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Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing
cedarhillbilly passes along a piece from TheHill.com on the chilly reception that tech firms and lobbying groups are giving to a bill promoting union formation, which has a chance of passing in a more strongly Democratic congress and with a Democratic president. "Up to now, large tech groups have been on the sidelines in what is likely to be one of the roughest fights in Congress next year. A few, however, are preparing to weigh in. That makes other tech lobbyists nervous that, by doing so, the industry could sacrifice relatively good relationships with Democrats and, therefore, jeopardize some of their other legislative priorities."
It's interesting that every single person in the article is against it except for a dnc congressman. The end of the article says he bemoans the lack of union growth. Why would he be concerned about union growth? Why would he be so concerned about union growth that he would try and take steps to lower the bar on organizing groups of people who probably don't even want it? Oh yeah - money. This is why I hate politics. This has nothing to do with serving people it is all about finding revenue streams to fund their next election. Maybe they can get the rest of the country to be like the state of Washington and force people into unions, fire the ones that wont join and rack up plenty of contributions that way.
I was a union member for a number of years. (UFCW) Fortunately it was in a right to work state and it was my choice. And fortunately it was possible to relatively private about joining or not joining. None of this harassment that can come in other environments. Unions are just like employers - they are good to keep in check against one another but I think it is a mistake to think they are purely for the employee. They quickly fall to Pournelle's Iron Law. This whole affair is a marked reminder of that fact.
I don't think the Republicans are any better for what it is worth - but I think at least the discussion on what this is all about out to be frank rather than draped in a bunch of spin. Being cautious about unions is not being anti employee.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Unions worked so well for factories and the car industry, why not extend them to a completely different TYPE of work, 60 years later in a completely different economic landscape? DUH.
Unions = FAIL.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What we need instead is a professional guild association, much as the legal and medical professions have. Unions are more appropriate for low skilled industrial professions.
Corporatism != Free Market
Manufacturer certification (MCSE cough cough) is not a substitute for an organisation that takes care over assessing credentials. Here in the UK we have the BCS and the IAP, and perhaps others. My own feeling is that the main opposition to proper regulation of the software and IT industry comes from (a) managers who are unqualified and would not be able to get certification, (b) managements who want to cut corners on the job and (c) contractors who hop from one job to another without ever picking up a serious core competence.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Of course the owners of the corporations are against their labor organizing. The purpose of a union is to spend more of the corporation's profits on labor, leaving less for the owners.
What's interesting is how often the union's improved terms for labor increases labor's productivity. Which means a larger total profit, so even a smaller share of it to the owners can be a larger total amount than before the union, when worse working conditions produced less profit for everyone.
Which shows that sometimes, the owners are not maximizing profit, but just maximizing their power.
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make install -not war
The article speaks about people possibly being intimidated into signing a petition to unionize.
Let's see how many people already feel intimidated to the point where they have to post as AC if they want to say anything good about this idea.
And for all those that blame GMs' problems on the unions, wake up - GM makes crap cars nobody wants - THAT is the problem with GM.
Have I ever been a member of a union? Yes - the Steelworkers (they don't just organize steel plants, you know :-)
Would I ever again join a union? Sure, depending on the circumstances.
Do I think unions are practical for IT? Yes. The image of the code-worker who is "too independent-thinking" to join a union is a self-defeating myth. Get over yourselves already. If nurses and bus drivers can have unions, why not IT workers?
Jeez I've been listening to this for 20 years. IT workers resist unionization. Why? I don't know but I suspect it has something to do with believing that each of you is more capable and special than anyone else. Even in companies like IBM who in the early 90's laid off a quarter million people, still, the remaining workers resist unionization.
I can tell you it's not but a racket. The only ones who benefit are the union hierarchy, not the members.
I've mentioned before I work for state government. In my state, PA, anyone who works for the state and is not classified as management level MUST pay union dues though they are euphemistically called "fair share fees" because they represent your fair share of all the privileges and benefits the union supposedly bargains for you. Here's how well that system works.
Years ago when I initially worked for the state, I was in the temporary clerical pool. My sole benefit was I got paid. No vacation, no health insurance, no nothing else BUT, I still got the privilege of paying the union for all those benefits I got for working at the state.
I eventually got a permanent job in the state, based on my skills and the people around me wanting to keep me, so then I got those other benefits. Then governor Tom Ridge, who you remember from such classic films as, "We need a color-coded threat level to paralyze the nation into fear!", decided to eliminate the one state agency which was recognized as a leader in efficiency and responsiveness. In fact, the place I worked for instructed agencies from other states on how to become better.
What did the union do? Shrugged their shoulders and said, "Oh well. We're not going to fight it."
I left for the private industry rather than being shoved out the door.
Now, back with the state after several years, it appears for the second time in six years the contract the union negotiated with the state as far as COLAs and raises are concerned is being thrown out the window. But, I still get to pay the union for all those benefits.
If the union wants to unilaterally renegotiate the terms of the contract for which I'm supposedly paying them, then I should do the same. Why should I have to pay the union for all these benefits if they're not going to honor the contract?
Unions are bad news. They cause more troubles than they solve and yes, I have and do work with people who should have been fired long ago for not doing their job but because of the hoops that one has to jump through to fire someone, it's easier to just keep them and let them retire.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I know - just look at the UAW! That's what the entire US economy needs right now.
When your workers have good pay and benefits, that takes away from profits, and in a plutocracy such as ours the profits always outstrip any consideration for human beings and their needs.
If WalMart was unionized, you wouldn't have to pay those taxes that go to food stamps. The poor are REQUIRED to work in the US under TANF (which ended AFDC welfare in 1996), so those food stamps are another government giveaway to the rich, like that 700 billion that went to the banks who still aren't making loans.
Unions are good for everyone except the corporates.
The head of a major non-union airline in the early 80s (I think it was Eastern, whatever company it was has since become union) said wisely "any company that gets a union deserves one". Your workers create your profits and your wealth. Bargain unfairly and they will come to bargain collectively.
You owe your workers, the generators of your wealth, a living. If your business is sound you owe them a decent living.
Want crime rates down? Raise wages. You'll find that most poor people are far more generous and honest than most rich people (not to say that many rich aren't honest or that all poor folks are).
I've been re-reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the story of a Republican who wakes up and finds that he's turned into a Democrat overnight.
Humbug to you too, Mr. Bush.
Free Martian Whores!
How can unions work in the era of the global market? Creating artificial scarcity of labor only results in pricing yourself out of the global market, right?
What's interesting is how often the union's improved terms for labor increases labor's productivity. Which means a larger total profit, so even a smaller share of it to the owners can be a larger total amount than before the union, when worse working conditions produced less profit for everyone.
So, when a railroad union demands that a railroad hire firemen and brakemen that site around all day, they are increasing productivity?
Or when a union demands a camera operator for robotic cameras in a television studio, they are increasing productivity?
Or how about the fact that the Japanese automakers here in the States can change a production line to make small cars from SUVs in a matter of hours; whereas, Detroit takes months? Yeah, management has to take a hit on that one too, I agree, but much of that delay is union rules.
Don't get me started on the pilot's union. $250,000 for a 777 captain? Yeah, I realize the career path of a commercial pilot and how they live in poverty while working up to that for years, but so do artists - it's their choice. I'd do it for $50,000 and be ecstatic! But, if airlines could reorganize and pay less (getting rid of the pilot seniority for one), we wouldn't be giving them tax payer handouts every few years. (There's going to be another next year - I guarantee it.)
I agree that in the past, unions did a great job for the health, safety, pay, and over all living standards of workers. I've read the business history and I read what those 19th and early 20th century industrial bastards did. But that before the labor laws and OSHA.
I think unions need to be reformed dramatically.
Where have you been for the last two years? Isn't unrestricted lending and a $50 billion Ponzi scheme operated from Wall Street, no less, evidence that wild capitalism is still going strong?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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Unions were great when dangerous jobs were causing people to get injured and killed. But now that this problem is taken care of...
Tell that to the families of the people that once worked for Genwal Resources, Inc. and Murray Energy Corporation
No.
The government has no business telling private citizens what they can earn. That's Communism, and antithetical to freedom. Politicians, on the other hand, serve their people. The public SHOULD demand that there be a limit on the financial rewards for serving. Again, being a politician is supposed to be a TEMPORARY SERVANT position for people passionate about their country. It's not supposed to be a career or an exclusive club for dynasty families lining their pockets off the public till.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I watched labor unions in Michigan drive manufacturing out of this state into more friendly states like Tennessee. Unions have destroyed Michigan and given us the highest unemployment rate in the country.
Destroying one state isn't enough. Let's all drink the kool-aid and perish together.
The reason people are so against it is that its primary purpose is to take away the secret ballot from workers considering joining a union.
Currently if union wants to move in it has to get a certain number of workers to sign a petition and then a secret ballot is held. If the union wins, bam the company is unionized.
What the unions want to do is just collect 50% of the signatures and skip the secret ballot step. This is called the "Card Check" provision, because the workers just sign cards and hand them to the union boss. Why? Because there are an awful lot of people who are willing to sign when the union boss is at their door leaning on them but when the secret ballot comes around the union routinely doesnt get anywhere near the number of votes the thought they had.
This is all about pushing unions into workplaces where the union cant win a secret ballot. The country tilted too far right in the past few years and now we are about to see what kind of legislation gets enacted when the left controls things and wants to push their own agenda on people whether they like it or not. Virtually every democrat supports this because it was made a litmus test on getting the big union campaign funds during the election.
What's being proposed for the US is similar to what Canada already has. About 25% of Canadian workers belong to a union, compared to about 12% for the US. The US and Canada had about an equal percentage of unionized workers in the 1950s, when changes in US law made it harder for workers to unionize.
There are successful unions for professionals. Check out The Animation Guild, which is part of IATSE. If it came from Hollywood and was animated, an Animation Guild member probably did it. In Redwood City, Dreamworks and EA have facilities in the same building complex, with many people doing similar jobs. Dreamworks is unionized, but EA is not. The Dreamworks people have reasonable hours, unlike the EA peons.
Here's the Animation Guild standard contract. A few key points:
Unionization is about being jerked around less.
As you can see from my four-digit ID, I've been hanging out on Slashdot for a long time. Whenever the union issue comes up here, I notice that there are an awful lot of negative comments against unions, more than there are favoring them. Since I'm firmly on the pro-union side, it's incumbent on me to chime in.
First, regarding the Employee Free Choice Act, there is a lot of misinformation about this that is being unchallenged by the mainstream media. One myth is that this act will eliminate the secret ballot for union organizing. That is NOT true. The employees will still be able to request that a secret ballot election be held. It will eliminate the employer's right to demand a secret ballot for the purpose of delaying union certification, and in the interim, intimidate employees to reject the union.
Now regarding the attitude generally displayed here toward organized labor, anecdotes prove nothing. Tired old tales about your uncle's friend's co-worker who showed up to work drunk, and caused your uncle's friend to lose his thumb, but couldn't be fired because of his union, may convince lots of people that unions are a bad thing, but they are largely apocryphal. Even where they are true in isolated cases, it is an indicator of incompetent management, not a necessary impact of the union. If you are managing a unionized work-force, and you are too lazy to even read their contract (which would tell you how to dismiss such an employee), then you are the problem, not the union.
Fair analysis of data (e.g. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/datazone_rtw_index) indicates that unions have a positive impact upon the distribution of wealth, and general level of prosperity. Moreover, as unions decline in influence nationally, living standards decline both in the unionized and non-unionized sectors. Median real wages among those of you who live in so-called "right to work" states are lower than for those who live in states that don't interfere in the membership requirement that is written into union contracts. Yes, I'm sure that you may have read some report from the Heritage Foundation, or Cato Institute that said otherwise. But if you believe those sources of information, you may as well watch Fox news. If you must rely so heavily on anecdotes, talk to older members of your family, and ask them about whether or not there was ever such a thing as a "stay-at-home" mom. Ask them how could anyone afford to live that way.
I was raised in the '60s and '70s. When I was a kid, my father went to work in a factory every weekday. My mother did not work outside the home. This was typical among most of the families that I knew. Forty man-hours a week, for a family of four (six in our case), performed by a man without a college education, (in fact my dad didn't even have a high school diploma), was sufficient to maintain middle class living standards in typical American families at that time. We had health insurance, owned our homes, had leisure time, vacations, and typically, a full time mother. When my dad's company laid off workers temporarily during a lull, my father's seniority was honored. He felt bad for dismissed coworkers, but he didn't cut back spending, or miss any house payments. My father retired with a pension that kept him from falling into abject poverty for the rest of his days. That pension was bargained for by his union. It was not provided by his employer out of the goodness of their hearts.
As for myself, as a young man, I joined a trade union, served an apprenticeship and became a journeyman. But recognizing the direction of the political viability of unions, I decided to go to college part time later in life, and become an engineer. I paid my own way, and graduated nine years ago without the debt of a college loan. That was one of the benefits of a union wage. Today, though, working as a college educated professional, I barely approach the living standards that my family had in my childhood.
The arguments I read here go like this: "Blue collar workers belong to unions. IT workers aren't blue collar workers, therefore IT workers don't belong to Unions".
I'd like to compare IT workers with film industry workers. Production designers, casting directors, location managers, writers and directors.
Are you aware that those actors, directors, writers who get paid millions of dollars are also union members? So much for the "you can't advance to your full potential if you are in a union" argument.
But I wanted to talk more about the average film industry worker who makes $70,000-$150,000 working 100-200 days a year. I'm one of these people. I've worked for a total of 20 years. 15 years non union and five years union after we organized our sector.
We are still freelancers. We may work for 5-20 different employers every year. There is no seniority. Each party chooses to work with whoever they want for whatever amount they want. There is a "minimum" pay scale but 90% earn above the minimum.
Except on shooting days when we have to be on set a certain time we choose how we spend the day, how many hours and what type of work. Sure we have to complete a given task but it's up to us how we go about it. If it takes too long or we don't do it right we get laid off or we don't get hired again.
This is how it was before we became union and this is how it continues to be after we became union. Nothing has changed.
The only thing that changed is now we have health and pension benefits with one of the best health plans in the country.
Couldn't I afford to buy my own health insurance? Yes, I could but with insurance companies repeatedly wiggling out of their obligations when you need them the most I wouldn't want to. One person vs Huge Insurance company = FAIL
BTW when we were collecting cards to unionize the only people that refused to sign where those who were already receiving union health benefits through a spouse or a second job.
I'm actually a community organizer who, until very recently, actually worked on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Having talked to literally thousands of average people day in and day out for 18, the vast majority of people given the chance would join a union (studies have backed this up- a full 86% of people would join a union given a chance).
Granted, as an organizer I was actually in management and sometimes the union contract got in the way of removing a problematic employee; but at the same time it serves as a deterent to unfair practices by management.
I'm seeing a lot of opposition to the removal of the secret ballot. Let me clarify. Under the present system people need to sign union cards- until you hit 50%+1 to say 'We'd like to vote on the issue of whether or not we have a union.' The company then knows exactly who has expressed interest in a union and usually target those folks with intimidation/firing/coersion up until the election... which is held on the employer's home turf.
Furthermore, EFCA also greatly increases the fines for union busting activities. Right now, someone is fired in America every few minutes for union activity; Wal-Mart has a whole corporate department dedicated to union busting. Violations usually cost a company about 5,000 bucks- and when you're Wal-Mart that's nothing; but under EFCA- those penalties rise to as much as $250,000 per incident. Something tells me Wal-Mart might actually play by the law now.
As for me, my dad was a union guy, I'm a professional, couple of advanced degrees, yet I worked in organizing and did management there. I've seen how a union paycheck allows people to live at a decent level (we weren't rich- but we didn't have to choose between getting the car fixed and only buying the store brand cookies rather than Chips Ahoy. And for me its a little personal. My dad worked at UPS- when I was in high school I developed a very severe case of scoliosis- without a major surgery I wouldn't be able to walk today. Because the union fought for better health benefits during the 1997 labor dispute with UPS I had the surgery (keeping track of the bills that came home during a 4 month recovery the sticker price is a little more than $300,000) and I can still walk.
Of course there is always that free market arguement. If any of the free-market apologetics have ever actually read Adam Smith- they'd notice he calls for a self-imposed limit to the hours and excesses of large business- that clearly hasn't happened. Also, he was writing in a time where labor relations played out in a small shop- sure it was easy to go to the cobbler across the street if the one you were working for was treating you poorly. These days (and especially with what has been going down lately) that is no longer possible. Companies have all the leverage to make the average employees life a living hell.
Also, while unions do protect crappy and lazy employees, studies have suggested the quality of work from union employees is much higher in union made products than in non-union ones. If anyone would like the stats and citations... I'll be happy to get them for you- just not in front of me right now.
Although I will probably be back in academia by the time EFCA passes (which I have little doubt it will) I am proud to have worked on this campaign- it is high time workers are treated as humans and not tools of excessive corporate profit.
I'm reminded of a T-shirt I saw once for one of the local unions, "United we bargain- alone we beg."
Full disclosure: I served as the Assistant Canvass Director of Working America, AFL-CIO, Cleveland from June 07- November 08.
"...but back then you could DEFINATELY live the "Leave it to Beaver" life without having a union job."
Absolutely true. But the only reason that the Ward Cleavers, who didn't join unions, got decent paychecks was because the unions had raised expectations for everyone. Ward would only become a professional, if professionals made significantly better money than carpenters. And carpenters, both union and non-union, were doing well because of unions, thus Ward was able to command upper middle class living standards as a professional.