportunities. They usually say absurd things like it's good because they'll only fire people who don't love tech or only untalented people are hurt by a slow economy.
I also think a lot of the problem is IT workers are usually doing very well or very poorly. When they do well money is thrown at them so why unionize? When it's bad, they are just scared of being fired.
And if you happen to be an H1-B you're scared of being sent home. It's not like there's even a pretense companies want to pay them their value.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Oh sure, it worked so well for the American auto industry !
\u262D = \u5350
I welcome you, my new unionized underlords. Personally you won't see me in any union of any sort at least not while I am in IT (and it's my calling, not just a job). But once you are unionized it will make it that much easier for me to get those contracts that are supposed to be your projects that normally permanents staff would do. I'll have my own shop operating from where ever in the world there are no IT unions and I will undercut your prices, be sure of that.
Still want to unionize?
You can't handle the truth.
Everybody go post comments on infoworld's site about this article. You don't need an account to do it.
Let's slashdot it and let them know how geeks feel about IT unions!
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/04/36NF-union-for-tech-workers_1.html
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
Oh for godsake, it a Bel-air.
You mad
Why is this in "The Almighty Buck" category, and tagged as "money"? This is about workers' rights, not just money. If I joined a union it would have nothing to do with my pay, and be everything to do with my pension, insurance, work-life-balance, redundancy, performance review, etc.
IT would be able to bargain for fair treatment, regular hours, and other expectations.
However, one of the primary topics of discussion in unions is seniority, and the seniority scale would almost always need to favor the middle for IT, rather than the experienced or the newbs.
Licensing would kill the industry. CompTIA, Cisco, and Microsoft certifications and their ilk aren't helping, even though, in most cases, they are actually beneficial. I was passed over for a job a few years ago because I lacked HP certification, even though I was outstandingly overqualified in every other aspect (in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't get that job).
A local union might be acceptable and work for some businesses. However, a union on the scale of the AMA, UAW, AFL-CIO, and whatnot would be detrimental to the industry.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Well, if they don't want to fork over a substantial chunk of money on union dues, no, they couldn't get the piece of paper.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Day 1: Really excited by my new development job, even though I have no seniority. Was trained by the person with second-least seniority, who told me my job was to access the bug database and make a graph in powerpoint of "severity x days open."
After about 5 minutes of this, I said You know, I could write a perl program to do this in less time than it would take to do it by hand.
He smiled, and said that's what he thought on the his first day. However, we were programmers and the IT people had the responsibility for the bug database and they were in a different union. Ergo, we weren't allowed to build programmatic interfaces to their tools.
Day 10: I've got building the chart down to taking only six hours a day, and have spent my other 30 minutes (minus union-mandated lunch and coffee breaks) a day looking at the code in read-only mode, trying to familiarize myself with it. Having worked on open-source projects, I knew how to use the SVN web-viewer.
Day 20: I noticed a quite-obvious buffer overflow in the code, and went to the developer who wrote it to point it out. She was quite upset that I had been looking at the code, and filed a union grievance about me exceeding my job responsibilities.
Day 22: Grievance day. The shop steward yelled at me for a while. Afterwards, Management took me aside and told me it was nice to see someone who had some initiative, and they'd see if they could find me something interesting to do...
Day 41: Time to build PPT charts now 7 hours. I had gotten it down to 5, but there have been a rash of bugs and features over the past few weeks.
Day 52: Management tells me there's a small feature they've wanted developed for years, but it never seems to get done. It's completely self-contained and sounds pretty simple. They give me the bug # for the requirements list, and caution that I can only work on it in my spare time, and not generate overtime.
Day 56: I've done a bit of looking into it, and now understand how to do the side project. The problem is, I'm already at 15 minutes of overtime a day because of making those stupid charts. I think I'll work on it at home.
Day 57: Tired at work today, since I stayed up until 3 AM working on the side project.
Day 58: Gave the completed side project to Management, along with all the source code. They thanked me profusely, saying it's nice to see people who can get things done.
Day 59: Called into a meeting with the shop steward and one of the senior developers. Apparently, the task that I did had done was assigned to the senior developer, and Management had given him my source and said "We got something off your plate for you." It turns out the task had been on his plate for a year, and he had never done it. I asked "I know it wasn't my responsibility, but isn't it good to have something off your plate so you don't have to deal with it?" He exploded and said he was saving it because it was a simple task, and if he ever had to raise his productivity to meet a quota, he could have done that.
The shop steward said that it didn't look as if I was going to fit in, and they terminated me on the last day of my probationary period.
I am all for the T.W.A.T. union.
on a more serious note, this is something I've been advocating for years. The real consequences of a tech union could be disastrous for business. I certainly agree that we need one though. We are the workers who are used to being dumped on. I say we unionize. If you think of the real consequences, a strike could shut down the world.
They're using their grammar skills there.
...is scope creep good for a project?
Unions have their tactical time and place (credit where due), but the economy of Michigan is usual the strategic result.
Aside to the wanker with the 'Overrated' mod: your tolerance for ideas not in lockstep with your own is appreciated. Somewhere.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'm not a big fan of unions and, unlike many folk, I speak as someone who is a part of a union and who has attended union meetings. But I do believe that organized labour does have a purpose. Think of it this way: an employee is an individual, while a business is an organization. Because of that, the business has more power over the employee. Very large businesses or businesses in fields where there is little competition will have almost complete control over the employee. Unions are there in order to maintain some semblance of balance.
That being said, unions do very stupid things. There are certain things that unions should not have any input over, such as managerial functions that do not affect the employee; they have a tendency to support ideological causes that should be outside of their mandate; and, in some industries, they have way too much power. But maybe rationalized IT unions can fix those problems. After all, a lot of IT workers seem to be a tad more rational than the average Joe.
...the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) already does lots of lobbying on behalf of IT and CS professionals. There's also the AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals) which has more of an applied/business slant to it than the ACM.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
For all you nice folks who claim working 60+ hours a week is expected. I claim that you are PW'd. Get a backbone.
Say "no."
Now, you can't do this overnight. You have to talk with your boss and let him know that you aren't happy with the work expectations for time.
Make suggestions for how to improve the time issue that doesn't include hiring 20 more people next week.
Could it be that he doesn't know how much time you are actually spending doing work?
I've been in situations where 80+ hours appeared to be expected. First thing my team did was start tracking our hours and time spent on tasks. After a month, I provided that report to my manager. It was overwhelming proof that
a) we needed more people
b) we were working WAY too long over weekends
c) we were spending too much time on stupid things like password resets.
A few months later, we had an automated password reset web page up and running that made Security happy.
If you were working weekends, you didn't work the following 2 days (Mon-Tues).
My team of 20 people grew to over 70 in the next 16 months. Somehow the total work didn't get less because we were adding value to the projects we were on. The work was just spread over more bodies.
We still track hours and time spent on tasks so management knows where we are spending our time (as close as is reasonable). One of our key SAN disk guys left and the time to work on disk stuff sky rocketed for a few months! We hired an expert to take over and it went back down, overall.
Don't just whine, bring facts and data that help decision makers actually make good decisions.
Certainly, with a union, 50% of our jobs would have been outsourced offshore. Fortunately, they haven't figured out how to have someone in India change a bad disk or SAN cable in Atlanta, .... yet.
What would removing ions do for me anyway?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Get India and other off shore IT people to unionize! Best way to stop outsourcing!
Thus, the true function of trade unions is revealed. By limiting knowledge that can be obtained by people functioning outside the union, you prevent the circumstance of someone else being able to do your job from arising in the first place. All the tech community has to do is learn not to share knowledge with 'outsiders' (smother the open source movement in the middle of the night with a pillow or something) and it will be set forever with its high wages and superhero attitude. Sadly, there are plenty of people out there who would give quite a lot for the opportunity to work endless amounts of unpaid overtime in a skilled profession (particular types of manufacturing are skilled, yes) if it would mean that they were getting paid for the rest of their work week. From one perspective, fighting back might end up like quicksand and result in the entire community sinking even faster than it would otherwise.
Then again, from another perspective, there is presently a massive shortage of IT workers in the US which is something that many employers are trying to rectify using H1-B visas. Indeed, fear of outsourcing has created a paradox (in that there is now a surplus of jobs, because less people chose a career that they thought would be quickly sent overseas). So, maybe there is room for a union, a professional organization, or something. In the end, there really is no substitute for getting all the team members sitting in the same room at the same location to work together. However,it is a globalized economy, and more and more high tech firms are being started outside the borders of the western world (perhaps, in response to this very pressure) which is an even worse situation as the new jobs are being created overseas as opposed to just being sent there.
But all of this is really irrelevant. The tech community as a whole, as the article points out, has an attitude which is infamously contrary to cooperative endeavors, especially ones aimed at collective benefit in the face of potential individual sacrifice. Oh, and as one last thought, unions probably give preference to seniority, as senior members of unions are employees of companies that cannot be easily dispatched (they often have the greatest amount of accumulated knowledge). If the senior members of the union left the union, it would be very easy to fire the rest of them and replace them with newly trained workers. In the end, there is sadly no substitute for experience, especially experience in a particular company or institution. No amount of self taught-ness will allow you to divine how an undocumented system that was written several years ago by an intern works. But that old guy over there probably knows.
Every few years I hear about discussions and arguments about unionizing IT. There are a few in existence, generally associated with electrical or cabling unions. Personally, I feel that in general (note the "in general") unions of any kind tend to be counter productive and usually contribute to; the loss of positions, due to increased individual wages; increased work loads, to compensate for the loss of positions; and no real monetary gain for the individual works, because of the outlay of dues. The only real benefactors of unions are the unions' hierarchy. Add to that the general trend for IT workers to bounce ever 2 or 3 years and there really is no need.
If the argument for them is to limit the outsourcing of jobs, the I would submit this. Penalize corporations that out source by implementing a 'labor tariff' based on a percentage of outsourced employees. So for instance if a 1000 employee company has 100 jobs off shore, they should pay a 10% tariff on their income. (note not 10% of their income, 10% of the tariff). Then again, we really don't enforce tariffs here, as the Constitution lays it out.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
Support unionization if:
- Your skills are sub-par, and you want to be endlessly employed without improving them
- You believe seniority alone should be the basis for promotion
- Your secret wish is to slowly destroy your employer
- You think there is no legal path to conflict resolution without bringing back the teamsters
- You've got Alzheimer's and you think you're loading sixteen tons of coal a day, and you owe the company store too much to quit
I linve in New York, a union strong state. Here the only place you can't hire non-union labor for SOME job is in NYC. Most other places in the state where licensing is required it is called for by the municipality (town, or city). No one up here requires a union to work.
I've met people who are in the Manhattan electricians union who got there by non-traditional methods. They are truly skilled professionals.
What I do want is a bunch of senior people telling the company management exactly how long my shift should be, exactly when it starts and ends, exactly how much overtime I get for which extra days and hours.
Around here, in the Hudson Valley we have carpenters schools, steamfitters schools, I don't know how many union schools we have, beautiful campuses where the union membership goes to get their training updated regularly. Paid training in skills they will then get to use.
You know what the Teamsters still have that IT workers at Enron didn't? Guess. I'll make it easy for you. The answer is a secure retirement.
How do you explain all the IT offshoring that already happened? The overwhelming presence of the union? What drove all those call centers offshore? It wasn't the union.
Look, I know your 4th grade teacher told you that someday you would be rich and the schoolyard bully would work for you. They told you that a lot, that someday you will be the boss by right of your superior intelligence. Ayn Rand is wrong, sure you can excel on your own and protect yourself and what you care about and all that. If you want to make real change, and not remain insignificant, you need to be part of a group that has influence.
Here's a list of people doing well in unions...
Cops
Teachers
Truck Drivers
Carpenters
Plumbers
Actors
Screenwriters
Here's one more thing an IT union would be able to do. It could help define best practices. As in "Nope, that software is not union-spec. If you want our guys to use it you're going to have to pay for their training." Then the union membership (IT workers) would have some say over whether or not non-standard or poorly written software gets union support. As union members we would be protected from having the blame on us for every piece-o-shit software.
Don't focus on the abuses of power, that always happens. Can't not do something because someone might misuse it. Or do you not use filesharing?
"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."
Joe Bob actually *is* more fit to wire my house. Let me know how hiring a PhE EE works out wiring your house.
Who do you want repairing the engines on your airplane? An aerospace engineer? Or a journeyman airplane mechanic? I'll take my chances with the mechanic, thanks.
You're right about one thing... it is a young industry compared with the legal profession or medical profession, but hopefully, better definition and qualifications will become the norm in this industry. Today, we have a lot of people who know how to program (i.e. EE), but no idea how to solve a problem a customer has (i.e. Electrician).
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
This guy is spot on. Anyone can set up a server, sure. Can anyone keep it running, secure, and respond to issues in a timely fashion?
You know, you sound just like a battered wife. You're being robbed, and instead of rebelling you insist on defending the people who rob you. Ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome? You're a poster child for it.
By the way, I'm posting this from Montana. I just harvested a nice big crop of dental floss.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
There was a unionization drive for IT at my university not so long ago. I wasn't allowed to vote in the election because I was a technically a temp worker at the time, but I would definitely have voted "no".
I've got great working conditions: great benefits, good career development (books, classes, conferences, etc. paid for), good hours (nominally 9-5, but with flexibility for me to pick up my kids, etc.), and very good working conditions (telecommute full-time from another state, at the time of the vote I was telecommuting from another country). I'm treated with respect and encouraged to voice my opinions on anything I've got an opinion on. My pay is a little below average for the industry, but that's a trade-off I'm willing to make for the other stuff. In short, I'm not being exploited. I think I'm getting a good deal, so I don't have any reason to expect a union to make my life better.
(As an aside, we're hiring for my group's manager, so if the above sounds impossible, we might have a place for you.)
If you're being forced to work 10+ hour days, are always on-call, or are otherwise being mistreated, I suggest you think long and hard about whether the salary is worth it. If you're young and single, maybe it is. I worked long hours and tolerated a lot of crap at my first (non-IT) job because I needed the money. I suspect most of the people doing the same in IT are in the same boat. Older, more experienced people are in a better position to find better working conditions. There is so much turnover in the IT industry, anybody who's qualified can always find something else if they don't like their current job.
-Esme
IT is everywhere, and so is the demand. You can get a better/different job that meets your lifestyle requirements, even if it means moving.
Get off your rear and hit the classifieds. Don't like how stuff works in the industry/area? Go solo, if you can, and set your own hours.
The problem is that most jobs expect credentials anyway, so unionizing probably wouldn't change that anyway. Even if it did, it would only change in union shops. Non-unionized shops wouldn't have to fret over such things.
A lot of it would also depend upon the people who are running the union. Some unions are simply there to negotiate collective agreements and handle grievances. Those are probably the good ones to be a part of. Other unions are driven by ideology and an incredibly distorted world view about entitlement. Those are the scary ones. The latter would probably depend upon credentials and senority because it re-enforces the old-boys club. The former would probably give the employer more leeway to terminate bad employees, partially because they would reflect the union poorly anyway.
It sounds like a lot of you just need to be looking for new jobs. At the company I work for (a very large company), we have paid over-time after 80 hours (in a two week period), 8-5 work days, and anyone below Senior Manager isn't even allowed to have a Blackberry on the network. (You can sync using Exchange and Windows Mobile or an iPhone, but I digress). I get 26 paid vacation days a year, and standard holidays.
I've worked crazy hours for other companies, but when you realize that you are working 60+ hours a week for more money but have no time to spend it, who cares?
I get paid less here than I did at a few other organizations, but my quality of life is higher, so what does it matter?
I've also moved from more technical infrastructure work (server administration, backup, maintainence, etc), into a more business oriented role. Essentially I take business requirements and translate them into to be process models and describe the requirements of new systems. Then they are moved off-shore for development. It's a good role that is not easily outsourced, so I'd also suggest taking a look at non-technical work. It was hard for me to do at first as well, as I much rather work with computers than people, but it is rewarding :).
Because my father is an electrical contractor. And while he doesn't have a degree in EE, there are hundreds of code requirements that have nothing to do with the knowledge of how electricity works. And having worked with him before moving into IT and taking several EE courses at uni, I do have to say that I would not blatantly trust someone with a Phd in EE to wire my house.
While they may know the math behind it, that alone is not what ensures the safety. Please don't make the assumption that because you know the math, you are qualified to actually construct something. Ask any construction worker who makes the most mistakes that slow process and they'll tell you it is the architects and engineers.
The same residents who left me waiting in the Emergency Room because, I was told, they were "getting their donut on"? Yeah, right.
We're a bunch of IT professionals. There's no reason that we should have a union like all of the other non-IT unions. We could well make a union that has entrance exams and recurring certification to weed out the useless sub-par types that pollute other unions. The point of a union is supposed to be collective bargaining power, not guaranteed employment. People are supposed to want to hire union employees because they're supposed to be guaranteed to do jobs right. Maybe if IT unionized and the union were run properly, the daily security disasters, passwords sent in clear text, and so on would become less common. Right now very few IT people have any motivation to learn anything beyond how to play games at work without being caught. Anyone can claim to know anything and half-ass their way through it via Google and copy-pasting. Maybe a union would provide the means to change that.
That should have been obvious by the asshole getting the Defcon scale backwards.
Anywho, I bring it up to Deffcon 5. I slam the gas and pass the woman, then cut her off.
Defcon 5 is peacetime readiness. Defcon 1 is maximum readiness. Watch Wargames at least, you're on /. for fuck's sake.
Unions themselves aren't "bad". They are just bad for all who aren't members.....
Well, sucks to be one who isn't a member then. A union's purpose is so that you can bargain collectively. Your employer is likely a corporation with not only a CEO but a board of dirsctors and stockholders, all of whom ar collectively bargaining agaisnt one little guy - you. If you unionize, your union bargains on your behalf, not with the nonexistant clout of one guy, but with the clout of all the company's employees together. Your employer bargains collectively, you are a fool not to as well.
Business are hurt by unions because of higher pay demands, strikes, etc.
And by worker safety laws, minimum wage laws, etc. You're crying because your employer CAN'T RIP YOU OFF.
Other businesses are hurt when they rely on businesses subject to unions (manufacturers impacted by shipping industry unions that are on strike).
Sucks to be them! They don't care if my employer wants unsafe working conditions, low pay, no health care, why should I give a rat's as about them? If they're hurt because I'm on strike for safer working conditions, then they should complain to my employer, and/or go to his competitor.
Customers are hurt by unions in that higher business costs are then transferred to them in terms of higher prices.
They're hurt by stockholders demanding higher dividends, why aren't you whining about that?
Employees who aren't members are hurt by exclusion of job potential.
The let them join and pay their dues.
The Union members benefit from higher pay, better benefits, etc. For them, Unions are good.
BINGO! It's YOUR job. Stop whining about the issues of people who are exploiting you. YOU benefit if YOU unionise, and all the other people you whine about DON'T MATTER. learn from Slartibartfast's Bistromatic -- it's Somebody Else's Problem.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
From the reactions, I would say that most people here are against unions. I say, let us all take a stand together against unions.
Unite against Unification!
We'll form the Anti-union Union!
All those that don't wish to be part of a Union are now part of the Anti-union Union. Union dues are payable to me.
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
I have a history of being opposed to unions. However, your idea has merit. Having been a contractor, consultant and full-time employee and let go at a whim, I am not happy about how IT professionals are treated. We are the whipping boys of corporate America for processes and problems that are not in our control. Maybe one idea would be employment contracts like executives have, that state exactly what each side's responsibilities and benefits are - that would be something I would be interested in.
When employers are abusing workers unions serve a purpose. When there is no abuse unions are a destructive force that erodes quality, stifles productivity and ends advancement by merit. Unions are a pox on the modern workforce when they have no wrongs to redress.
Union strength is good for one thing: protecting workers from bad employers. Beyond that they have no place and should be immediately disbanded by their members.
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.
I see unions as detrimental only as an efficiency problem, thus killing the concept cold for me.
But, as for operating in the interests of joe sixpack, I can tell you that's very true. In my younger days, I worked at a large food chain retailer which was unionized by the Teamsters.
I show up to work one day late. The first time in over a year I was ever tardy. I get taken to the manager's office and told I'm being written up, which was fine. I was 10 minutes late, we just wasted 20 minutes in a meeting over it. Let's make sure I never let it happen again. I should have gotten around that wreck in traffic a little quicker. Whatever. Shit happens.
A week later, I show up on time, but I goofed. the uniform tie I was issued had accidentally ended up in a wash load of whites, thus got exposed to bleach and looked kind of bad, but they only issued one to me, so I had to wear it. I ask my manager if I can get a new one or skip wearing it for a few hours and put some of that RIT dye on it and put it back on when dry, but no, I get taken to the same office, by the same manager and am told I am being fired for not complying with their uniform code. Basically, saying I was on a 90 day probation for being tardy, so they could let me go for any further infractions.
So, I go home and call up my regional Teamsters representative (over 200 miles away). The next morning, he calls me from the store I worked at and tells me to come on in for a chat. I got to sit through a meeting with HR, my manager, and the union guy as he named both legal and contractual reasons why they should not have fired me and should offer my job back with better pay, and if they don't, the union to sue them on my behalf. I got an instant $1.20/hr pay raise, assigned under a different manager, who was much cooler.
They definitely empower the 'little guy', but often too much so. There's a lot of people who really sucked at their jobs who managed to keep them, but then there were people like me who worked hard but, for whatever reason, was disliked by a manager and end up getting screwed as a result.
On the flip side, that chain is now out of business in the US. I don't doubt the union assisted in this by driving wages of non-managers up too high regardless of the health of the business overall, allowing competition to consume them.
On the other hand, I do see where you are coming from. When things get to the point of a strike, the worker often loses out, but don't forget, these issues are voted on by the workers so you will get a lot of differing opinions depending on how much the worker cared what they were striking over and the availability of temporary jobs to take up in an area to make up for the smaller check the union is sending until operations get back to normal.
At some point, perhaps the early 20th century, people associated unions with fair working conditions, organised work forces and workers rights.
Now, most people seem to associate them with belligerent leadership, intransigence, unreasonable demands and striking at the drop of a hat.
After the 7/7 bombings in London the moron head of the underground rail drivers union came on TV and said that the bombings would not have happened if only they'd had more staff on the platforms.
He was using the deaths of 50 people to campaign for more money. That pretty much sums up unions for me.
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.
The first thing I thought of was how easy it would be for me to become a digital scab.
I work remotely.
Seriously, these organizations already do much of what the ABA does in terms of a) being a professional society, b) providing professional education from books, journals/ magazines, courses, and conferences, c) contribute to recommended education curriculum, d) have a global presence, with chapters around the world, e) provide some services (e.g. insurance) for professionals who are working on their own, f) have been present, and try to be vocal about legal issues (i.e. USACM), g) provide standards that industry really do use, think IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n as one of many.
These organizations are not perfect, but they are respectable profession associations that do merit consideration. (Disclosure: I am a member of IEEE Computer Society, ACM, and the IEEE itself)
IEEE Computer Society
ACM - Association for Computing Machinery
I'm CEO and I can
I'm in a union. My dues are $20 per month, and it's far more than made up by the higher wages collective bargaining gets me, as well as holidays, sick leave, paid vacations, health care, etc. That $20 monthly is money well spent; nay, INVESTED.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I thought it was from The Godfather.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
They've done wonders for lawyers and doctors. Don't say they're not unions. 99% of economists would disagree with you.
There are definitely things IT and engineers in general can do without falling into the typical union/professional organization problems.
Problems:
pay/stability based on seniority not merit
fixed pay grids
exclusionary to new comers
Things we could do:
monitor overtime across the industry and get paid for it
mandate career development/training
divide up the loot between shareholders and employees. Ex: 100 million in profit. We negotiate and say 40 million goes to investors... 60 million goes to employees as bonuses.
mandate mentorship and knowledge transfer
Now if we didn't mind stepping on a few toes and becoming the people we complain about :P
we could restrict membership like the medical associations and the legal profession. What to write some software? Well you need a software engineering degree with a license to write software.
---------
Better still. I've always felt engineers are the stupidest smart people you will ever meet.
We should be forming engineering coops. We have some very rich tech people who could easily start this off.
We could start providing services as well as developing products. Remember the good old days of the telecom monopolies? There was a constant inflow of money to r&d. Not to say there weren't any problems of course. But in todays free market, wouldn't it be great if Google or Cisco started their own ISP? Some have started this of course.
Google realized it needed a good stream of revenue (ads). RIM has realized this too and they basically have their own network which adds a surcharge to the telecom bill that goes to it.
The AMA and the ABA are not unions, they are professional associations, which are a very different things. Whatever the rights and wrongs of such, I will not deal with them
Unions are needed when they employer can truthfully say to the employee "I could replace you tomorrow". If the employee tries to improve his/her position, the employer can fire him and employ another. By employing successively the weakest and least able to fight back of the pool of potential employees, the employer can force all the employees to work for the worst conditions that any of them will accept. Unless they join together and refuse to work without reasonable compensation. Which is great, until you try to define reasonable. Which brings more problems, but at least the arm-wrestling is symmetric.
But if your departure is going significantly to harm the company, because your particular skills are difficult/impossible to replace, you have personal bargaining power with the employer and the arm-wrestle starts on equal terms.
At the moment, IT seems to me to be headed for even more diversity, which means that there ever more diverse skill sets and individuals are less and less replaceable. If you know of more than a tiny handful of people with whom you could switch jobs and there would be no problems after a few weeks, then you are replaceable. This is the case for, say, bus drivers, waiters, cleaners etc., and hence they need unions. But most IT people, in terms of skills and experience, are hard to replace and hance have little need of unions.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
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.
Take the time, money and effort required to form IT unions and spend it on overturning the corporate friendly laws and regulations that allow IT workers to be classified as exempt employees versus hourly. Then eliminate the healthcare hostage taking by supporting universal coverage.
That's it. Do those two things and the balance of power in employer-employee relationships would be dramatically closer to even.
It seems unusual in the USA, but in the UK it is common for a profession to be represented by several unions or professional bodies. There are three big teachers' unions, for example. If one isn't representing you, then you're able to switch to another, and there are laws in place to protect non-union workers (it is illegal to make union membership a factor in hiring decisions - you can't specify only-union or only non-union employees).
If you allow a union to be a monopoly, expect the same treatment you would from any other monopoly.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If you don't enjoy your job, find something else you are passionate about and do that professionally. Yes, you should have a life outside of work...but you need to be passionate enough to not bitch and moan about having to work 60 hour weeks. You have to love it, or you don't belong there to begin with.
I think a political body of some sort would serve the I.T. Industry well.
I do not buy into the belief that is being peddled here by the "all UNIONS are bad crowd" that if a UNION where to develop it would ship all the jobs over seas.
What a simplistic view of the profession.
We are not building widgets here, we are building very complex pieces of software. That includes a large amount of cultural restrictions, logistics for example that are totally unique from country to country.
I doubt it would be cost effective to move on a large scale that much development work out of the country.
Besides, the concept that our jobs are safe without a UNION cannot be logical if the same people believe the jobs will be shipped over seas if we form a UNION.
That IS circular logic.
They are already and will continue to be even without a UNION.
I think the working conditions for I.T. are poor, and so is the pay. Normally with increased responsibility, comes increase in pay.
That is not happening, instead, pay is being reduced and hours are becoming longer with individuals "expected" to work continuously 24x7.
Individuals are even forced to use their own vehicles to drive between sites with no reimbursement for vehicle wear and tear for example.
There is very little actual educational reimbursement in the industry. I say actual because I have seen LOTS of companies proclaim that they offer tuition reimbursement but when you actually request it, there are problems in getting it. Usually ending up with no pay raises "Oh, you got tution last year right?" or worse management sees that as less time for you to work 24/7 on the business. So, you end up getting labled as "semi" employable with no real long standing future in the company.
From my perspective as I leave this industry and go back to school for all the degree work I want to finish, I find I will not be missing my job much and will be doing much of the job I had previously as a private practice if I do software work or networking work.
That way when I wake up at 3AM, and I WILL get paid for it.
Try and replace that system from India once.
I would also like to remind people that the world is not as stable as many would think it is. This era where you can do commerce is entirely dependant on good relations.
That could change very quickly and ALL of the companies assets overseas could and probably WOULD be confiscated.
There are real tangible risks to offshoring. Offshoring is a young practice and as energy costs skyrocket, it gets progressively harder to have something made overseas shipped thousands and thousands of miles to its destination.
At a certain point this WILL breakdown totally and it will be impossible.
My guess is when oil hits about $180 a barrel, which in my opinion is not very far away.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
If you went from high school and got an MSCE and now think you can control IT with your madd skillz, maybe you do need to unionize. Make IT decisions based on what you know, not based on what's good for the company. Form a union, file a grievance every time a person puts a Mac on the network... I say go for it!
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
If you'll do anything, I suggest you retrain into another field. I'm almost 40... I worked in the field before the "always-connected" worker. We still had pagers and the wonderful but dated "telephone". I still got pages and phone calls at all hours, and I guarantee if I didn't respond, I would not have been getting a paycheck. It's wasn't much different than now, except you are able to actually fix something without having to shut off the TV and haul your ass into work.
It's the National Fire Protection Association who writes things like the national electrical code. It's all about avoiding things that have caused fires.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
IEEE is a major professional society for electrical engineers and computer professionals. It has a unit called IEEE-USA that lobbies on issues such as H1B visas, pension plans and intellectual property employee agreements, and provides career advice to its members.
One possible solution to the issues raised here would be for IT people to join and strengthen IEEE and IEEE-USA.
I think there might be a place for unionization in IT, but it would have to be a different kind of union that had a completely different culture from what the labor movement has had up to now. Many of the complaints that techies have voiced about unions derive from hard-fought issues, such as restrictive work rules, that started in the late 1800's and became part of the union culture as we know it. An IT union would have to develop a different culture. I'm not sure what such a culture would look like.
As long as there is strong competition for workers, the threat of a worker picking up and leaving a job provides a strong incentive for an employer to offer good benefits and working conditions. As the work becomes more routine and the competition decreases, workers lose their leverage and employer abuses start. We may be nearing that point.
However, until someone figures out what the culture of a high tech union should look like, I think our best solution is to depend on existing professional organizations such as IEEE and IEEE-USA.
the average income of a teacher in Oklahoma is about $30,000, which means they get about $22k or so after taxes. The head of the Teacher's Union makes over $100k a year to represent those who make less than a third. yuck.
unions are good if you still have a workforce that can protest and stop buying goods that they don't support.
if people dont like their jobs going to India/China, then they shouldnt buy products from companies who outsource that way. but we as a society/culture have lost the ability to take a stand for something. joining a union is not the way around that.
the problem is, we have lost the ability to take our business and our employment elsewhere, and we have lost the ability to support each other and protest the greedy processes being imposed by those at the top.
this is why wal-mart never has to worry about unions. the people who work there can only afford to shop there and no place else, so there is no way they could officially protest.
Most of IT has gone the way of the TV repair man. Technology becomes EASIER to use as the generations go by.
Programmers are now a dime a dozen with kids, KIDS, learning Java, C++, Pascal at a highschool level.
You could try to go the "professional" route, of course with 11 year old kids with MCSEs and CCNEs I doubt there is much in the way of credibility. A+ and Net+ are highschool coursework now. They are in fact, in a way, modern Highschool++.
Here is what you can unionize and I would recommend modeling it after the legal Bar Assoc.:
Network Administration: (Potential access to confidential data, privacy issues, etc.)
Network Security: (if you need an explanation on why they should be licensed, please go swim in lava)
Enterprise Architects: (just like engineers that build highways, skyscrapers, most have licensing requirements, because you don't want to spend 3 million to get a network that is insecure and slower then pitch)
Here is what you can't unionize:
Programmers: (dime a dozen, should count as a 2nd language in college if you ask me)
Support Jockeys: (Incident and Problem Management, you have become Wal-Mart cashiers the moment they brought in drill down support databases and the ITIL escalation paths. Get over yourselves, you worth minimum wage at best. All you do is read crap out of a database that I could just as easily read myself.)
But let us look at the three "professional groups"
A: You need legislation to mandate that NA, NS, and EA staff must meet a rigeous standard and background check. Effectively the Bar Assoc. becomes the certifier of those qualifications and THE MUST BE LICENSED by the federal government. (As a net admin in Minnesota would more then likely admin servers in other states, so a state by state licensing becomes useless.)
B: The Bar Assoc. must maintain the highest of standards that are not vendor-centric with standardized best practices, continuing education requirements to meet licensing standards, etc.
Now let me ask you this: A generation of people that demanded to wear sandals and purple hair while setting up NT servers, are they really willing to wear a suit or, in my opinion, go back to the lab coats, and act like professionals? Because lets be honest, if you want to be treated like a professional, you, well have to act like it. An unlike a JOB, a career, a profession, you do not hang up when you leave work. That is something that generation-X and Y knows nothing about in my experience.
For an industry hell-bent in making open toed sandals, pony tails, goatees, and tee-shirt & jeans the norm, I doubt they have the intestinal fortitude to walk the professional line that doctors and lawyers have to maintain.
I don't see an IT union working in the fashion of say, Teamsters, but I can see a small sub-set heading the way of the legal professional. Perhaps a paralegal role would emerge so the dead beat, 3 nights a week, no-nothings answering the phones have something to shoot for so they can kick of Tivoli remote installs...
My 2 cents...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Unions are a BAD idea. They may start out seeming fine, but they evolve into massive bureaucracies that concentrate on self-preservation and pursuit of irrelevant issues rather than acting on behalf of their members. We see this over and over again. It's unsurprising that union membership in North America is at an all-time low; the best way to ruin a sector's economy is to unionize in these days of globalization.
I disagree.
I am the "Junior IT" technical admin for my company, and I slid into that because it is an *adjunct* role because ridiculous software glitches appear in the proprietary Enterprise package we use. So, I play WhackaBug professionally some 30 hours a month. I also try to reign in the worst logic-Fail situations embedded in management's "big pictures". My Uni degree is in accounting. It's really common to see Accounting/IT pairings.
The "Senior IT" guy is also self taught, but he went more "classical IT" and now does our servers, Exchange, etc.
So my advice now is to have a "lead" profession that drives your resume, and "play the IT card" to seal the deal. It also gives smaller companies a reason to hire you if they don't need 40+hour dedicated IT types.
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I work for a large state university. All full-time professional jobs have the option of being part of the union. If you're not part of the union, you're required to pay them a fee for doing all your contract negotiation -- dues turn out to be about $15 a month higher, but they buy you great dental insurance and discounts on things like museum admission (actually, most are free), travel arrangments, cell phone service, and all sorts of other things.
Working under a union-negotiated contract, I'm also guaranteed a 40 hour work-week, reasonable vacation and sick leave, decent pay (I work for the state, so it'll never be great, but it's decent), and I can't easily be fired without cause.
Now, that said, I think the union has too much power here. There are people who can't be fired, even though everyone knows they're incompetent, simply because the paperwork is a pain. The amount of administrative overhead for dealing with the union is horrific; it mostly comes down on the university administration, so I don't have to deal with much, but there's a tremendous amount of it. There are a lot of other issues, as well. The examples other people have come up with -- states where union workers are required by law, where no one can do anything without the union's approval -- are all good examples. They're rediculous. The point of the union is to keep the company from taking advantage of the workers, not to allow the union to take advantage of everyone else.
But overall? I'm glad to be working a lower-paid union job. I've been offered higher pay in industry jobs (more than doubling my pay, actually), but you know what? I think it's unreasonable to be expected to work 80 hours a week and be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year. I'll take my moderate pay and pleasant working environment any day.
Maybe what we really need is a PAC or some sort of lobby. I don't want to pay my dues to some idiot with no neck so he can use my industry as a means of attaining political power. Rather, I need a voice. Collective voice is one thing, a pie-scheme for developing politicians is another.
>Unions may have helped some industries
Unions are about helping the workers, not about helping industries.
Typo on my part. I meant that unions may have helped employees in some industries in the past.
I already work as a s/w developer in a Union position. I vote absolutely against unionising s/w development. Three reasons come to mind:
1) You can't fire a crap employee, you can only move them between projects
2) Employee quality and productivity has minimal bearing on earnings
3) Moving projects in-house involves formally applying for a position as though it were with an external company. Waste of time and money IMO
Also, our contract has some wishy washy wording that still gives management the right to force us to work 60+ hour weeks, weekends. They can also force us to be on call 24/7 and they can make us travel with zero notice.
I used to be a member of a union (United University Professionals). The union didn't impose any onerous restrictions on my work and I was glad to have the representation of a union. If I worked for a very large employer today I might want to be in a union, or I might not.
There are two reasons why it wouldn't work for me today. First, I work for a small employer, and I have worked for small employers for much of my career. In effect, I'm a union of one because if I stop working the place shuts down. Second, I'm a very skilled and experienced programmer. It wouldn't be easy to replace me.
So, I guess unions work in fields where workers work for large employers and where workers are largely interchangeable. A lot if IT isn't like that.
It would be cool if there was a large professional organization that looked out for my interests, but again the problem is that there isn't one set of interests to represent in IT. The issues and positions that matter to me are likely to be different than those that matter to a Microsoft or IBM employee, even though we may have the same job title.
Yep... "RocketScientist" is absolutely right. (Although I happen to work in I.T. for a shop of union steelworkers, and it's not *quite* true that it's cheaper to ship ore to China and import the steel back to the U.S. right now. That WAS traditionally true, but the steel industry in the U.S. is seeing a bit of a resurgence ever since fuel prices skyrocketed. Shipping is becoming a major cost factor for items as big and heavy as steel beams.)
The bottom line is the same though. As you pointed out, you have to really be a "location based" business to get away with unionizing and keeping your job afterwards. When shipping costs too much for a product, that effectively makes it "location based".
I.T. certainly has no such issues....
End of Message
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Thanks to a lot of culture bashing, Unions got a bad rep since the 80s. Lest we forget, unions help give us reforms such as the 40 hour work week, safety standards for the work place, and minimum wage, etc. These are all good things.
Unions became so powerful, however, that people thought they were a block to progress. People have been busting unions since the 80s, and look where it's got us. The biggest problem here is that the working wage is not keeping up with inflation.
Yes, SOME unions got mixed up with organized crime... yes SOME unions promoted mediocre people over talented ones and got into shady politics... yes SOME people with union mentality want an obsessive number of perks and encourage not standing out so that no one "looks bad" when one person shines. But unions also protect us from corporations who want to raid pension plans and push workers to work longer hours for low wages. Obviously when unions did so many good things for us and then suddenly had some problems because they are two powerful, you don't throw them out entirely. Companies will find any reason to make employees work as hard as they can and resist paying them that little extra raise, especially in companies with huge numbers of employees.
Unions are an important check and balance with corporations. Right now the corporations are out of control.
IT can't unionize now... that loner mentality is too strong, and most IT identify with a while collar job. However, IT has to run cable, do heavy lifting, work long hours, be on call. In the IT industry that's all worn as a badge of honor but in truth, are you getting properly paid? Are you being ask to work too long? The average true number of hours worked in the US has been going up, because companies can get away with squeezing extra hours out of salaried white collar employees. Those same employees don't get the benefit of more pay for those extra hours and as such are getting a little screwed here.
If anything, we should not take away the message "unions are evil" and be thinking, are we treating our IT reps right?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Quit. Vote with your feet. You might complain "but the money is so good!" But if you break it down hourly, it isn't. And working fewer hours gives you a better quality of life.Besides, there is no IT shortage. Let's just let market forces decide things.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...are the lame and the lazy.
I've seen unions, and I've seen what they do. Maybe once upon a time they actually gave a damn about their members, but now they're just another bloated, bureaucratic monopoly. A monopoly on labor. Ever seen the Teamster's board room? How about the NEA's HQ in DC? Think they managed to get stuff like that by giving a flipping fart about the rank and file? Suckers, the lot of them.
Regards;
You obviously haven't seen most of the IT women I work with. Thanks, but no.
youMeanCamelCaseHungarianNotation?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
That could actually be accomplished if the paralegals got together and formed their own organization. That, or their was something like a nurse practitioner for paralegals to achieve via more apprenticeship/less schooling than the traditional law school model.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Union "elections" are a byword for corruption, and union bosses are almost synonymous with the mob. Jimmy Hoffa, anyone?
A union represents the members the same way that the legislative branch represents citizens--which is to say: always in theory, but rarely or never in practice.
It's nice to say (of congress or unions) that "You are THEIR boss" but trying getting things changed by talking to a legislator or "boss" is equally ineffective. The congresscritter will tell you they feel your pain, and the union boss will tell you that there's some obscure work rule that prevents you from doing things faster/more efficiently/easier.
I've been a union member, and I hated every minute of it, from the money they collect "voluntarily," to the corruption in the elections, to the way that they protected the lazy, incompetent, and downright stupid. Never again.
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So you want to make it so that IT workers have to be licensed in order to work?
Liberty in your lifetime
You are possibly making a false dichotomy. Just because some unions have lots of silly rules does not mean that ALL unions (or trade groups) must have silly rules. An IT union would hopefully be better run because we'd use wiki's etc. to work out policy instead of smoke-filled closed doors. We would hopefully use our technical know-how and technical pride to do it better.
Table-ized A.I.
It would be in my best interests to have strong unions in China, India and any other country that provides competing skill sets. This would help me out in the long term more than a local union shop. Giving the inefficient crap to my competitors would outweigh any long term benefit that a union could provide since I am already in a country where basic labor rights exist
Heck, I work in a non-union shop but would gladly pay union dues to organize unions in other countries
Should IT Unionize?
Yes. Why? Because I'm getting really tired of this question appearing on slashdot at least once a year. Uncle.
I am a unionized IT worker in Canada. I have worked for non-unionized private companies, and as a free-lance consultant.
I have to agree that some trades unions in both the USA and Canada managed to get very restrictive contracts in place. Here in BC, most of the more stupid union rules have been trimmed back for the trades.
IT and unions.
Overall, I see the union as a great big rusty ratchet. You never move backwards, but it is hard to move forward. The best and brightest DO move up the ladder faster within the union, but not as fast as in a non-union company. On the flip side you can't be fired or held back as easily if a manager or two don't like you. You don't see "golden boys" winging past you because they can lose at golf gracefully. You have well defined rules for over-time, on-call, stand-by, and telephoned in work. You never work for free. Our union is not "militant". There are not overly specific rules about who can do what job. This gives managers flexibility, and workers opportunities to learn new skills. But it also means that sometimes you find you have gradually started doing work that should pay more, and sometimes have to fight to get your position re-classified at a higher rate of pay. For most IT people moving up the ladder means applying for higher paying jobs within the company. Staying in the same position gives pretty small annual raises for 4 to 5 years on top of whatever general wage increase the union contract calls for. After that you have to move up the ladder to get a real increase.
Our union represents all the "office workers and professionals" - this means everything from clerks to guys designing huge province spanning networks. Web monkeys to unix admins managing systems with 6 giant boxes with fail over, SANS, and complex networking requirements. There are a lot more clerks. At the lower pay scales you do much better in the union than in the private sector. As you move up the pay scale you start to do about the same and at the very top not quite as well as the private companies. But your benefits are much better. Sane working hours. Double-time for most over time. Lots of time off. I find the union job suits people who want good steady work and time to raise a family. People interested in making big bucks, usually young and single, often move on after getting some experience that looks good on the resume.
So there are pluses and minuses. And you do have to make sure to elect people to the union who look out for you and not just the 'union'.
Anarchists never rule
Unions arose because they served a purpose, and they actually helped people back when no one spoke up for industrial workers.
However, like many things, unions have outlived the very purpose for their existence.
Would there be a place for some sort of collective arrangement for IT workers? Quite possibly there is, but it has to be created on completely different lines than a traditional union.
The most important part of it? Its goals must be limited and focused, and it cannot start to view itself as a institution that has a right to exist in and of itself. If it has served its original purpose... it needs to die.
If you could create a focused collective arrangement with clearely stated and reasonable goals that self-terminates before it grows into a hierarchical, tyrannical monster, you may be on to something.
But a Union? No, thank you.
If you don't get paid overtime and you don't make over $100,000 a year or manage more then two people then you need to go to the labor board. You DO NOT need a Union. You need to make a good case for yourself and get paid.
Given that the whole point of a union is to create a monopoly on one form of labour
No, the point of unions is to give workers a modicum of power in negotiations, as opposed to having to take asinine demands from management, and liking it.
I work in IT and I don't understand the article, maybe it's a US thing, I'm from Canada. I've always been paid for OT and it is voluntary, of course it's still heavily pushed. I'm not syndicated but I find I have pretty good working conditions. Is Canada different labour law wise or did I luck out with my job?
"That's what management thinks. Your superiority complex lends much about your personality. You don't want unions because they would bring you down to earth like most professionals. You probably work in a place where you keep your job by seeming mythical to your managers. I'm not doubting that you're highly skilled, but you rely on obfuscation and parlor tricks to feel irreplaceable. You think management can hate so long as they fear. We all know someone like you. You guard your shop jealously and you do everything in your power to make sure all would-be peers fail. That's not professional behavior. Unions would force you to behave like a professional. That's not something you're willing to accept."
Your overreach in trying to psychoanalyze me from a short list reveals a lot about you.
I'm not mythical or godlike to my management team. I am, however, very competent, and I have earned their respect. There are people in my IT organization that are better than me in every single thing that I do, but nobody around me has quite the breadth of skills that I do. So my best areas are in troubleshooting and problem analysis across technologies.
I wear a tie to work, even though it's not required (we're business casual). I don't need a union to ask me to behave like a professional, and the idea that one is required to "keep me in line" is just stupid. Only a union supporter would make such an audacious claim.
I don't guard my job, and I don't obfuscate or use parlor tricks. Everything we do day to day is well-documented. In fact, I've trained two new team members over the past two years specifically so that we don't suffer from "the man in the room". We had that problem because we're a Gensym G2 group, and those people are hard to come by.
If you think you have troubles with yr boss now, just wait until your boss can't be fired for misbehavior because he, too, works for the union, and the union protects its members from being fired.
WHOOPS! FAIL! LOSE! Your bad!
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I am a systems administrator in a 4000+ user environment and I was recently insourced from a fortune 500 outsourcing company who lost the contract into a state/local government account. I chose to stay with the account for a number of reasons that are irrelevant here. But I can speak directly to converting from an outsourcer/contractor culture into a union culture. I am 9 months into this union environment and I now really believe that unions were created for the sole purpose of destroying industry. In less than a year this place has gone from a cutting edge can-do/competitive attitude to they stereotypical lazy union worker environment. We have a bunch of rules lawyers running around telling people what they can and cannot do. The threat of job termination is completely off the table at this point since we are now past the 6 month "probation" period so whereas previously about 10% of the staff surfed in 90% of the staff's wake it is now more like 60% of the staff working and 40% just looking around for stuff to take credit for. I am fortunate that my two peers in this group have maintained the same level of intensity that we had prior to being insourced but I look around at other groups that have integrated with other government unionized employees and they are self-destructing. They are becoming the exact thing that caused this local government agency to outsource it's IT 10 years ago and we aren't even a year into this.
I've heard a rumor that sometime in the next couple months they are going to have some kind of vote and try to make this place a "Union Shop" which means those of us who bargain for themselves and stand on their own accomplishments will be forced to pay union dues if we want to remain employed here. At that point I might have to re-evaluate my decision to stay here.
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
I am a former member of the Communications Workers of America. I was a Production Control Data Processing Associate (read Operator) in a large datacenter. It was a not requirement of the job that I join the union though it was emphatically "recommended" that I join. I enjoyed some excellent benefits as part of the union: scheduled pay raises, 8 hour days with night and weekend differential pay, good insurance, etc. but ultimately lost my job thanks to the union. Most of my coworkers were in the "30+ year vet" category and had only ever worked on mainframe machines. Since the union voted on such things as "job description changes" the big expensive-to-maintain-and-run machines had to stay in order to retain the expensive-to-utilize-or-retire veteran employees. As of 2003 the datacenter had 60 full time operators running 3 OS/390 machines 24/7 . This meant that they paid me (only a 5 year vet) a crapload of money to watch a couple of backups run every day. Eventually the company moved all processing to UNIX servers in an outsourced datacenter, told the union to go to hell, and closed our datacenter. I might still be employed there today with a nice pension to look forward to had the union been respectful of the company's needs and less self-serving. Sadly *all* unions are self-serving to the point of eventually bringing about their own demise.
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"I suspect that the "techie" solution to this is to pass around a hat and hire a lawyer when it comes time to renegotiate a contract"
Why should I contribute to your hat when it's not my contract up? or when you get fired for farting in the wrong direction?
That's what unions are good for.
I've noticed that this discussion is dominated by folks with the *very* american dislike for the word union. Are they perfect? No, but some sort of collective organisation for employees is a very very effective way of restoring some of the balance of power.
I am in a Union, COPPEA.
It works well, it costs me 15 bucks.
What do I get:
40 hour week, OT or comp if I need to work more.
Great benefits
ABuota 25% smaller check then I made not being unoin. But the benefits more then make up for this.
I have a good reputation among my peers, and I get Job offers from people I ahve worked with i the past. I turned down a job offer from google.
A lot of this would be different 10 years ago when I was just about work. Now that I have kids, I do not want my work to be my life.
My coworkers are all very good and hard working and I ahve seen none of the 'lazy entrenched employee' issue everybody seem to bring up when talking about unions.
IT workers are not management, and should not be paid under management terms while being treated as a laborer.
IT workers are being abused to the point where the productivity is less then a 40 hour week even though though they work 60+.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Of course that is also what pushes up the salaries of doctors and lawyers -- there are plenty of tasks that nurses or other less-remunerated people could do that are the legal exclusive purview of doctors, with a carefully restricted supply (limits on the number of medical places). And, like IT, healthcare is something that is largely outsourced -- IBM do not employ their own doctors, they pay for corporate health insurance. Large IT projects are similarly capital intensive, with high cost of failure (and yes IT failings have cost lives in the past), and with a constant requirement for professional development as new technology becomes available. But unlike doctors, computing professionals insist that any old qualification must do, anyone must be able to have-a-go, and employment questions are of the "why are manhole covers round" variety, rather than anything professional. (When did you last ask your oncologist that one before you agreed to let him do some engineering on your body?) Is it any wonder the doctors live in rather nicer houses and don't have to worry so much about unpaid overtime!
They are "built" in the same sense that a car of legos is "built" by a 9-year-old... the legos were made somewhere else and then put together by our theoretical youngster. Toyotas assembled in the United States are assembled from parts that were made in Japan (and increasingly, China). The value added by the assembly (and the percentage of the profit that comes to the U.S. assembly workers) is not a major economic benefit to the U.S. (To the locality, perhaps--but assembing Toyotas here is a tax dodge, because Toyota doesn't pay the same import duties on the parts as they would on the completed car)
I own a Chrysler (with an drivetrain made in Mexico) and a Suzuki motorcycle (built and assembled in Japan)--so I'm not preaching some sort of protectionism here. Just pointing out that Japanese car makers "outsource" the assembly of cars to the U.S. because it's cheaper than assembling them in Japan and paying the import duties on a completed automobile.
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In America the Unions are more like legal thugs. We have such a thing as "Closed Shops". This means you must join or be a member of the correct union as a condition of being hired. This is different from "Union Shops" where you MUST join the union and pay union dues OR pay fair share union dues and not get any of the so called protection of the union.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop
I was a member of the AFSCME Union at one time when I did bio-medical electronics. The best thing I ever did was to get out of the union and get into the IT world as a programmer. My salary, work life and level of respect received from my employer improved 10 fold or more since. I will never go back to a union where the inept are treated and rewarded as equally as the competent. In my experience the unions only ensure that everybody is equally miserable.
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.
The way you state this, it appears as though you are implying that the amount they are willing to pay is unfair, not just the minimum necessary for the maximum productivity. Popular models of the appropriate wage to pay employees which are commonly used by hr departments tend to indicate that the minimum wage for maximum productivity is actually the wage that the employee feels is fair, or even more than that. By definition, I cannot see that as being unfair.
By joining a union, workers can push back against being treated as nothing more than a disposable tool.
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.
We are not coal miners being killed left and right by severe overwork, ignored safety requirements, and untreated work-related diseases... believe it or not, the job you are so fed up with is a cushy, well-paying, white-collar job that most people would kill for, regardless of the on-call nature of the work, long hours, and so forth. We happen to have the right talents and knowledge to be able to work in this industry... we're lucky. You use fiery words to describe what's really a pretty cushy deal. Is there a ton of burnout? Heck yeah. Are people working really hard, without overtime (it's expected that we work more than 40 hours a week... how unfair!!!), under highly stressful conditions? Absolutely! Would you rather work at McDonalds? You can, anytime you want... I guarantee you could get a job there today. We're generally highly paid for a reason, and only part of that is because we're so smart and talented and wonderful... a good part of the reason we are paid higher-than-average salaries is because of the high demands our work places on us.
Ask you grandfather or great grandfather who got his head cracked open with a club for participating in a strike.
We still have the vast majority of the benefits you mention, excepting the 40 hour work week and overtime pay, and the important ones are enshrined in laws. If things really get bad (i.e. huge numbers of people dying of heart attacks or something), who knows. Right now, you sound a little too whiny... as if you were brought up with an overbearing sense of entitlement. I have a hard time believing that your grandfather or great-grandfather would get his head cracked open to improve conditions at the horrible job you are forced to endure.
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.
Sorry but this is one of the few industries that is perfectly suited to raw capitalism at its unadulterated worst... our jobs can disappear overnight, offshored to any of a dozen countries where unions are less of a problem. If the IT industry unionized en masse, it'd take a decade or less for the whole thing to go the way of the US steel industry. If small pockets of us unionize as is apparently happening now, who knows... but I'll say one thing: I need a job, and if your union ever strikes, I'd be happy to scab. Who wouldn't want a high-paying white collar job in this economy? Judging by 99% of the other posts here, I'm not alone.
Now, let me first say I totally understand your argument here. I am the lone programmer for a unionized manufacturing plant, and though I'm personally salaried, I can tell you from observation that all of the abuses you describe above are true. People get jobs and advancement through seniority, not qualification, and that's the sort of thing that should never be allowed to happen anywhere, period. That simply leads to stagnation.
But while that stagnation of regular unions represents an abuse of the company by employees, the fact is that at non-unionized facilities you can have heavy abuse of employees by management instead. And that abuse of employees by management is the situation we in IT are currently in.
How many of us were told we were going to get 40 hour workweeks, and that overtime is occassional, but once we joined found that our hours were closer to 50-60 a week because we were salaried and that's free labor for the company? How many of us were lead to believe that the pager would rotate among a lot more people than it actually does, and that late night downtime is rare? How many of us have recommended to management that parts of IT not be outsourced to other countries, because while their wages our lower, they tend to produce inferior work? And how many of us have found that even though the company technically had "more" employees after outsourcing, that we actually had to stay even longer because someone had to clean up the messes in the code? Or how we have to show up at awful times in the early morning for meetings on the other side of the world, and work at night when something goes down, and are expected to then show up during regular hours during the day and work the full 8 hour day?
All of that is abuse, and there has to be a middle ground system that prevents abuse by both employees (unions) and management (salaries). Take a look at the recent case we discussed where IBMs employees finally sued IBM for scads of unpaid overtime, only to have IBM cut their salary 12% in retaliation? That's abuse, and if IT had been unionized in that case it would have been very helpful, because a big fat strike might have forced IBM to quit being such jerks (one can only hope that at least the negative publicity hurts their hiring efforts).
Anyway, I'm not totally sure what the middle ground is, but I think maybe it's having most of IT become contractors. Collective contracts (unions) lead to employee abuse but keep management in check, so perhaps individual contracts keep the management in check, but still leave out the stupid seniority rules that lead to so much laziness. Additionally, companies that then try to outsource to other countries for cheap costs will find that they often end up with poor systems, and they will actually have to pay the domestic programmers for all the hours spent straightening things out. And if they need it in a rush and want overtime, that's fine, but they'll have to pay for it like everywhere else.
Just a couple last observations about this contractor thing. Most of the contractors I've met have better hours and fairer pay, and feel better about their jobs because they can't be forced to work unpaid overtime (and they get more sleep, too). All this leads to better morale, and even better productivity. And for those who think programming would become to expensive if everyone was a contractor, if all IT was contracting then it would be sort of a commodity thing, and prices would stabilize to a fair, normal level, but still be based on qualification rather than seniority, with better contractors costing more. Lastly, companies could even still have their own pseudo IT staff of employees, and if they treat them well most of the employees would probably stay and keep renewing contracts, leading
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Well personally I'd much rather be unionized than ionized. And I'm shocked that nobody on Slashdot passes the Asimov test!
Oo.. IT guilds..
can I run around with my "Network Operator" guild tag over my head and engage in open combat with those members of the "Webpage Design" guild?.. plz plz plz!
*Cor Por* *Cor Por* *Cor Por*
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
A better approach would be a licensure board for the profession. This is not the same thing as unionization but it would cut the labor supply which is horrendously high. One of the main contentions of the Programmer's Guild (lobbying group/not union) is that tech companies release false claims of a low supply of labor so H1B visas can be increased. Meanwhile, domestic talent finds it hard to be employed.
Of those who claim to be self taught, remember that whatever claim to skill or knowledge you have, it must be demonstrated repeatedly each time you change jobs. Any other person can make the same claim.
Also, let's not belittle the profession so much as to think that the 4 year degree isn't worth anything. That would make the university and college system the one of the biggest scam artists in the IT world. One could say, I never used the stuff I learned in school so therefore it isn't valuable. On the other hand, one could say, it wasn't used because the employer didn't bother to learn the value of the skills aquired, and therefore underutilized the educated person's skills.
I fail to see why a hair dresser, real estate appraiser and other jobs require a license but not software professionals.
A better approach would be to license not the ability to do work, but the ability to make claims on that work. In otherwords, put the licensed software professional on the hook for work done either by him or her, or a lesser skilled person by signing his or her name. Legally preclude non-licensed people from making statements about that software, despite having an MD, MBA, JD, etc. That gives the trained individual the respect they deserve, rather than saying, hey, I studied basket weaving and read a book on C++, now I'm a software professional. As it is now, there is *no* standard level of comparison.
Companies win because the overall quality of software would have to rise. Software professionals win because everyone's brother couldn't falsely claim they knew what they were doing. Pay would rise to reasonable levels and working conditions would also improve. Not everything could be outsourced because companies would demand the licensed software professional be located domestically where he or she could be held accountable, just like attorneys, CPA's, etc.
Having said all that, I'm leaving the profession because I've learned that the vast majority of people doing this work love the anarchy of it. They love the low entry barriers which destroy their economic rent. They think it's great to let other professions make far more money despite an equivalent amount of education and talent. They love the lack of prestige bestowed upon them, preferring pejoratives like "Geek", "Hacker", and "Nerd" instead of professional.
insensitive commie clod!
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
I'd really like to see professional unions for IT and software professionals. Like airline pilots, university faculty, doctors, and so on. It would benefit almost everyone. Obviously, engineers would have some leverage (finally!) in a profession where 1-2 year jobs are the current reality; but requiring employers to hire with a longer-term outlook, and defined work rules, would impose some proper planning and scheduling, and a union contract could put real constraints on the substitution of contractors, vendors, and outsourced/offshore labor for positions that should belong to employees.
It's taken me a while to come around to this position (I've been in the industry for 20 years), but I believe that without question it's the right thing in the 21st century.
And do not confuse organizing with professional licensing. They are two completely different and unrelated things. I'm not a fan of licensing in other than safety-related positions.
this is the worst thing that could ever happen to IT.
There is a bill under consideration that would allow Unions to see how their members (or potential members) voted.
Washington Times article
It's being pushed under the guise of efficiency, but its potential for abuse is disturbing.
and then will end the freedom of trade and business on the internet. every country will mandate that whatever done in I.T., has to be done with their countrys' it workers. and no company will be getting contracts from other countries from now on. you'll be stuck with whatever demand there is for i.t. in your own country, for the better, and for the worse.
and as this process will introduce bureaucracy that will force standards, you wont be able to just take a plane to another country you can get living permit and start working in a i.t. job either. you will have to go through insane tests for 1-2 years and 'prove' that you can work in i.t., just like doctors, architects have to do. hey wait a minute - they DONT. process is so arduous that many doctors just prefer to stay in their own country rather than engage in a dud 'acceptance' procedure in another country. better or worse.
ah, while they are at it, there sure would be a lot of sources who would demand that trade on the internet also should be 'subsidized and encouraged' for their own nation.
whoooopssss. end the internet freedom. you wont easily go to facebook or orkut or any other website and get an account there - why should you be let to do so, while there are the SAME services in your OWN country ? enter censorship and ban, to 'promote national i.t. industries'.
no.
unionizing is FAR stupid.
we are not coal mine workers. we are i.t. people. there has been no other profession on earth that members of which have been able to DICTATE not only their wages, but also what they want, on not only their bosses but entire companies/organizations.
yea, we, i.t. workers are like that. if you are good in your field, you can freelance even in u.s., canada and command $85/hour. hell, if you are good in your field, you can even go freelance in turkey and demand $100/hour and get it. not only that, but people LISTEN to you, or have to listen to. after all, youre the guy with the keys.
so, unionize and let go of ALL those things ?
go fuck off to 19th century.
Read radical news here
...would get over it's commie fear and see the light.
---
First: IT changes too quickly for a seniority system to function.
Second: Lots of bitch, whine and complain.
Third: Lots of narrow-focused argueing about slightly related topics.
Forth: A few truely insightful comments (see first point).
---
I'll close with a question: Do you really want your network potentially held hostage in a strike driven by newbies, no-nothings or 'technical sales' morons? How could a 'technical union' be structured to work and yet protect against such unqualified twits from destroying your ability to use your own network?
When those around you are loosing their heads while you are keeping yours, maybe you've misunderstood the situatiuation.
We're not charged particles, so I fail to see what unionization will accomplish...
First atom: I think I've lost an electron!
Second atom: Are you sure?
First atom: Yes, I'm positive!
unions suck. EOT.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
"i cant compete, and i want someone else to compete for me".
i dont know any good i.t. worker with good skills that is out of job, or underpaid. (if they are not stupid and let themselves exploitated). many people i know actually have so much demand that they are having to choose what to go with.
Read radical news here
Unless you signed a contract stating that you couldn't bring in legal services to aid you, you can. The only one stopping you is you. If you feel you were laid off for no good reason, you have every right to get a lawyer to find out why. It will cost you (unless you win and get your bill paid by the other side).
Or you can pay the union all the time. Instead of the big legal fee you pay a smaller fee the entire time you work under that union. Remember your union dues are paying those lawyers all the time, even when not in court. And when the union says that you are on strike, you got to picket getting paid a fraction of your regular salary. Even if your contract is not up. Got to support your union. See if your bills will understand that you are supporting your union and only took in $250 that week instead of your regular $1000 (that is what my brother's pay was when he was on strike)
Unions do not belong in every occupation. They were needed back in the day. Now laws exist which were why unions were needed in the first place. Do unions help some jobs? I hope so. But the need for a union is getting smaller every day. People need to realize that before the sign on the dotted line, they can 9and should) make sure they understand the contract that they are signing. They might want to change some parts of it. At a job interview, you are also interviewing the company.
"Unions do not cause companies to leave the country."
Never said that.
Geeks are too suspicious of any organization that would have them as members.
Even if it is in their economic self-interest.
And I say that as a former union member and shop steward (Steelworker USWA Local 480) and an IT guy since 1987.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They also like Ron Paul for his dashing good looks ;)
So how much of that is a safety issue, and how much is a group of people trying to force their personal preference on everyone else?
I think building code has gone from a good idea to the realm of insanity in the last few decades.
Think Deeply.
My brother!
You are now stating your position... Dude;... you are so-republican! :-)
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
There is no loyalty in this business; People hire slowly, fire quickly; everyone is either underqualified or too expensive; a highly skilled line of work but nobody ever gives a thought to real training. People cant develop skills or valuable and meaningful lives in an unstable economic environment. If unions ever form for IT, it will be due to companies who for so long have been trashing and exploiting the workforce instead of nurturing it.
I lived in the Detroit area for 7 long years. I had good friends that worked in union auto plants and the stories were amazing and scary. It's a wonder that a majority of cars run at all once they limp out of a union shop. A buddy had a job supplying a very slowly moving line with parts at a GM plant. He told me that it took him just under an hour to do his "job" and then he'd sleep the rest of the shift! Outrageous? One day he grabbed a broom and began sweeping up his messy area and was written up and skewered by his "steward". He almost lost his job over that transgression. So instead, he sleeps and nobody complains. I could tell many such tales. Also, it should be remembered that in 1972, I bought a brand new Chevelle SS for $3230. A cheapy car now is $20K and up. What has accounted for this increase in cost? Better cars? More features? No. Unions are at least partly responsible for this as they demand huge wages for workers that could not make that kind of money in any other way. Then they strike and claim the union members are being screwed somehow - low wages, not enough insurance, etc. I manage a 100 user network in IT for a county property appraiser. I make $40K/year though I am very skilled. I hold a Novell CNE/CNA, Microsoft NT certification, 98 certs., I am A+ and Net+ certified. IF this were a union shop, I'd likely make at least double what I do now but where would that money come from? You can depend upon the powers that be scrambling to replace me with a cheaper alternative should unionization take place. Then I'd have all the attributes that I do now and could say "I'm union - I don't have a job, but I'm union and proud of it." In 1973, I worked during the Summer during college as an oil pipeline laborer. I was a proud member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union. They paid me 14.66/hour and that was 35 years ago!! I ran something they called a "Vacuum Truck". It was my job to wear rubber waders and suck raw crude off the top of bodies of water where a leak had occurred. I wasn't allowed to drive the truck either and so when it filled up, another union guy drove the truck to the refinery where it was emptied. REALLY wasteful but I DID make a lot of money. In retrospect, I wished that I had kept that job and skipped the IT work. I was a physics major and math minor. I look back over all the years and find myself shaking my head at this. Unions self destruct, drive prices for goods to ridiculous amounts, and award laziness while punishing initiative. So what's with that?
I understand that quite well, thank you. It's just that Americans (not to exclude anyone, it's just the area I live in and work in) are currently in a situation where it's extremely and artificially difficult to earn a living wage. We live in a system where there is established and systematic inequity, and it's not the poor, sad businesses that are suffering.
When we're in a situation where pay raises have kept up with inflation, and where pay doesn't need a MASSIVE adjustment just to be reasonable, then I'll concede that it's equal opportunity. Right now, while either side can be wrong, in the large picture, workers need assistance across the board.
After witnessing the long and highly acrimonious battle between Safeway in Southern California and the grocery workers' union, I wouldn't touch a union, ever. The entitlement mentality of unions - i.e., "forcing" employers to give employees golden benefit packages at a huge cost that ends up draining the margins of an industry where margins are microscopically thin anyway - creates an inherently combative employee vs. employer environment. Being a devout Capitalist, it's against my nature to agree with what is basically Communist in origin and design. You compete in the open employment marketplace for your skill set and if you can't get the appropriate salary and benefit package you work hard on improving your skillset to compete - or you start your own company and work hard to generate whatever income you want. Making $60K+ with a hugely loaded pension fund and golden health benefits most even highly skilled professionals never get for an essentially unskilled labor position - i.e., clerking, washing fruit and veggies, stocking shelves, bagging groceries - give me a break. 99% of the people who are similarly unskilled will barely scrape above minimum wage and likely have no health benefits - or have to contribute half their paychecks if they want them. Does this make companies like Wal-Mart "evil" for doing this? This is the prevailing wage, like it or not, and it's up to the individual to strive for better. Perhaps the essentially Communist Utopian ideal of forced wealth redistribution (which is essentially what paying $60K to a fruit-washer amounts to) as a model for creating a better life for every person appeals to some people, but as someone who has seen things both as an employee and an employer I can say I want people to complete for whatever wage they can get and let the marketplace decide and let the individual decide what level they want to be at.
I'm surprised by all of the anti-union sentiment here, which I guess explains why IT has no unions. What other group of workers would stand for wage cuts, unpaid overtime, reduction and benefits etc. all at the whim of management? Where I live, Nurses and Teachers are both on strike because their salary increases are not keeping up with inflation - never mind a salary CUT which is standard operating procedure in IT. Sure, that might help keep some business afloat, but at what human cost? And what is the logical extension of this - back to the days pre-labor laws of 6 or 7 day workweeks and no minimum wage? Back to the days of slavery? Now THAT was "great" for business - workers for free!
im TOTALLY pro-democrat.
yet some stuff need different approaches.
the freedom had created all the i.t. we know today, also internet. if we let go of it through whatever reason, we let go of everything.
Read radical news here
Cops have been corrupt since time immemorial. In fact, any locus of power brings corruption to it. It is, in fact, why our founding fathers devised checks and balances; spreading out the power between three branches limits the degree to which it can be abused. The more people involved, the less abuse can happen.
Yeah, cops abuse their power. But I guarantee that there is far less abuse under police unions than without them. You have a high threshold to prove it otherwise.
[Ego]out
I'm currently working in Switzerland, but for those of you in the States... you're telling me that in the middle of an economic recession, you want to raise costs for the employer? Yeah, THAT will save your job!
Honestly, I've worked in large and small companies, and most of the time, there are about a thousand different ways that both efficiency and effectiveness could be improved at every turn. However, most IT people that I've met simply don't have the ability to step "outside" and see that delaying one project to improve the environment could result in big savings later. They like to blame the boss for that, while at the same time demanding more and more pay, under the illusion that they're talented when in reality there's simply a shortage of qualified IT people that's forcing companies to accept them as what's left.
Although as I came to the end of that paragraph, I realized that maybe most IT workers really are perfect for unionization... but I'll personally fight against it till my dying day!
As an EE, I have job security. My job is NOT offshoreable, because you cannot offshore local maintenance in power stations. Think about it.
In the US, we are at a precipice: energy is still in large demand and the cost of which is skyrocketing. Watch CNN for one hour and tell me how many Green energy advertisements you see. They are not advertising the energy but rather advertising the demand for innovators and engineers who can help solve this problem.
If nothing else, they would rather import EEs to help fill the team, rather than send the work off to *sia. As far as the EE/CS types are concerned, that market is saturated with smart people. Simple market forces dictate that the supply of able-bodies outnumber the supply of available jobs. Cue the labor auction.
So, it is in reality yet another anti-immigrant BS, with stuff about the H1...
If your proposed union says the H1 is good (because it is), then I could join.
Legal insurance runs about $12 a month where I work, and they handle all of that contract review work. Salary surveys for the area are cheap, and usually no more than a quarter out of date.
And I really don't want some of the people around me making the same wages as everyone else, because they don't pull nearly the same load.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
However, to the extent I believed that a labor union or professional organization would increase my material or economic well being I personally would be willing to join one.
I am aware that the U.S. has little democracy and therefore self-sacrificing citizenship is unlikely to be rewarded. I am aware that legally and politically speaking, the U.S. is all about money. I am aware that your economic status has much to do with your personal life expectancy, not to mention that of your family.
(sarcasm?)
I_Voter
New and incomplete web site
Political Power in the U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/2sdtvk
and unions make that fat float better and faster. We are facing layoffs at my job, but no exempt employees are being laid off. My boss kept the IS dept out of the union because he hates unions (one of the major reasons for me choosing this job). But I am watching all of our young skilled workers leaving or getting cut because of "bump rights". all we will be left with are the old bags who show up to socialize and collect their too big paycheck. Screw unions - they are more harmful than helpful and if people don't like long hours as a salary employee, then go somewhere else. Skilled IT people don't have problems finding good jobs. I know I don't.
Thou shalt not use tools thou does not understand, lest they rise up and smite thee
I've not taken notice that unions are very active in engineering fields like mechanics, chemical, civil, electronics, and so forth. While the need to present some kind of voice for common needs exists, there may be a reason that unions aren't typically found in those areas.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
If you stop giving away your code and abilities away for free, you will gain the respect of the folks in the board room.
If you continue to give away software for free, you undercut the whole industry. Manager types stop seeing the hard work that goes into making things work and takes it for granted.
Free software puts a damper on our ability to earn a living. If you were smart and want to have respect, money is the only language the business types understand.
If the industry continues to give stuff away for free, you will be expected to work for the same.
Kevin
demand better working conditions?
/.!!!
I'm reading
Unions are never the answer. They create a power struggle between the employees and management that is never balanced due to human nature. Instead form a worker owned cooperative. This way you own it and your democratic structure defines what you do.
My cooperative (worker owned and operated) started as a union but instead formed a cooperative. Here is a very handy resource site for worker cooperatives.http://usworker.coop/howtos
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
I am pretty sure that I would rather not be ionized, personally. Even a slight ionic charge would be bad on the electronics, and being turned into plasma would really suck. So I'm all in favor of IT being unionized.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I'm a software engineer. Back in the early 90's My boss sent me on loan to a GE Aerospace facililty (Now Lockheed Martin) in Camden, NJ where all the engineers were unionized. That included my fellow software engineers.
All the scare scenarios I'm reading here are complete BS. They had pretty much the same working environment as me, the same procedures and methods, etc. The only differences between them and me (as a non-unionized engineer) that I can remember were:
Oh, and I worked there on loan as a non-union person for two years. I was never treated any differently than anyone else by my co-workers. No harrassment, no attacks on my car, nothing.
This is just one person's story of course. But perhaps we should look at the actual real-world experience of unionized software shops before we start listening to scare stories about totally different industries.
I took as they were too busy actually working to bother.
There is a war going on for your mind.
That's the conclusion I've come to after glancing at all level 4-5 comments.
What you think on the issue is up to you but I would hope that you could come up with better justifications than "all unions are crooks", "only the lazy get rewarded," etc. If that's your knowledge of unions what is your knowledge of IT? Still using an abacus? Tin cans and string for networking?
Choose your side either way but don't expect me to take such ancient cliches seriously.
By all means, lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper, rather than the actual ability.
And this is different from the way things are run now... how?
Employers who are looking for personnel ARE looking for those pieces of paper. And some of those pieces of paper are worth more than others. And some of those pieces of paper are worth jack shyte, but they're still required.
Some of those pieces of paper are MCSA certs, some are A+ certs, some are Cisco certs, some are GEDs, and some are college diplomas. Most employers LIKE the idea of an outside source looking at potential candidates and giving them a Stamp of Approval(tm).
Now, I do not disagree with you. I do not think unions or more certs will entirely help a profession such as IT. Right now it's just a bit too wild and woolly to carve things into stone, and just about every decent if different IT professional brings *something* to the table. However, I do have to stress that those pieces of paper that we all disparage have meaning, if not for us than for the people who will be doing the hiring.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
My wife works with union issues all the time. They're struggling for their lives. The trickery, the BS...no way.
This issue comes up every now & again, and each and every time I say hell no. I want no part of that.
An association? Perhaps. But never a labor union as we know the term to mean.
Sure, the libertarian types tend to yell the loudest, but the libertarian types yell the loudest everywhere.
I've never heard Libertarian points argued as loud as the anti-abortion sect or the environmental crazies far on the other side.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
There are too many problems with your post, so I'll just name a couple.
The auto jobs that are here (and aren't in danger of being lost by imminent bankruptcy of GM, Ford, and Chrysler) are the non-union jobs from Honda, Toyota, and Nissan.
Since when do assembly line workers get to plan and design cars? Union assemblers build em' good or bad and they've been building products nobody wants for decades. Pontiac Fiero anyone?
The textile workers
Huh? The products that can't be made anywhere else have stayed in the U.S. Your generic t-shirt has been made abroad for at least a generation.
The steelworkers, who through a combination of union tactics AND environmental laws
You need a better understanding of the history of the American steel industry. Those mills were booking work *years* in advance. Instead of expanding capacity (which lowers prices) they stuck to their high price, let 'em wait attitude. It's very difficult for me to see how floor workers were to blame for that.
See, I was supposed to wait for one of the union electricians to come over and move my stuff.
Did it ever occur to you there might be a reason that is more important than your immediate need to use another cubicle? Imagine a worker who brings an electric heater to her new cubicle.. No problem right?? Well, he's probably the one that screwed it up for you.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Unions only make sense where there a LOT of workers doing very BASIC and undifferentiated work. If you can be replaced by just about any thing that can breathe than you might benefit from a union. In addition, only jobs that require physical presence in a specified location can be regulated this way, otherwise the least expensive option will almost always win.
Fourty-two!
Companies will just ship more jobs overseas and we don't need people getting lazy and giving eveyrone else a bad rap (ie the motor industry).
Having said that, my company does have a union. At times I think that's part of the problem. So I've personally opted not to contribute. Yes, I know I still get some benefits from their work but the problem with unions are that they aren't there to protect good workers. They're there to make money and that means protecting lazy workers who will obviously be grateful and pay up.
because there aren't enough foaming-at-the-mouth religious wars about vi/emacs, windows/linux, sql/mysql/postgres/oracle, apple/everything, and all that other fucking bullshit.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
i live in the midwest and grew up here in union manufacturing towns.
all of those jobs are gone due to overpayment for jobs anyone can do.
forcing higher wages and forcing arbitrary qualifications will do the EXACT same thing to IT jobs.
replace wages with prices.
replace jobs with sales.
now realize that's what happens whenever rabidly anti-union supply side economics are implemented.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
First, I RTFA:
Let's be very clear about this, while you have a right to work in America as well as a right to seek work, quit work, work well or work poorly, even a right to not work at all, you do not have a right to have a job.
Arguing that you have a right to a job is tantamount to arguing that you have a right to force someone to pay you regardless of your qualifications, skills, effort or quality of work.
Secondly, lets talk about incentives.
I used to work in Washington State and ran into a few people who were interested in this WashTech thing. I didn't meet ALL of them, so please don't be offended when I say that those I met were easily in the lower 50% competency bracket. Unionizing has always been about leveling the field. Providing equal or more equal pay and benefits to the lesser capable at the expense of the more capable. I suppose that is a good thing if you are in the lower half or even lower two-thirds since no-one can be accurately placed on a sliding scale. But it's not a good thing if you are at the top of your field.
These incentives are all wrong. They encourage solidarity to the union and your peers, not the business or the underlying profit motive that makes your paycheck possible. They encourage seniority rather than excellence. This is the death knell for businesses even though it can take generations. We are witnessing the effects now in the way Detroit is losing to Japan. If you don't understand why a healthy business environment and support for the profit motive are important to your employment options then please stop reading now and go mark some other post as funny, the rest of this is beyond you.
Thirdly, lets talk about hiring.
I don't know why corporate lobbyists are fighting for H1B visas so hard. It cannot be about the volume of candidates because I have no trouble finding a volume of non-H1B people to apply for my open positions. It also cannot be about quality of candidates because I don't see the H1B applicants as any better (or worse) than the standard US Citizen candidate. I also don't see Unions protecting us against H1B candidates or offshoring taking "our jobs." There are financial costs to H1B hiring that level the salary with US workers. There are also stability costs... will their visa be renewed or will you have to replace them in a few years after they've gotten up to speed? Offshoring is also immune to Union protection. If anything, a Union threatening an employer will chase all the jobs overseas rather than none. Companies go offshore because cash is tight and their goals are big (and they're run by inexperienced management that hasn't been burned sufficiently by offshore teams). Sure some jobs can be compartmentalized or are documented well enough to be regimented and executed by offshore teams... but are those really the jobs you want to fight for? Do you WANT to work in textiles or a call center where you just follow a script? Are those the jobs you want to fight to keep in the USA?
When I'm hiring, I look for the most capable candidate with the best experience and attitude that I can find. I pay handsomely to retain this person because I want those skills and don't want to have to settle for second rate. You, as a free American, have a right to acquire those skills. In other words, you won't be forced into a gymnast training camp at a young age because your body type is right for it and the olympics are coming. You have a right to educate yourself. The Internet is a sufficient tool, you don't need a college degree, you just need motive, time, the web and a cheap computer to play on.
If you bust your ass and become highly skilled/knowledgeable in a desired field (choose wisely) then you can be c
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
I've worked union and non-union IT jobs and I far prefer working in a union job. Yes seniority over skills can be a problem. But in every other job I've had skills and how hard you worked took a back seat to who was friends with management. I don't like seniority trumping all, but it isn't any worse than the alternative.
At my most recent previous job management delayed evaluations over and over. They said they would be objective based upon metrics. The metrics ended up being the managers subjectively picking a number and then an "objective" totaling of these numbers. If the supervisors really liked you, the top raise was 3% which was below inflation, compared to 10-15% raises management received. We had no retirement plan. We were huge so we had good health care benefits if you were willing to pay a significant amount for them. People were often fired without cause or fired for trivial mistakes. The head of the IT and Engineering departments [~300 people] had a degree in Biology and no formal IT training such as a degree and about a decade of experience. I have slightly over a decade of experience, although a large portion as an independent consultant, and am trying to finish up my last year of a bachelor's in CS while working.
Under my union position we have fully paid healthcare with almost nonexistant copays. We have a 15% 401k contribution (with no match required). I have a grievance procedure to ensure there is a process of progressive discipline rather than immediate firing for trivial things. When I was hired I was hired in to a lower level position than the work I was expected to do, and ended up also taking on even more work outside my job classification. Management was unwilling to voluntarily make adjustments to my position and salary. Through the bargaining process the other members of our union local wanted to ensure our IT department was compensated fairly and they chose to give up a percentage of their raises in order to have our salaries adjusted. The head of our tiny IT department has no college or certifications. He has a decade of experience in IT, but only at this organization except for a short stint helping with a college computer lab.
There is a very interesting book called Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives by Madeleine Bunting. The book is UK-centric, but I think many of the ideas in the book will apply to other countries.
The author of the book points out that although many occupations suffer from compulsory (and often unpaid) overtime, knowledge-based professions such as IT and teaching are much worse affected than other professions. It's been a few years since I read the book and my memory is a bit hazy on its content, but I do recall finding it to be a worthwhile and informative read. If you are frustrated with working conditions in the IT industry then I suggest you read it: it won't provide any solutions, but it will educate you about the symptoms and extent of problems.
That's greedy employers and a congress who refuses to protect the domestic job market.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
They can already find out who is going to support the union and harass them.
They can already find out how they're going to vote and stuff it with vetted supporters.
They can do worse than what happens with card check.
They can hire agitators from security firms to make violations happen.
They will attempt to fight a war of attrition to force no votes.
Those above acts do not suggest a true choice, but a forced hand towards voting no.
The industry is overdue for unionization, and to remove the imbalance towards business.
It does not mean incompetence, and it allows an even hand against those who have no problem bankrupting entire communities just to get their favored answer.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
No one will see this post, but here goes.
I think we fail to see large enough.
It depends on how far and how connected an IT workers union is made.
This should be a union not only of the programmers and help desk people, but
hardware/system analysts, network designers, and telcom people.
Try outsourcing to India or China when the entire nation strikes and cuts off communications to the entire business world.
Or if all the DNS servers in the US fail to find web addresses. Many other crucial systems are the lever for hard negotiation when taken on a nationwide scale.
The might of such an organization would rival the power of something like say . . . the Spacing Guild in Dune. A problem business doesn't travel on the internet without us.
You could have two tracks to get into the union. Formal education or grandfathered in through work experience.
That brings in the folks who needed to work from the ground up when the industry began and covers the current workers who put in time through formal education.
Have rotating spokesmen the for "Guild" or Union whatever you want to call it.
We know who has ability and who doesn't. Set some minimal standards and help people become members who really want to learn and belong.
Only have fees when necessary for representation legal or otherwise.
All the pitfalls of Unions needs not apply: Greedy entrenched Union bosses, nepotism, freeloaders, squeezing small businesses.
What are the big beefs of IT? [Listed in no particular order]
No budget.
No time or training for new untested software.
Treated like glorified janitors instead of being included as part of the business.
Long hours, short on pay and high on stress and blame.
Lack of even minimal staffing.
The big problem is trying to group IT workers into a cohesive group.
Like herding cats on meth who hear an automatic can opener.
This Union can't be all things to all people, and that is why it hasn't formed earlier.
The lone hired guns won't give up competitive advantages compared to a union.
Really sharp programmer/consultants are still making money while helpdesk
and programming plebs get the outsourcing shaft.
Might want to stay away from government connections.
I'm a software developer in a union. The union negotiates with the company to set the engineering levels & benefits.
Standardized benefits i think are very fair. Although it removes the opportunity to negotiate more vacation, etc in lieu of raises, etc.
The union also advocates for employees in cases of workplace grievances.
The union contract defines what benefits we receive, which means the company cannot suddenly decide to remove benefits from us.
The contract also covers layoffs & terminations which provides the employees some benefit.
Unionization will not suddenly make the business respect IT. Do you want what all the other big career options have then start acting like a professional. Someone earlier said that if a normal engineer knows how much guessing an IT engineer does then they will be ashamed of calling them engineers. Well then ask yourself why are you making so many guesses. It is shocking to me how many people implement systems without putting them in a test environment. Do you think that the Petronas Towers were built without doing extensive modeling ? Well get that attitude into IT and maybe the business will start respecting you more. Also for those not familiar with ITIL, IT is there to support the business. IT is not the boss of the business. And again be professional. Should you be called into a meeting with management about a major project that you are busy with, try and be on time, do not show up carrying a can of 7up and God help me next time I see some idiot pitching up with a food stained t-shirt and expecting me to treat him like a professional adult. If you need a bib to eat then I will treat you like a child and make you stay behind until your job is finished. And just for the record I am a techie not management but I have been in enough meetings where things like this happen. Finally for management stop hiring the smooth talking fly by nights or PFYs that I am sure is just out there to screw up my systems because they promise me at home when they have problems a factory reset of the router does the job. In short management should learn IT before they hire anybody else. Do this and IT will become respected and there will be no need for unions.
I once heard someone say that a union is the result of miscommunication between management and staff.
That said, while Unions may have the power to improve the lives of those weak individuals on the extremes who are taken advantage of, they will inevitably evolve into life sucking micro-managed financial bullies where you will not be allowed to be productive because the task you know how to do (install program X on your workstation), that must be completed before you can start yours (use X to do something) has to be done by the union protected overpaid old guy who doesn't care about when it gets done because the company cannot fire him.
Unions are like the RIAA, they look good on paper (protect the helpless artist / employee who doesn't have the work ethic and brains to stand up for themselves) - but once they get you locked in, they reveal just how truly powerful and evil they really are.
(Mentioning the RIAA is karma whoring, but I think the anology fits - at least from the similar sensation of fury over the abuse of power I feel when I read either term.)
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
Being a strong believer in liberty and the free market, I see nothing wrong with allowing groups of similar people to organize for better job conditions or what have you.. however Unions today seem to only operate in the political realm. I'm not interested in using government to enforce laws against my employer, the terms of my employment must be as voluntary for me as they are for my employer.. Nor am I found of sending my union dues directly to the Democrat party.
Generally for these reason I do not favor joining a union. However if a union existed that operated only in the market realm I would join that without any issue.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Most code's are NOT a joke. They are a means for business. Codes are a huge racket.
Yes, many codes are in conflict, obtuse, and profanely nonsensical. That is why homeowners, developers, and contractors pay a lot of money to those who enforce the codes.
There is a lot of money made in zoning, permitting, and inspection. Some of the money is passed via fees, licenses, and permits. Some of the money is passed under the table. There are plenty of ways to pass money indirectly in order to be less traceable.
If the codes were truly about safety, there would be more certainly and less money flowing because of uncertainly. It's the same as the idea about writing laws so that everyone is a criminal.
If IT becomes a certified profession, it will be because there is money to be made for those who control the certification process.
Always follow the money...
So let's not create an IT Union that works in that model - let's make one that focuses on work conditions, from overtime compensation, on-call compensation or limitation, and workplace standards - non-RSI-inducing desks/keyboards, an a push for solid standards. what if we suddenly stopped bending over backwards to make sites IE compliant en masse? What if we couldn't be laid off because we were out on extended medical leave due to RSI, and could make our employer spring for DragonNS?
There are many benefits to collective action.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I think you just said that being in a union would raise your wages, therefore you shouldn't join one.
I believe too many of us think of ourselves as the "employees". C'mon, this is America. The land of opportunity. Lets become "employers" and then dictate what we do. Wether we want to exploit our employees or outsource our business. Stop cribbing about corporations trying to maximize their profits by such exploitation. You would have done the same. Start your company and then set examples
just waiting to take your job. Unions only work when labor is scarce. Labor in the IT markets are not scarce. For an idea of what the market would look like, check out the union vs. non-union auto industry. The non-union jobs are actually growing in the U.S. by thousands every year. The union jobs are shrinking by the tens of thousands every year. Unionizing is the fast track to unemployment. Keep your skills up to date, diversify the number of industries you work in, and always keep your eye on the next gig.
Most of the ones I deal with on a daily basis are a bunch of lazy worthless idiots anyway. I see them hang up on people, surfing the net instead of working, putting people on hold etc...
Your statement assumes that sharing is not related to making money.
The sentiment you share is of "pay me or nothing gets done". That works for continual labor. It is not the same for software, and you know it. The software guys play by a different game, one in which can never be understood by the big-wigs.
Why is that? The basic idea behind communism is that people (all, not a select few) control the means to produce. Because a few people made the basic tools to create, we all can create. Because we all have the capacity to create for no cost other than time (linux + GCC), contracts were implemented to boost the communistic ideal: sharing is caring.
Your system doesnt work with ours. Why exactly a problem?
Depends on the union.
The one I am stuck in now AFSCME is not an IT union it is a public service and health care workers union.
The sad thing is that the management knows they have the union by the balls as the employees are to afraid to strike for fear of not being able to feed their families.
The amount of comp and vacation time lost is just stupid as the management chooses weather or not to give you comp time or OT and when you can take the comp time. Which ends up being comp time that workers cant take.
Wage wise...... I work for one of the lowest paid counties in the state.
You obviously haven't seen most of the IT women I work with. Thanks, but no.
Well if their overweight, then a corset would make them look more feminine. Now you still might not find them attractive, but they would be more feminine. Also, one could wear a corset and still dress modestly. If a female coworker you find unattractive will wear a corset and a xena outfit as opposed to a maiden's dress, she probably tends to dress revealingly in any form of clothing.
Now if their petite (read really skinny no ass no boobs) a corset would do little to enhance their figure. So it would be a waste.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Unions themselves aren't "bad". They are just bad for all who aren't members.....
The 2 unions I've seen from the outside, but up close, are those for nursing and teachers. To my view, they have both locked employees into really crappy agreements with 'management'. They were bad for all competent members.
And they cost money to their members.
And they keep their members from negotiating anything better, individually.
That doesn't sound like it's good for anyone.
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.
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 j
It is well known that unions stand up for members' rights when it comes to pay, overtime, working conditions, grievances, and so on. But the most important issue for members of an IT union is girlfriends. If a union could help members with that impenetrable issue then I think most people on slashdot would sign up immediately.
Failing that, using union dues to subsidize membership fees of porn websites would be acceptable.
A friend of mine also had this problem. He walked into a major university about two years ago and asked about getting some formal qualification to match his skills.
He's now writing a phd, (with an honorary everything else under it) and working at the same time after the undergrad lecturers discovered they had nothing to teach him.
While it might be fair to say that many institutions are more interested in tuition fees than education, most aren't so completely stupid that they can't pick a buyer at a market. They'll accommodate if you can prove you have the skills and talk to the right people.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Unions have their place, and this is NOT one of them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I generally agree with you with respect to labor unions. However, it is evident that you conflate unions and their behavior with professional licensure / regulatory bodies. While it is true that a variety of outside forces including unions and employers have schemed to game those bodies to their own ends at various points, their function and history behind them is quite different than that of labor unions. Professional licensure (for lawyers with the state bars (which you mistake the ABA for), or state engineering licensure boards, etc.) came about as a result of failures on the part of those respective professions to police themselves. These failures made themselves evident in the form of massive miscarriages of justice (for lawyers), and in the failures of large structures causing high human casualties (for engineers). It would seem from your animosity towards these groups (which seems rooted in a mistaken impression that they are analogous to unions) that you advocate allowing any person or group of people to build a bridge. Unfortunately, we tried this as a society and got incidents as bad or worse than the failures of the school buildings in China from the recent earthquakes. Even licensed professionals have lapses or blind spots in judgment, thus the Tacoma Narrows bridge catastrophe. State licensure boards provide a formal tracking mechanism of the person who takes personal and professional responsibility for the safety of the works wrought under their seal.
Clearly, other than a very few sorts of systems, there is no need to so license and verify the competency of IT professionals. If I write an erroneous CORBA interface for e commerce or design a terrible UI for a company's website, there is manifestly no acute public safety risk. As you can see from the considerations in these examples, there is no real discussion of advantage for the licensed professional. Typically there are only drawbacks to being a PE, including professional liability insurance and a possibility of making a reasonable mistake with catastrophic consequences which the public officials will hang you out to dry for. Also, to reduce the burden on the public (you) most states require PEs only for structures over a certain size and/or expected occupancy. Also, your right to represent yourself in court is preserved, though given the complexity of our various legal codes, it is difficult to do so effectively. In other words, your expressed concern about licensed professionals like lawyers and engineers is not nearly as valid as your concern about trade unions. And it stems from the origins of the two things.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Overall, Union is good. It has kept a lot of people working over the years. Without it, I'm sure our unimployment rates would be way down. Union is definately good in some, but it's not necessary for all industries.
Work smarter, not harder, with gps tracking
This is correct, the presence and potential for unionisation can lead to conditions that are the equivalent and so negate the need. Honda is an excellent example.
Why do smart programmers make such dumb decisions. The Writers and Actors are doing quite well against the studios.
Well, perhaps C++ programmers are dumber than (pick the rich actor)
This is a different industry. Start anew. Learn from the other's mistakes.
With no overtime? If you're sticking around after having that happen once or twice then you're an idiot regardless of whether you're unionized or not.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
The reason we in IT get abused with work hours is due to Federal law that exempts us from overtime payment.
No unions are needed, or even professional organizations.
All that is needed is to remove I.T. workers from the list of jobs that are exempt from the overtime wage laws.
As soon as employers have to pay for all those hours, the overtime will stop real fast.
A few years ago I was on an SAP conversion project. I calculated that if I have been paid straight time, never mind overtime, for all the extra hours I had logged, I would have been paid over $35,000, JUST FOR THAT YEAR, and the year wasn't over yet.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/hrg.htm#8
I don't want the dead weight dragging me down. I want my employer to be free to fire anyone, anytime. Nothing is worse than having to pick up the slack for people who don't get it or won't do it.
I don't want to have to wait in line behind some dull C- lifer to get a senior position. I want to move my career at my pace, not the pace dictated by some one-size-fits-all collective bargaining agreement.
I don't want to have a "shop steward" or analogue who butts into the operation of the business. I want the business to be run efficiently based on business goals and profitability because if my employer succeeds I will either benefit fiscally or at the very least my marketability will improve.
I don't want a standard payscale based on seniority and bogus paper credentials. I want the freedom to negotiate my job based on my value.
And for the people who have bad working conditions where their employer is taking advantage of them, you have three choices:
1) Renegotiate your job.
2) Get a better job.
3) Accept that you are not good enough do 1 or 2 and be happy someone lets you pay your mortgage for populating a cubical.
Unions protect the B and C players at the expense of those who excel. We don't need them in IT.
Wow, if there's still IT people using Blackberries, then we do need a union. iPhones for All!!! (But not the 3G one's, we want 16gig version 1 phones....with unlimited Voice AND DATA packages!!!!) And we want them on something other than AT&T! and mountain dew, lots of mountain dew...
ed duval the very last person
The common thing here is Specialized Knowledge. Regardless of how it is learned, we need to keep up with it. A union just doesn't fit for those with this type of knowledge, professional organizations do.
Personally, i am discusted with the current state of IT workers. I cannot hire college grads with degrees in computer science, the programs don't prepare them. Certs from CompTIA never expire, I had an A+ certified tech not know what type of memory went into a desktop computer. MCSE, Cisco programs are rather proprietary, and don't prepare for multiple platforms well. The best thing time time in the field, but we've all seen managers that claim years of experience who are so out of touch that they cannot make an informed decision anymore. A voluntary professional organization with a system of continuing-ed is the best option to get the IT industry in ship shape.
With a group like this, workers in large shops can openly share their issues with others in the community, and change standard practice. IT managers can also effect corporate practices. IT is NOT a magic bullet as we all know, and many ave pointed out. The forgotten piece of the puzzle are the little guys --the zit faced beetle-driving geek squad guys, the neighborhood small businesses, and the niche computer consultants, security experts, and the highest sought after freelance assets. There will be a measuring stick to compare these guys to, and keep the corrupt ones out.
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch
Let me complete it for you: H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 30% less than the going wage.
L1 visas H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 50% less than the going wage.
Offshoring is H1B's are designed to allow US employers to obtain employee's with skills that they are UNABLE TO FIND IN THE US for 80% less than the going wage.
Offshoring is very dependent on guestworkers (H1B or L1) to get company info so the former guestworkers can lead offshoring teams, cut off guestworkers and you reduce offshoring markedly.
Your simple change would work if the employers had to participate in an auction so those bidding the highest wage got the worker.
The American auto industry didn't die because of unions. It died because idiotic managers refused to build cars with any quality controls, and Japan listened to Deming. Then idiotic managers chose to try to force consumers to buy gas guzzlers just as gas prices rose to four bucks a gallon. Poor management was not caused by the unions.
A person with no technical skill who knows they have no skill and is willing to get the right person to do the job is FAR better than a person who thinks they know more than they do and tries to micromanage.
Let's say you're a landlord. You want to offer a tenant a lease. This activity happens a million times a year in your city. There are no real surprises in the vast majority of cases -- you pay money, I fix leaks in roof over your head.
Do you think your local lawyers would be happy with there being just one OSS Model Lease Agreement which fulfilled the needs of 99% of landlords and saved them one million billable hours a year? Oh, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeck no.
Do you think the IT union is going to be in favor of any OSS software which obsoletes union members? For example, if there is a Java Struts Configuration File Operator (Level 2) on the union chart, do you think they will be very happy when someone comes up with a convention-over-configuration framework (Rails, etc) which obsoletes those JSCFO(2)s? Oh heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeck no.
You will use the tools that the union approves. You will write your code the union way. You will support the candidates the union supports. You will, in all things, comply with the will of the union. Or they will find you troublesome. And that could end very, very badly for you -- capiche?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Unions only work if everyone on the planet is in the same union. Unionization just drives the cost of business up, which either kills the business, or the business moves elsewhere.
No the problem for workers in this country is Outsourcing and theres only *one* way to stop outsourcing: give those foreign workers visas.
If you think competing with someone for a job is bad, consider how bad it is when you are competing against someone paid at Indian wage levels. The only solution is to give that Indian a US Visa, so that now he's competing under US laws and US cost of living. Sure he'll still drive the price down, but at least not to Indian cost-of-living wages. And that money is going into the US economy. When they leave and start their own company, its another US company - not a home grown Indian company.
Right now, US companies are training Indian workers how to start Indian businesses to compete with them.
I hear from US IT people complaining of sweat shops in the US where Indian workers come over temporarily to learn the needs of US customers and then go back and work for a pittance. Do you think they go back because they want to, or because the US government makes them? Let them stay, and demand a proper wage.
And bottom line, if IT really is that easy, then you really shouldn't complain that its pay sucks. You don't hear the fry cook demanding six figures. Welcome to capitalism. If you don't like it, go to France.
To those who still support unionization, I ask you: what make of car do you drive, where was your TV made, your computer? There are still US made cars, TVs and computers. But they cost more and aren't as good. If you really believe in protectionism: put your money where your mouth is.
Doctors don't belong to unions, but they have the very powerful AMA to protect their interests. Lawyers have a similar deal. It seems to me that if you don't organize, then there is nothing to keep the MNCs from stomping you into the ground.
So what is the non-union remedy to the issues noted in the original question (of 60 hour work-weeks, etc.)?
I ask, because for as much as I like free markets, the free market currently isn't fixing these issues, and it is *precisely* because of the "lone gun" culture IT has.
A true free-market argument states that the labor side of the labor/capital tug-of-war would do something to create its own power to negotiate for better terms. And guess what? This is precisely what a union would do.
A critical distinction must be made: unions != licensure organizations (call them what they are: guilds), like the ABA or AMA. They serve different purposes, even while their effects on labor utilization sometimes appear similar.
Both unions and licensure organizations would have the effect of driving at least *some* -- but obviously not all -- IT work offshore, to nations with lesser labor power, regulations, and equal or lesser pay rates, with a secondary or tertiary eye towards quality-of-deliverables. But unlike a union, an IT licensure organization modeled after the AMA or ABA *would* kill the innovative spirit of the IT industry and artificially drive-up the costs of those services (just as the AMA and ABA have done).
I argue that we need a union, because it's the free-market's labor-side alternative to regulation. But should stay VERY far away from statutory licensure requirements. Let the market reverse-course a bit, and more-closely and accurately seek its labor vs. capital negotiation equilibrium...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
but in IT isn't one of those places.
Unions have done a lot of good. 40 hour work weeks, pensions, overtime and safer working conditions for people in industry are all directly attributable to the rise of union labor. However, unions do their best work for unskilled and semi-skilled professions. Welders, truck drivers, miners, steel workers and the like are helped by unions. WHY IN THE FUCK DO TEACHER'S UNIONS EXIST? Why are government employees unionized? There are grocery stores where people are unionized.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
My experience with unions goes like this. First off, several years ago, my mom started working for the county as a public health nurse. When she was offered the option to join the union that represents people in her profession, she declined mostly due to the fact that that union spent some of the dues that members pay supporting political policies that she disagreed with. Fast forward a couple years and her manager approaches her and strongly advises her to join the union because if she isn't a union member and there are budget cuts she would lose her job before union members would, regardless of how long she has worked for the county, so my mom had to start paying union dues that will very likely be spent in part on fighting for things she disagrees with. This is flat out wrong.
Experience number two is this. I have a friend who used to work for Northwest Airlines as a mechanic. This (as all airline jobs are) is a union job. Northwest wasn't doing well financially, so they said "sorry guys but we're going to have to cut your pay and benefits a bit". The union wouldn't have any of that so they got into some real hard core negotiations and I believe even went on strike. The end result of this was that Northwest gave in to the Union demands, but in order to afford the pay and benefits the union demanded, they had to not only cut jobs, but also close down one of the maintenance shops leaving my friend with out a job. Thanks Unions, you all are great.
Keep the previous story in mind next time your flight is delayed due to a maintenance issue and direct your complaints to the Unions who ultimately forced the Airline into a position where they couldn't keep their planes all up and running smoothly and on time.
-Cheers
There is absolutely no reason to repeat the mistakes of the past. A union can be formed any way you wish. That's why some work and some don't. An IT union can be as limited or controlling as you like. The first thing we need is simply a legal team and lobbiest to fight to protect us from the offshoring problem.
Easily fixed by going to a "loser pays" court system.
+++OK ATH
Looking at the comments, I can see that people on this list - i.e. mostly Americans - are generally against trade unions. Now, putting to one side the question of whether it is actually a good idea or not, why are people against the idea?
I mean - as far as I can see, what most people say is that they've seen some spectacularly bad examples of what trade unions do to sitfle the freedom of workers and monopolise their area of trade, but surely that is only one side of the truth? I don't know about America, of course, but in Europe most of the benefits you enjoy as an employee are due to trade unions: the right to holidays, sick pay, 8 hour work days, protection against unfair dismissal and a lot of other things. That is not to say that unions are only good - what really is? But they aren't just bad either.
I think one of the problems with unions now is that they have grown old in their way of thinking. They still think they live in a world where workers suffer under appalling conditions and have no rights at all. If we could create a trade union that served our actual interests as they are today, maybe that would indeed be worth our while?
Well, let's dissect this.
A) Even libertarians generally acknowledge that it's the consumer that drives the free market; they just don't think that there should be any regulation of the market's operation. And no, no-one is owed a job they're not qualified for: what they are owed is fair compensation and good working conditions if they ARE hired.
B) Of course, the auto industry in America has been destroyed: by bad decisions, competition from abroad, and mismanagement. It's hard to argue that they've been crippled by unions, given that the various unions involved have systematically caved for over a decade now.
Also, RE: "competition keeps things healthy." That's a meaningless buzzphrase which isn't applicable to the discussion.
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.
That would be great. IAAL. Would you mind getting all of my clients to agree not to sue me if they lose their cases and it is not my fault? Please bear in mind that some of these people may be angry and bitter, not to mention in desperate need of cash. Thanks, I appreciate it.
I also venture to suggest that you have never drafted a "simple filing" in your life. Pleadings are a complex artform, and a good lawyer will take many years to perfect their drafting style. Because they serve the technical purpose of identifying the issues in dispute, a good pleading can mean the difference between years of costly litigation and a quickly resolved dispute.
Lawyers do charge too much money. But $50/hour is not even close to adequate to cover the insane risk of being sued by your clients when they lose, nor does it reflect the extremely complex skills which are required to practice law properly.
Read Pynchon.
...if you aren't taking the initiative to get yourself better pay, better benefits, or a better job, then I'm sorry, but you need to grow a spine.
I'm 30 years old, and I've been at my current job for almost 8 years. Two and a half years ago I was making slightly more than half of what I'm making now. I had let raises come to me in their own time, which wasn't very quickly under the old management; we got bought by a giant media conglomerate, who has worked to improve our pay and benefits tremendously, but it still wasn't something that just happened by magic.
I worked out what I *should* be earning per year if I'd received an annual cost-of-living increase, as well as if I'd received any kind of merit increase. The amount was about 10% higher than my salary at the time. So I drew up some charts and sent it off to the VP of my section.
Within a week, they had given me a raise to more than that amount. They knew I was good at my job and were afraid I would leave (I in fact was feeling disillusioned and did interview somewhere else, and almost took that job, but the circumstances just weren't quite right). And I realized that this had only happened because I had taken the initiative to tell them that I deserved more than I was earning.
And that began it. What came along with the raise was also more responsibility; and I realized that you will not get a significant raise for doing the same shit you're doing now. Go ask for responsibility, go ask for new tasks. One of my co-workers constantly whined about not getting to do any of the interesting work; but whenever we'd point out that they should go ask for such things, they'd complain that there was no point.
I reactivated my résumé on Monster.com a while back, and got a dozen calls and emails within three days. There are a lot of IT jobs out there; if you think your company is underpaying you, tell them how you feel and that you think you deserve a raise. Most IT companies are always looking for people to hire, so if you put your résumé out there, your own company will see that you're looking for a new job, and if you're valuable to them, that can make them want to improve your situation before you up and leave. (This can backfire if you have spiteful managers who think "How dare he look for another job!"... but then, why would you want to work for such people?)
Go out and GRAB IT. The single biggest mistake I've made in my entire life was turning down an offer to run the department I'm in. (I turned it down because the VP who made the offer was a psycho and I didn't want to be reporting directly to him. He was gone three months after he offered me the position; I should have taken it.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
So your boss only has to agree to things that are less of a hassle than firing and replacing the whole department. That's ... not all that much leverage.
Professional organisations as advocated in the article are worse than useless - they invariably end up doing the state's dirty work for it by excluding from the industry those who have displeased the government. And they are as undemocratic as any corrupt union, because workers in such 'professions' have no choice but to join the organisation.
Good to know you are indeed a practitioner.
I agree you have a knowledge function that is not meant to be deleted. However, you appear to be merging a couple of situations that I feel would benefit from being separated.
You of course have final review because of the risks you mentioned. Yet I still believe that not every minute of the case requires top level judgement.
The breakpoint I went after may even benefit from some "risk prevention" agreements. For example, if the defendant is otherwise stuck with some $8-10,000 fine which I would call "low-midline", then it makes no decision-analysis sense to use your firm for more than 50 hours (choosing an arbitrary rate of $200 an hour).
This means the **AA can just grind you just out of spite alone to force you to do work that will drive your price over the mark. That is what I am looking to open a discussion about.
If someone gets the big precendent that says "this is how you bust this kind of claim", if the first few steps are "boilerplate", that is where I was suggesting my initial "simple" rate.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
To be honest, I think that the union in most of those shops was a good idea for the majority of the workers. Management was continually trying one screwage tactic after another. However, the worst thing that happened in my longest-term workplace was when a particular manager (who also managed hiring) quit and was replaced by a series of executive glove puppets. New hires were idiots, the jobs themselves were downgraded multiple pay levels, and the entire place went completely to hell.
Being in a union then actually hindered the manager who came along next, as he couldn't simply fire the worst of the idiots and get the place back on track. There were people there pulling down higher salaries than he was, and actually contributing negative work because someone else had to be assigned to follow them around fixing their constant screwups.
If I hadn't quit soon after, I would have gone to the CEO and spun a project request involving transferring the few remaining useful people to a new group, bulking that up with new hires who knew what they were doing, and have them gradually take over the role of the original team. They could even have used the opportunity to move the team out of the "temporary" premises they'd occupied for eight years.
Since when do assembly line workers get to plan and design cars?
The point being the product they've been selling has put them into the dire straits they are in now. It's not in the union's scope to design cars, establish features, etc.
"a retirement plan based on selling cars"
Toyota and other younger companies either,
1. Haven't been in the U.S. long enough to have the burden of pensions on their books. It's also worth noting the unions have taken over much of the pension plan. http://www.knowyourpension.org/pensions/UAWpensions/UAW_pension_updates.aspx
2. Don't offer pensions. Which means the average assembler working for much less.
Today's lesson: don't count on a pension. Ever. Between inflation used to discount them and the lack of penalties for abandoning them, the pensioneer is screwed.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Instead of expanding capacity (which lowers prices) they stuck to their high price, let 'em wait attitude.
Might that be because expanding requires more labor, and the unions made hiring more labor unprofitable?
Nope. Labor is a very small cost compared to the capital required to build the mill. Instead of reinvesting the capital in the business, primary shareholders put it in their pockets and squandered and insurmountable lead in worldwide steel production.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
How can you expect to buy a second hybrid car under these oppressive working conditions? It's completely unethical for a company to hire you on salary and then have you work 50 hours a week for 7 or 8 times federal minimum wage. You're so busy with working that you don't have any time to go on the internet at home, you have to do it at work. It's completely unacceptable.
What I would like to see are more professional organizations for IT that demand a certain level of professionalism from their members. Rather than creating an workforce monopoly as unions do (a union is almost always ran like a business). I would rather see the professional organization used like a brand to indicate a certain level of quality to an employer. I think to be a member you ought to agree to certain terms that would be conducive to professionalism.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
>Why exactly a problem?
If it wasn't a problem, we wouldn't be talking about getting unions involved.
Kevin
I agree that bottom up is the way to go in almost anything, especially a union. That sounds like a good system.
Unfortunately, in the US, the large unions got lawmakers to pass a bunch of legislation about what is and isn't a union that the large employers also liked because it meant they could deal with an equal instead of the workers themselves. So, it doesn't really work that way here, though it would be nice if it did.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
More numerous problems with your black-and-white opinions. Here's a tip, it's just not that simple.
If labor costs were less, the cars would cost less or they'd be better, and I'd be willing to bet that they'd actually be better cars, with better design.
And pixies would bring me free beer too. Manufacturer gets to charge whatever the market will bear for their products. Period. Costs establish a floor, but the only ceiling is market demand of the product.
It's because the overseas labor and environmental costs are so much lower.
So, you'll ignore the simple fact that American car manufacturers are global manufacturing organizations. They can assemble a car anywhere in the world and import it too!! Oh, but that doesn't fit into your neat black/white anti-union constellation.
Are you willing to put up with the consequences of unfettered environmental destruction that comes hand-in-hand with low labor costs? Probably not.
So in effect, by demanding more benefits, more pay, and more pension, the increasing labor costs has made it almost untenable to make a small car in a union shop. The labor cost is too high, the profit is too small to nonexistant
If it wasn't labor, it would be some other boogeyman that is to blame for American automaker woes. Most American executives have a bully pulpit from which they blame everything else but themselves. I have worked with executives all around the world and Americans are by far the worst of them all. There are some great American leaders, but most of them are quite happy in their niches.
Furthermore, did it ever occur to you that unions can be credited in part with creating a thriving middle class? Will Toyota ever be credited with sustaining the American middle-class? No. They don't pay well enough on the floor. And that has very broad implications regarding national infrastructure. But that's too challenging for your black-and-white view.
space heaters were fine
Now I know you are making this up. The current demand for an electric heater(s) in a cubicle farm would.... turn off the lights.
You know, it's a much more complicated issue than you want it to be. Choosing such a simple belief system does you a major disservice over the course of your lifetime. Good luck.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The entire IT department and IT workers were thrown into a 'catch-all' union with secretarys, admin workers, campus security, parking attendant workers and anyone else (other than management) that wasn't already in one of the local trade unions. You can just imagine how well that has worked for IT staff. No more getting payed based on performance or annual reviews. While that might be a good thing, union mentality has set in. Why should I bust my ass if I'm not going to be compensated for it? And of course, salary is no longer negotiable, it's all set on a pay grade and most IT workers are red-circled because they make so much more than the top level of the grade they are in. It's been a complete joke. Almost as big a joke as the union of choice for McMaster staff was the Canadian Auto Workers. It won't be long until McMaster moves south of the border like all other CAW union shops.
I prefer 'lawyer pays'.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari