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BART Strike Provides Stark Contrast To Tech's Non-Union World
dcblogs writes "The strike by San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) workers this week is a clear and naked display of union power, something that's probably completely alien to tech professionals. Tech workers aren't organized in any significant way except through professional associations. They don't strike. But the tech industry is highly organized, and getting more so. Industry lobbying spending has been steadily rising, reaching $135 million last year, almost as much as the oil and gas industry. But in just one day of striking, BART workers have cost the local economy about $73 million in lost productivity due to delays in traffic and commuting. Software developers aren't likely to unionize. As with a lot of professionals, they view themselves as people with special skills, capable of individually bargaining for themselves, and believe they have enough power in the industry to get what they want, said Victor Devinatz, a professor of management and quantitative methods at Illinois State University College of Business. For unions to get off the ground with software workers, Devinatz said, 'They have to believe that collective action would be possible vehicle to get the kinds of things that they want and that they deserve.'"
Unions seem to be blamed for everything wrong in the world of work on Slashdot but, even though I'm not a member because there isn't one at my company, I really appreciate the rights they have got for workers over the decades.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Unions were good in the 1920s and 1930s. Now, they've priced the American worker out of the global labor market.
There's a reason that union membership is down to historic lows: all they do is take money out of workers' pockets to line the bosses' nests and send money to Democrat politicians.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
You want to destroy innovation in the tech sector? I guarantee you the fastest way to do that is unionize the tech field.
You know that this is pretty much US only? In Germany where I worked all of the engineers were unionized.
Granted the unions seem to be quite a bit different. The UAW is quite a bit different than most of the German unions I worked with.
> "capable of individually bargaining for themselves, and believe they have enough power in the industry to get what they want, "
How's that H1B situation treating you?
One of the reasons the Unionized Uk telephone system was modernized (well ahead on the US i might add) with no labour disputes was that all the M&P grades who developed the new technology where union members. :-)
The CEO of one of the smaller uk telcos was even an activist in his younger days and I know that a CTO of one of the global telecoms companys was a member of my branch
Lobbyists fight for the rights of companies.
Why shouldn't unions fight for the rights of employees?
The problem with unions is they view a worker as a clone of every other worker.
For example, a young worker is unlikely to really need lots of health insurance when compared to an aging worker. Similarly an unmarried man most likely couldn't care less about maternity leave. But yet with collective bargaining, that young worker could get useless (for him) insurance in exchange for something that would be useful for him (vacation days, higher pay, etc.) and that unmarried man might get great maternity leave but at the expense of something that could be useful for him.
Instead, contracts should be dealt with at the individual level, allowing for the best for both the employer and the individual employee.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I am a developer in Canada, one of my workmates went to a job working for a local city. It's a union shop, so he gets; pay raises according to a fixed pay grid, advances according to seniority, all holidays off and so on. Not a bad gig if you can get it, IMO.
The problem that I see is that the vast majority of tech workers are not employed by large corporations; they work for small and medium-sized companies and often fill one-off positions. While it could be possible for the engineers at the big corporations to unionize, for the unions to have enough reps to negotiate with all of those small businesses on behalf of the tech workers, would probably be cost prohibitive.
Jhyrryl
The state of CA has a debt of what? $127,000,000,000 was the last I heard. Much of the tax base is leaving the state. Govt. employee unions are largely responsible for the utterly unsustainable financial situation of the U.S. state which has the most natural economic advantages.
BART workers don't work in sweat shops and never have. They are overpaid and underworked like most govt. workers. Govt. employee unions should be illegal since they screw the taxpayer, the people who actually pay the bills.
However, in California tech jobs are not regulated very well by the state. Since salaries are so high, most tech workers are exempt from overtime -- and companies like Google, Zynga, Netflix etc are well-known to demand long hours from their employees without paying overtime (albeit paying decent salaries instead). One of the main reasons California and Silicon Valley is appealing to them is this, and also, at-will employment. Meaning, if an employee doesn't work out, it is very easy to fire them and replace them with someone else.
The talent you have at a start-up is critical -- when your core team is ten people, having one or two free-riders or non-stellar characters in the mix can be a big drain on productivity. So, California makes it relatively easy for these companies to replace their staff, and both hire and fire new workers.
If this wasn't the case, very likely the startup I work for wouldn't exist here, and would be located somewhere else. Dealing with union workers is the last thing a busy CEO wants for his start-up, they're busy drumming up business, promoting the product, getting funding, etc etc. My company rarely fires anyone -- but the talent is very good and stays motivated with little management. But if we do hire someone who needs to be managed all day, we do want to get rid of them without having to go through a union and a few HR lawyers. Startups simply don't have the resources for that, nor to spend money on someone's salary who is not ideal.
In conclusion, there's a reason why things are the way they are.
Unions simply have a poor reputation and haven't worked very hard on improving it.
For one, they've failed the address the perception that unions protect lazy workers at the expense of the productive ones. They should actively encourage bonuses, for example, and allow some degree of "demerit" pay cuts. (They don't have to be biting cuts such that a worker has to suddenly sell their house, but allow small gradual demerits.)
Second, they've often negotiated contracts with local governments that end up appearing one-sided during downturns, making the unions look unwilling to scale back in hard times. The problem is that local governments often think short-term because of election cycles, and unions take advantage of this stance in negotiations. While not directly the union's "fault", it does damage their reputation. Unions should ensure they scale back a bit more during down-times to match everybody else's experience. Sharing the pain makes you more popular.
Third, they need to make their case in the media. Corporations trash unions left and right in the media, and unions have done a poor job of putting out their side of the story.
Table-ized A.I.
That may be true. Yet, recently, I got into a conflict with my employer over wages ( not getting what had been promised ). Not being an affiliate of any worker's union, I threatened with a one-man strike. Of course, I took care to also inform the client to whom I was dedicating most of my hours at that moment. The result was impressive: the client wanted an explanation from my employer about what was going on, and wanted assurance that they would further be able to count with my work. My employer gave in, prolly because of fear for losing his reputation. Divide et impera, said the Romans. I can assure you that it was one of the most entertaining episodes in my professional life hitherto.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
That's how capitalism works. Surprise, surprise you don't need to pay union dues and have collective bargaining to negotiate.
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Of course, the flip side is that the union can add inefficiencies to the business and prevent them from meeting changing market conditions. It becomes much harder (or nearly impossible) to remove underperforming employees, and leads to siloed skillsets "I can't change that lightbulb, you need an electrician for that job" or "I can't unload that truck, it's not in my job description, but once someone brings the box into the building, then they can't take it to the store room, I have to do that". And I imagine that developers would get like that too "Well, it would be trivial to take care of that with a bash script, it would take me 2 minutes to do it. But since I'm a classified as a J2EE developer, I would have to architect a 3 tier enterprise architecture to do it, the team and I could have it ready to go 6 weeks after the business analyst finishes the requirements analysis. Unless, of course, you want to post a job for a Bash developer (and leave it posted for internal-only applications for 16 weeks)" I'm only half way joking after some of the BS I've run into at union shops.
Which may be why my train can be 10 minutes late or even 10 minutes early yet BART still says "all trains are on time".
What problems could unionization of the tech industry solve?
Step 1: Unionize! Workers unite!
Step 2: Elect union overlords.
Step 3: Pay dues.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Rejoice!
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I work 40 hrs a week, get to work flex hours if I have to deviate from my regular schedule, work from home on Wednesdays, work in an air conditioned office kept between 74 and 76 degrees year-round, and the heaviest thing I've had to lift* in 5 years was a pot of coffee. My biggest occupational hazard is heart disease from lack of activity. I have enough business knowledge that it would take two years to train someone with a college degree for my job.
Contrast that with a dock worker or auto manufacturing job where OSHA compliance is something to worry about, on the job injuries, back and foot injuries, fire hazards etc etc. The most training many of these people get is how to drive a fork lift and can be replaced with a temp worker in a day or two. Unions do a great job of protecting mostly unskilled workers.
*not counting activities outside of work
moox. for a new generation.
In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself.
Unions can be a victim of the Iron law. The people who put their energy into furthering the goals of the union are almost always politically out-muscled and displaced by the people who preserve the union itself. So at the end, only those who preserve the union are left.
Imagine person A is lobbying for things that will actually make a difference for fellow workers. While Person A is lobbying, person B is figuring out how get the union to grow and get stronger. Person B is making political connections and becoming more powerful while person A is in the trenches fighting for the workers causes. Its no surprise that it is Person B that ends up rising to the top.
So at the end of the day, unions can be a double edged sword. They have the potential to make meaningful changes, but as they grow in size, there is a potential to begin focusing on doing things that keep the union in existence/power instead of doing what is best for the workers.
I don't see why software developers, generally, would want to unionize. On the other hand it seems like I hear a lot of horror stories from video game developers, which makes sense since it's such a small market and so many developers want make games. So I could see why game developers might want to. Although it might be easier to just switch to a more profitable market like databases, since the real problem is a surplus of developers willing to take abuse to work in games.
It's all about power.
Our notions of right and wrong tend to adapt to fit our notions of what we want.
Someday, users will use software to create the software they want. When that happens, 95 percent of software developers will be redundant and they will belatedly learn that unions multiply their individual power.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
CS is collgle is very hit or miss and lot's of trades schools people get passed over even when they don't have the skills gaps. Also tech needs apprenticeships as well.
And an hiring hall system can be much better then all the clue less staffing firms.
they seem to be like running the autopilot system in aircraft and they some needs to be there to cover stuff that the autopilot can't handle
It's not as simple as we needing "to believe that collective action would be possible vehicle to get the kinds of things that they want and that they deserve". We have to believe that the benefit that the union would provide would outweight the detriment. We have to believe that the union would truly have our best interests in mind. We have to believe that the "collective" would support what I want versus what it wants.
I think as people who have an education and pay attention, we see that we aren't likely to net out on the deal and therefore are better off the way we are since we can, individually, make some pretty good demands.
Not to mention that techies, pretty much by their nature, don't want to work harder to support their less talented union brothers. We generally set pretty high standards for ourselves and our colleagues. High standards that would make being part of a union turn disastrous pretty quickly.
My fellow slashdotters keep forgetting that Doctors, Lawyers, Writers (in Hollywood) and Actors are all members of unions as well. The Bar, the Medical Association, the Screen Actor's Guild - all are unions no matter the name given. There is a way to make it work so that it benefits all involved - but then again we as techies have no problems when the networks are good enough to where once something is plugged in an engineer in the Philippines can take care of the rest of it...
"BART workers have cost the local economy about $73 million in lost productivity due to delays in traffic and commuting". The 3 in 73 reminds me of the joke: "Why do economists use a decimal point?"
I think the what should really be under the microscope is the impact of public sector unions vs private sector unions rather than using a broad brush to paint unions in both positive and negative lights. The fact is that public sector unions that strike hold us (citizens/residents/taxpayers) hostage and impact many more people, which is probably the point. Then again, when private sectors strike, it's more about affecting their company's pocketbook and public sentiment. I can't say which of them is better or worse but it's a distinction that should be made when thinking of the tech sector and some of those high skilled/specialized fields and how they might be unionized.
Honestly speaking though, when public sector unions strike (teachers, prison guards, etc.) they do cause disruptions and limiting their ability to cause those disruptions should be somewhat limited, especially when their pay comes from the coffers filled by taxpayers whose lives they are disrupting.
"Tech jobs disappear from America and wind up in China and India."
And those two headlines will appear, separated by a few days, the day that tech workers unionize.
They only negotiate on your behalf if you pay them dues. Today's unions often point to the past, things like minimum wage, various safety laws, etc. The labor movement of old pushed for universal reforms, even if people weren't paying dues.
If you don't advocate for universal contract standards, then either the contract isn't really about justice, or you don't care about justice for non-dues payers. Either way, you don't care about justice and it's pretty obvious. You care about money. In the end, labor has become capital.
IMHO, the moral place for labor advocacy is in voluntary political organizations, as planks in party platforms, and in legislative reform. Unions, like the state, should "wither away" (hoisting of communist intellectuals by their own petard, fully intended).
He who has the most Gold makes the rules.
Here in the US, that's the 1%'ers.
Unfortunately, there's never a static balance. There's just a pendulum swinging from one extreme to another.
Now, at this time in US economic history, we're back to the robber barons having the power. Back when Hillman, Vanderbilt and Morgan ran the World.
People were crushed. They were crushed and impoverished.
We need peaceful balance and the unions offer that - mostly. The alternative is civil strife like in the Middle East - and I don't want that!!
If you think we live in a society were hard work and gumption is all that it takes to get ahead, then you are delusional.
The same goes for folks who think we can be some socialist utopia.
I don't know who or what you do or who you are, but unless you're a CEO, you are a peon - a nothing. If you think you are above this because of your "talents", I got news for you - there are a million people on this planet that I can replace you with. And let's say, by a fluke of nature, you ARE the most talented in the World for what you do - you WILL get old and incompetent. This is not a guess - but a fact.
On the other hand, the folks with the capital can get old and incompetent and keep their status - that is the nature of capital.
face it scum bag, you are nothing and get over yourself. You cannot be anything more than a peon like us.
If you weren't a peon like the rest of us, you wouldn't be here on Slashdot. You'd be on your yacht with your 15 year old whores.
the tech industry fills its coffers on the backs of slave labor.
As with a lot of professionals, they view themselves as people with special skills, capable of individually bargaining for themselves
As with a lot of professionals who take responsibility for getting projects completed on time, they probably find that the only real consequence of going on strike for a couple of days is that they have to work double hard afterwards to catch up. (Unless they spend the strike day working at home and get twice as much done without all the interruptions. Long-term it doesn't look good if strikes increase productivity - people might misunderstand).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Unions do not promote productivity or innovation, they promote the bare minimum. Why excel and accomplish more when you can do the bare minimum on regular pay and make up the excess while getting overtime. Ever tried to cross a union picket line? They break the law while the police stand by and watch - the police after all are union "brothers". Union members cry about high CEO salaries, while each one of them driving a car probably 12 years newer than mine. Unions reward doing the least work for the greatest reward.
A USPS union member, former relative, complained his boss wanted him to do more work. He filed a grievance and got a few days off yet on days working can meet friends while on the clock to play backgammon. He, while on the clock, can go home to change clothes so he can attend his son's soccer game. Anytime something doesn't go his way, like a little girl he files a grievance.
A friend handling THEIR union jobs while they were on strike, away from his own family and home, has a union thug come up when his back was turned and blows an air horn in his ear causing permanent hearing loss. They behave like animals and are encouraged to do so.
While on strike several union members vandalize the company's assets. No time to do their jobs but plenty of time to break the law and destroy corporate property. Their allegiance is not to the company, it's to the union and there is the problem. Once you lose your loyalty to the company that pays you, there is a problem.
Shut all unions down in the US. They don't help but they definitely hurt us. Driving up costs... they take from the workers to pad their own pockets and make us unable to compete worldwide. There was a time and place for them but that is decades gone.
A group of people should never have more rights than the individual members of the group. This should apply to unions and companies. It seems in the US there are either pro-labor or right to work states. Both have it wrong. A company shouldn't be forced to negotiate with a union. On the other hand a person shouldn't have the right to work for an employeer that agreed to only hire union members. Giving unions special rights to strike without fear of being fired and allowing unions to physically block access to companies to prevent replacement workers give them too much power which leads to corruption.
Unions without that power would actually have to provide benefits to members AND employeers. This used to be the case where trade unions would have programs to teach welding, pipe fitting, steel construction, etc. When people hired union members they knew they were getting well trained people. With laws forcing governments and companies to use union members there is no long any need to probide these benefits.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
... to continue to support them forever.
The fact that union workers argue to get their salary regulated by the government (even for private sector work, search "prevailing wage laws"), indicates to me how bad the situation is. However, there's very little that can happen here except for unions to become more competitive. Hopefully the rank-and-file will help make that happen sooner rather then later, but given the tactics the unions have employed over the decades they will likely continue to put themselves out of business.
As for this particular strike, feel free to see how much they all get paid. And I hope you realize that for every unskilled worker getting paid twice as much as they should means that some other person is unemployed, and there is less service delivered to riders.
http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?Entity=Bay%20Area%20Rapid%20Transit
Did you notice that the corps have you fighting with the Union workers to lower your standard of living? They've got you asking: "Why do those guys get to live well?" instead of "Why am I struggling to retire?".
That's the entire point of the anti-union narrative we see non-stop. It's what progressives mean when they say 'a race to the bottom'....
Pay close attention to your views on workers rights and what a reasonable quality of life should be. Then ask yourself who's really shaping them and why...
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and your job will never, ever be outsource. You'll never see your wages go down and you'll never have your standard of living drop. They'll never take away your air conditioning to save money, or your clean air and water. Life can never get worse. It just keeps getting better. Right? Right...?
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Bottom line: how would a union help me?
If I am a Google or Facebook or Twitter or Apple or IBM engineer, how would unionizing help me?
If they outsource my job, what are they going to do, not show up to work in protest? They're already out of work because the job is outsourced, and they'd actually prefer you NOT show up. Maybe I could camp outside their offices with a bunch of other people who lost their jobs, and wave signs, while the people who decided not to wave the signs with the res of us are out interviewing and getting the jobs which are available?
I know, they can fly us to India to picket the people who replaced us!
Perhaps the can cause Google to offer better healthcare? You know, better than they currently do, since they are currently the best in the industry. Or maybe they can get the salaries of the top Apple engineers bumped from an average of $160,000 to $160,001 a year?
Face it: People in demand do not need unions.
Unions would like to collect a per worker tax (sorry, I guess they are called "dues"?), and the benefit they give will be ... uh ... uh ... wait, I'm sure I can think of something!
Unions work well when people are replaceable cogs in a giant machine that needs people physically present in order for the machine to function, but they have little value to technical workers, particularly people like software engineers, who are classified by the department of labor as engaging in creative work, which makes them exempt employees anyway, even if they weren't already salaried and so exempt.
Show me a *future* benefit to union membership, and then maybe we can talk. Until then, just shut up.
and I hope to God you're an astro turfer and that you don't really believe that. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and all that... Right now there's an entire class of people asking how they can take what you have and give it to themselves. It's all they do. They're called "Venture Capitalists" when we're being charitable and "Vulture Capitalists" when we're being honest. The human race had a 1000 years of dark ages. Did you ever stop to question why? What do you get the man who has everything? Nothing. Conservationism will monopolize societies resources and than throw us into the dark ages out of fear of losing that monopoly.
And don't think Science will save you. We can lose science. There's a good percentage of American who think it's the devil's work anyhow.
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But once you've finished working for that client, it's likely that your employer will seek to sideline you as a troublemaker. You might also struggle to get a fair reference from him if you try to change jobs; the concept of a 'blacklist' of 'difficult' employees still seems to happen. But let's hope I'm wrong...
The 1% that is. The owners. When Walmart employees try to unionize there's Lawyers on the ground in hours shutting it down in the most efficient way's possible. Even that's not enough, so that we're getting ready to bring millions of low-skill workers in on Visas to further depress the market. Finally our media has a heavy corporate anti-Union bias that we ignore because they're liberal on a few social issues. You turn on your TV and it's non-stop anti union everywhere you go. Once in a blue moon MSNBC is neutral, but never positive. They'd lose their jobs if there did.
Basically the fox is in the hen house. Things are going to get worse for all of us as workers in America lose more and more fighting among themselves
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as soon as the House can get everyone to look away long enough to pass that immigration bill. They just need to hold out for a terrorist attack or the death of a major celebrity.
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I have been both unionized and non-union. As such I feel qualified to comment based upon actual experience.
There's definitely some truth to the traditional negatives listed for unions. Unions, in my opinion, raise the levels of wages for lower skilled employees and lower the levels somewhat at high skill levels. I don't really have a huge problem with this; most union ideology is rather egalitarian and explicitly attempts to create a bond between all union members. Huge wage disparities detract from common cause so the unions don't like that.
On the other hand. I've seen employers who are as hidebound and inefficient as the unions in their ranks. The unions serve as convenient whipping boys and ways to divert and distract attention from the employers sins. In these situations the unions are using the bureacracy and process as a tool against the employer. It's leverage in daily life. Again, my opinion, if you take the union out of the employment situation, you will scarcely change the overall corporate-worker dynamic at all. It will just reveal the incompetence that exists aside from the union.
One more thing. I notice that the parties of the right like to rail against unions. I suspect this is a lazy and cynical partisan position. Union membership is way down from historic highs and has been falling for a good 40-50 years. The days of unions reliably being "The Problem" in any given situation is over. OVER. So why do the parties of the right still attract to this issue, as sure as the sun rises and the rain falls? Likely, because it's easy and the unions have lost most of their power to fight back. Not that unions ever employed many PR people anyway.
The real problem, in the 21st century, is the power of corporations. It's not the unions who need the attention, it's corporations. Yet we are told over and over again "corporations are people" as a way of explaining away abuse of power, even though this was always a legal fiction, a useful shorthand to identify a basket of rights (and used to be) responsibilities. Identify corporate wrongdoing and we're told it's the work of a "few bad apples" (divert to blaming individuals). Identify senior individuals doing wrong and we're told they merely represented the interests of the corporation (divert to blaming capitalism or society).
One of the games that my previous public sector employer played was paying more for Database Administrators than for developers. As this differential increased, there were occasions when as a developer I was required to do DBA work. I ensured that this was noted - and made difficult; if there is going to be a grading difference, they can't then expect us to do the higher paid job for the lower rate of pay. Ultimately we had the last laugh; as our wages fell below the market rate, they lost more and more staff, and ended up introducing a 'market supplement' to stop the mass exodus....
Americans complain about unions, healthcare and all kinds of stuff that other countries just take for granted.
I think the problem is not with those things themselves, but with the retarded US laws that make those things inefficient.
that are better paid then their workers? I don't remember that one. But that said, you _have_ to pay Union Bosses well, because they are _completely_ blacklisted for life for running a Union. It's sorta why ex-presidents get Secret Service protection.
Corruption can and will happen. You'll never stamp it out completely. It's the old "Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich". You'll never keep some people from gaming the system. The 1% are going to use the gov't and society to their benefit. If you think your by yourself can stand up to their power and wealth you're being silly. The question is: what will you do?
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notice the anti union bias
"days of lost wages, commuting..."
nothing about the postiive effects of unions
it is stupidity really: tech workers think of themselves as better, wait till they see the new immigration bill paid for by gateszuckerberg, that is gonna allow a flood of cheap 2nd world hi tech workers in to the us
computer braceros anyone
Unions - the people who brought you the hour day and the weekend
There was a point in time when they were needed, that point in time passed many years ago now. unions to me are like the horse and buggy makers around the turn of the century. fighting tooth and nail to keep their power not knowing that they arent needed any longer
It wasn't so long ago that folks argued the protections of Glass-Steagal were also as obsolete as the horse and buggy because big business would never again abuse their power to threaten the public's welfare.
It's only when you withdraw protections that you truly learn what horrors they were protecting you from.
Nobody here is forgetting the "facts" you cite... because they are just not true
The AMA, for example, is NOT a labor union; it's a professional association... and MOST DOCTORS ARE NOT MEMBERS (something they and the Obama administration did not want the general public to know back when they hyped the AMA support for Obamacare
Yes, actors are in the Screen Actor's Guild... but let's face it that union has nothing to do with savage working conditions deep in the coal mines and does nothing of benefit to anybody in society other than a small pool of people who get rich playing dress-up and make-believe; it's sort of a "rich people protection league"
Legal Bar Associations are NOT labor unions. They are organizations that pump-up legal costs for Americans by limiting the pool of lawyers who may appear in the various courts. Want to go to court in a particular venue? You can only take your lawyer if he/she is in the bar and allowed before that court...if not you might have the "benefit" of being required to add another lawyer to you list of dependents (another, VERY EXPENSIVE "mouth to feed") If you have a GREAT lawyer you trust with your life and a legal case that crosses several state lines and will end-up in the Supreme Court, you're not going to be able to use your lawyer... he/she is unlikely to be a member of the bar in each state and even more unlikely to be a member of the bar that you must be in to appear in the supreme court.
NO union exists to benefit the public or an individual. A union, by definition, exists to get as much pay and as many benefits as possible for the collective pool of workers who are members, in exchange for the least amount of the lowest quality work possible. Any union that fails at this is failing in its job and failing its members (as a group). Often, for a union to succeed in its mission, a union must harm the public and even some of its members (as, for example, the BART strike hurting commuters, and teachers unions supporting policies that get the best of their newest members layed-off to protect old, lazy, incompetent teachers)
Union protection is not what American tech workers need... what they need is to unite against both the Democrats and the Republicans pushing the new "immigration reform bill" which opens the H1B visa floodgates and removes the requirements that US employers certify that they will not use those H1B visas to displace American workers. If you always vote Republican for national security reasons or some such thing, you need to set that aside for the time being and call you representatives and tell them you'll bail on them if they support this bill. If you always vote Democrat because you want gay marriage or have a hispanic relative, you nee to call your representatives and tell them you'll bail on them if they support this bill. Both sides are counting on their bases to give them a "pass" as they screw American workers because they have support on the other matters.... and the rich guys running the Chamber of Commerce are laughing their collective butts off over their success at getting their wet dream legislation included in the bill that's being portrayed as help for poor Hispanic immigrant farm workers...
Unions do not promote productivity or innovation, they promote the bare minimum. Why excel and accomplish more when you can do the bare minimum on regular pay and make up the excess while getting overtime. Ever tried to cross a union picket line? They break the law while the police stand by and watch - the police after all are union "brothers". Union members cry about high CEO salaries, while each one of them driving a car probably 12 years newer than mine. Unions reward doing the least work for the greatest reward.
A USPS union member, former relative, complained his boss wanted him to do more work. He filed a grievance and got a few days off yet on days working can meet friends while on the clock to play backgammon. He, while on the clock, can go home to change clothes so he can attend his son's soccer game. Anytime something doesn't go his way, like a little girl he files a grievance.
A friend handling THEIR union jobs while they were on strike, away from his own family and home, has a union thug come up when his back was turned and blows an air horn in his ear causing permanent hearing loss. They behave like animals and are encouraged to do so.
While on strike several union members vandalize the company's assets. No time to do their jobs but plenty of time to break the law and destroy corporate property. Their allegiance is not to the company, it's to the union and there is the problem. Once you lose your loyalty to the company that pays you, there is a problem.
Shut all unions down in the US. They don't help but they definitely hurt us. Driving up costs... they take from the workers to pad their own pockets and make us unable to compete worldwide. There was a time and place for them but that is decades gone.
With its seniority rules, unions help out those on the low-end of the bell-curve. In the free-for-all technology world, those on the high-end of the bell-curve benefit greatly *if* they know how to bargain & know their worth. Or more cynically, if they know how to maintain the right buzzwords.
Anybody else gets screwed. This often includes the customer & employers, who often don't really know what they're getting.
The kind of dog eat dog capitalism you're advocating isn't far from it. You're a human being. Your worth shouldn't be determined by the number of of other humans starving to death at the moment (and neither should theirs, either).
I hear you saying "I'm just lucky not to be them", but why rely on luck? ensuring a stable, high quality of life should be the purpose of society. The only other possible purpose is to enrich the 1% at the expense of everyone else. 'Freedom' doesn't really come into it, because you can't be free if you're not economically secure. I control your supply of food, shelter and medicine you will do as I say even if you're technically 'free'. It's the real reason slavery went away in the US...
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The economic idea of an efficient market is one where nobody can force an outcome with superior bargaining power.
You get a market-clearing price that reflects supply and demand when the parties meet as equals.
A software developer applying at Electronic Arts is not as bad off as a single mother applying to Wal-Mart, but is definitely not on a level playing field.
Oh, "reinvest in his business" is an idea from the past. People used to do that, but today any surplus is going to pay the management fees of the private equity company or to pay the interest on the loan the private equity company made the business take out to pay the "special dividend".
Not sure how that could have happened if business were fleeing the state en masse.
Just curious: do you know any government workers? You think the librarians at the city library are overpaid? That teachers don't work hard enough?
The Economist did a piece years ago about California's fiscal problems. Look it up.
I once developed software at a company that was mostly a manufacturer. It was unionized. The union for the manufacturing workers would occasionally send out examples of people who did things the union had no interest in helping them out of.
... because we are used to be paid essentially what we want and get incentives shoved up our asses.
Gladly I worked in a factory as a summer job before that so I know what it is like to get screwed by The Man (TM) every day and having no power to say anything, because there are plenty of people who are willing to take over for you.
and it was the worst experience of my life... it was while working in a textile factory and i was member of the textile workers union... the working conditions were filthy, the women there had running sores on their arms from the fabric dust, there was little ventilation and lighting, the pay was lousy - and yet, the union took nearly 20 percent of my wages - and for what?
i lasted a year, then just left... the union sent a nasty letter telling me that i'd never work in the industry again...
i just laughed and was grateful to get out of that job..
yea, union membership and working in a union shop is just great... LOL!
The tech sector, and more specifically the IT sector is the modern day version of the royalists at the court of Louis the XVI. They (the tech sector) more readily identify with the entrepeneur ( read modern noble, or royal court), than the lowly peasants (union members). The tech sector, is perphaps the most pervasive component of the current "capitalist" world order. You can find it supporting all aspects of the economy, but no one told them that the modern day economy is (made up) kind of like the monarchy. It follows then that those who so assiduously maintain and expand it will be the last to see it's end. The fact that so many in the tech sector use the language of capital, namely free market, competitive, and efficient is evidence that they have internalized these "royalist" values (here's a clue they don't come from unions) and cannot use the same language to explain their eventual job loss. Worker in the political context is the natural enemy of capital. The reason there are no unions in the tech sector is because the tech sector does not see itself as "workers". That is untill the "let them eat cake" moment. But by then, it will be too late.
This argument is nonsense. It is like saying "Coal power made the world a better place, compare what things were like in 1860 to today", and using that to advocate ramping up coal production. It's a nonsense argument.
Whatever benefit something had IN THE PAST does not have bearing on TODAY. What is the benefit a union provides society TODAY. Rights of the worker are now codified in legislation; we're not returning to sweatshops. Meanwhile unions are silent on most of the most pressing social issues in society. I don't see any large unions striking for rights for same sex marriage.
What won workers rights was the tendency of most companies to not follow the worst examples and, when those worst examples were exposed, to no longer be forced to compete with that at price levels that were abusive.
In other words, culture won out over greed.
In the meantime, we've gained unions, which are parasitic organisms that in every instance are linked to organized crime, low worker productivity, and the failure of industries.
The lesson of the Twinkie has re-shaped American labor. Unions are not needed and destroy our industry; there is a better way without unions.
Futurist Traditionalism
They are part of the reason cost to consumers go up.
I wouldn't be a member of an IT union - screw that. If I don't like my job, I'll find another. Not pay some useless people to "fight for my rights"
What I wonder is why the proponents of public transit never mention the disruptive effect of strikes by unionized transit workers when they are extolling the benefits of public transit.
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
Yes, as a mechanical engineer, I'm supposed to appreciate how efficiency makes everything better. But, as an observer of economics, I can't help but notice that our national economy doesn't function as well as it did decades ago, in terms of making the common working man more prosperous and economically secure, precisely because it is now more efficient. I'm assured by those with economics degrees that eventually, efficiency will make things better. But I have to ask, what do they mean by "eventually"? Will I live long enough to see it?
1. As to your first example, that wasn't my experience having spent many years working under union contracts. Yes, union seniority, is given preference in the approval of vacation scheduling. But, under union rules, the schedule, once approved, would not permit a senior employee to arbitrarily bump another employee out of an approved vacation. There could be exceptions under extenuating circumstances, e.g. they once needed me to reschedule my vacation so that another employee could attend his brother's funeral. I don't recall whether I had seniority over that employee or not, but it wouldn't have mattered. We weren't as inflexible as you characterize us to be.
2. In every discussion of unionization I've ever encountered, the anti-union side will eventually chime in with the apocryphal account of their acquaintance's uncle (or an uncle's acquaintance), who lost his thumb in an industrial accident because of a drunk union employee, whom the union would then not "allow" to be fired. Well, that story is just nothing but pure bullshit. Tell me, is the allegedly "drunk" employee ever entitled to any due process at all? Who said he was drunk? Was it confirmed, or should he just be fired because someone stated that he was drunk? This is a story that anti-union management types like to bounce around in their echo chambers until they've convinced themselves that it must be true. A simple investigation of the facts invariably finds otherwise. But since you prefaced your account with "in several cases", please cite a real example of it somewhere. I have never seen one. But I have seen union employees be fired for being drunk. The union got them due process, but it didn't help them because they actually WERE drunk.
3. If an employee cannot, or will not, perform his duties, he can be easily dismissed by any competent manager, assuming the manager has read the employee's union contract. If the manager has not read it, why has he been given a position in management? Again, there is an issue of due process involved here, a concept that the anti-union crowd has a hard time getting their heads wrapped around.
4. Let me share an example of my own, regarding due process. I once had a co-worker who was accused of theft of company property. He was instructed by company security, that he was being fired, but that they would not file charges if he returned the property. He denied having committed the thefts. Security informed him that they had undeniable video-taped evidence of him stealing the property. He asked to see the evidence, but the request was denied. He was fired for about a year and a half. He was subsequently re-hired and given full back pay for the entire time period of his absence, plus an additional settlement that the company had to pay for libel. I don't honestly know whether or not my co-worker was guilty of stealing, but I know that he was denied due process. And that is the reason that I backed him up, and it's one of the reasons that I think it's better to be a member of a union.
I somewhat expect the manager who lost the battle would want to win the war, regardless of the consequences to the company. Perhaps I'm unduly pessimistic...
We could all tighten up our spending, but there are limits.
$2 per day is all some people live on. I thought what it would take to live on $2 per day. I would have to cancel my Internet and phone service. I could not afford electricity, let alone A/C, so I would have to cancel my electric service. Car? Bwahaha, no way, would have to walk everywhere. The city's water and sewage services cost about $60 per month, so those would also have to go. I would need an outhouse or latrine or chamberpots, and a well with a hand pump for water. Or perhaps I would have to take buckets to the nearest stream or lake every day. Either way, can forget about bathing daily. I would also need a wood burning stove, and access to enough wood to fuel the thing. But stoves are expensive, so I could make do with an open campfire. I'd need my own wooded acreage, perhaps about 10 acres, to have enough wood. But land is subject to property taxes, so I'd have to forgo owning the land and just raid public land. Buying food from the grocery would be intermittent at best. What little land I could afford to own would have to be devoted to a garden, and I don't mean a silly little flower garden, I mean a real garden, a vegetable garden. Then there's the problem of storing the harvest. Some crops need only be dried, and guarded from rats, which cats are all too happy to do, but many foods need more preparation for storage. Would have to take up canning, or perhaps dig a root cellar. The ice house is another way. Northerly enough towns used to have buildings devoted to cold storage. In the winter, flood a shallow depression with water, and the next day it would be frozen, then they would chop out blocks of ice and store them with sawdust for insulation. Amazingly, the ice would last through the year. Clothing is another problem. People used to make dresses out of burlap feed sacks. Homespun is another option, but doing that takes an enormous amount of time and labor. I would never see a doctor. If anything happened to me, I'd heal up on my own, perhaps ending up maimed with all the labor now twice as difficult as before, or die.
This is pretty close to how my great grandparents and grandparents lived in the Great Depression. They were all farmers, and they chopped wood, pumped water, tended the garden, milked the cows by hand, canned the harvest, bathed once a week, and hoped that all their hard, menial labor would lead to a better life for their children. It's terribly inefficient, and they understood that. They got electricity when it became available, and then when the freezer came, they instantly abandoned canning. Frozen vegetables taste way better than canned. Canning takes a lot of wood, and much of the energy from burning the wood is wasted. Pollutes like crazy too. Today, some people think all that sounds sort of romantic and admirable, especially the wood fires part, but it is neither. We could not afford for everyone to live that way today, for one thing there isn't enough acreage for all the wood that would be needed. But screw people way, way down on pay, and this is the kind of life we will all have, for a short while, until resources run out and they will. Then things get ugly, fast.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
BART Strike Provides Free Week of Telecommuting To Tech's Non-Union World
I don't know much about their grievances. But after not having to ride that stupid train two hours a day for the past three days, yeah, you guys show that bourgeoisie!
Finally, somebody posting who knows actually something!
Used to be a high school kid could do IT jobs... still can... but HR drones will filter those out for people with degrees who may know less relevant info. Sure more education helps even in indirect ways and it used to be a quality filter as well (but it is hardly one today.) Even then, HR drones are a joke because they are so stupid at hiring.
The local plumbers union is nearby me, they have a traditional trade skill education model tied into their system which fits perfectly with their profession and I think that education model fits with many other professions as well, especially programming or IT. Without their union, their ideal model would fade away into something of a mess like everything else has - I'm simply saying their union's biggest benefit is maintaining the traditional model which is ideal for their profession (at the cost of having a union, but who else is going to preserve what works best? The price we pay is too high, from our perspective-- but from theirs it is necessary. A balance is needed and today selfishness reigns supreme so being reasonable and sounding reasonable are totally different.)
I wouldn't want some inexperienced fool doing plumbing on my house and feel safe insurance will deal with the big mistakes and the useless court system would deal with the minor ones... that is if I even can trace problems back decades to the plumber who fucked up in the first place! Its not kung-fu, but I fail to see why that model (master/grasshopper) is not cool in other areas.
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Good comments here. Most of the people I work with in my Tech career have NEVER been a union, DIDN'T come from a union family, and have romantic notions of what unions are for or what they actually do. My Grandfather fought Shell Oil while trying to organize works in Southern California. My other Grandfather was a principal in a midwest Musicians Union. My dad, OCAW, other relatives in IBLW, Nursing, Retail Clerks. I worked in OACW and Retail Clerks environments before going to college. What Unions are in Hollywood movies, and were in the 1950s is simply history. The goal of Unions mirrors the goals of politicians and lawyers. How can we extort the MAXIMUM amount of money from those who put their own money on the line? How can I, the Union Leader, maximize my personal political power on the backs of others? Represent the workers? A long gone goal. What a Union SHOULD do is to assure that workers have a relatively safe and secure workplace. The should represent the workers to management, and assure the companies are run well to assure future jobs for the members. What a Union DOES for the most part is to shake down management, and create crisis where there is none. Find a crack and open it wide. Why? You can get more members and raise dues. With the dues, you can buy political power. Doubt it? The US educational system is a total mess. And, the Teacher Unions are the largest campaign contributors to the Democrats, currently in power. Unions work where there is a common goal with management. In Germany, many industrial companies have worker representative on their boards. In the US, that would never happen, as the union leaders would then be part of the solution, meaning they would have skin in the game. Better to sit on the outside and complain. The unions are their own worst enemies now. Detroit shows what happens when the unions essentially control the company. Are unions really needed? Are they wanted? In Wisconsin, the law was changed so that State Workers could no longer have their union dues deducted automatically from their pay checks. When members had to physically write a check, they realize what they were paying for 'representation'. 30% quit the unions. They were lucky, some workers cannot by LAW. Best thing we can do is to outlaw government unions. Government workers do not NEED unions. And, they didn't have them for most of the last century. FDR was against government workers unionizing. Why did it happen? Politicians saw instant votes. Get union support, give government workers a raise, get more votes. The craziness has to stop. Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers. BART should fire the strikers.
That's right. I want a globalized guild. Like stone masons were. Where IT workers have to go to special guild approved schools. Where there are oaths of loyalty to the concepts of Open Source, and freedom of information. Where places like SCO or the NSA can be denied services from the guild, leaving them only with unskilled rogue IT people... crippling these bad guys. A guild that can black list someone who crosses the line for working at such places willingly, once we've decided they are evil. A guild that can ensure good wages for our people, because it's global. So companies can't go *anywhere* without paying us the going rate we demand, not even 3rd world. I want a guild powerful enough to hold governments by the balls, and make them... force them to honor peoples privacy, respect our right to encryption, respect that our data is ours, even at borders, even if it's in a Google inbox. I would like a guild powerful enough to blockade entire nations from computer and internet access when such nations decide to be pricks to their people or their neighbors. I want a nation of IT workers, one entrenched in every physical nation, and calling the shots.
Give me that, and I'll vote yes on it. Otherwise, it's just a powerless regional union, and my job (and everyone else's) will move to where there is no such union. Hell, they could telecommute and replace us.
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because most of the work isn't location-dependent. Strike and you get outsourced. What is location dependent is largely either small-department or easily restaffed.
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No, I'm not. I was part of the 1987 DOL study that resulted in the classification of Software Engineering/Programming as a primarily creative endeavor. Until a skilled practitioner A and skilled practitioner B will tend to come up with the same solution to a given problem more often than not, it is an art as much as it requires a high degree of training and skill.
That may be what the DOL says; that's not what happens in practice. The chance for creative work is often rare unless you get to create something new; as every good software developer should know, the vast majority of time is spent maintaining an existing code base & making small tweaks. Or dealing with planning & meetings. The time for creativity is very small indeed.
Nevertheless, they are classified "exempt". This means (1) if they agree to a fixed price contract, it doesn't matter how many hours they have to work, and (2) they are predominantly salaried, so there is no such thing as "overtime" or "hourly pay". You might as well be trying to unionize the management at GM.
[...] Other engineering disciplines also have trade unions. Why should software engineering permit somebody without the proper training to write code professionally? How often are lives made inconvenient (or worse) because of rookie/amateurish design flaws?
I think the part that you are failing to grasp here is that a lot of training can make someone a better plumber, and there is a measurable correlation which you can use to justify this position. A lot of training isn't necessarily going to make someone a better software engineer, There's not a specific set of skills you can inculcate, nor can you test that someone has these skills and is able to apply them. Unlike plumbing, where it's easy to test whether someone is cleaning both sides of a copper fitting, then applying flux, before using an acetylene torch to solder the pipe to the fitting, or Tig welding, where you can pass/fail them with a ball-peen hammer test on their weld, after it first passes visual, you can not test whether or not a software engineer will write good software. Tests are not predictive of performance, as they are in the trades.
Leadership is a trainable skill & the military knows this very well. Some people are born naturals, sure, but most everybody else can be trained. Likewise with management.
Leads and management with both the leadership skills & the software engineering background are an all-too-rare combo.
And here you miss the difference between "leader" and "tech lead". A tech lead in software engineering is someone whose direction other people follow because they have demonstrated that they know what they are doing: if you follow them, the problem is going to get solved, and it will happen on time.
Someone with military training is frequently an asset; however, their value is predominantly in project management roles, and, to a lesser extent, in people management roles. My statement of the people management role being "to a lesser extent" is made both thoughtfully and reluctantly. In the best companies I have worked with and for, the best managers were those who had been technical themselves. It's also frequently the case that these managers do not have a lot of top-down authority for anything other than human problems. For example, in Google, there is fierce internal recruiting, and because of this, if you don't like your manager, you can tell them "take a hike" and go work elsewhere within the company. Note that this is a contributing factor in Google tending to cancel products, and in them not finishing things to the point of productization; nevertheless, it's the reality of the situation that managers are reluctant to play "800 pound gorilla" to drive projects to completion, and people tend to work on whatever they find interesting (which isn't productization, among other things).
> But in just one day of striking, BART workers have cost the local economy about $73 million
> in lost productivity due to delays in traffic and commuting.
No, the workers did not cost anybody anything. It's the BART management that is responsible for making the trains run on time. It's the BART management that cost the local economy about $73 million with their mismanagement of the BART system and particularly its human resources. You can't have it both ways. If BART is important then BART workers deserve to get paid. If BART workers don't deserve to get paid, then BART must be unimportant. But either way, it is management that has the responsibility. That is their one and only job.