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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.
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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.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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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".
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
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Unless you happen to work in one of the 95% of all jobs where the described situation ends up with the employee becoming unemployed.
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...
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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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.