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IBM Union Calls It Quits (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: A 16-year effort by the Communication Workers of America to organize IBM employees into a union is ending. The union's local, the Alliance@IBM, is suspending 'organizing' efforts, and says its membership has been worn down by IBM's ongoing decline of its U.S. work force as it grows overseas. The union never got many dues-paying members, but its Website, a source of reports from employees on layoffs, benefit changes and restructuring, was popular with employees, a source of information for the news media, and a continuing thorn in the side of IBM.
They are very interested in organizing globally, but 3rd world countries outlaw it.
Fact is, when comparing unions to corporations, there are no angels.
Unions are quite prone to using dues-money for self-enrichment, power-playing, politicking... and even today, some unions are not above using violence and intimidation (on the down-low of course) to get their way among their membership, 'potential' members, and basically anyone who gets in their way or frustrates them. For example, the 'scab' who dared to cross picket lines, usually because he needed the income that damned badly.
Mind, I'm not picking on either one - just providing perspective and balance here.
I know of honorable and good unions (and had once been a member of one - the Ironworkers). I know of honorable and good corporations run by honest men. Problem is, they both sit on the bright side of a very long and subtly graduated scale that runs all the way down to some downright evil shit.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Woah there Hoss. Not so sure about that. We regularly hear about ridiculous crunches and there are plenty of IT workers being treated like crap by management through offshoring, sick leave abuse, holiday abuse or whatever. I recently had to sign a contract with a previous employer that threatened to sack me if I called in ill with a stress or mental related condition. Now that' clearly unenforceable but that's the kind of shit they pull.
I can see why there'd be a tension between someone who can make out alright and someone on the lower rungs of the ladder, but managers are managers and workers are workers and wherever that differential exists, the former will always try and abuse the latter.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Unions are not just about wage growth. They're also about protecting employees from abuse. Let's face it, over the last 20 years or so, abuse of tech workers has been rampant. Companies expect their tech workers to put in 50 to 60 hours a week with no overtime or comp time. Many tech companies offer their employees stock options, which are not as handsome as they used to be since the tax rules surrounding them changed a number of years ago. So tech companies often feed their employees the line "Well, the more you work and the harder you work, the more valuable your stock options will be in the long run". That rarely turns out to be the case; not every tech company turns out to be an Apple, or a Microsoft, or a Netscape, or a Facebook.
Yes, I'll agree that I don't care for other aspects of unions either, like seniority over merit, and some unions can be very corrupt as well. But if tech companies aren't careful, they may have no choice but to deal with unions in the future. Running tech employees into the ground is not a sound or sustainable strategy for remaining competitive in the world. Unions could at least help ensure that practice stops.
Not quite. The second layoff for 35 people in New York and California were cancelled after the NYT wrote an earlier article on the 250 people in Florida who were forced to train their replacements (see link below).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html
We're all libertarian Uber-men while while the scales are tipped in our favor. Our skills and talents are in demand and we got to set the terms.
It won't be like that forever. "Your own wage growth" will last exactly as long as it takes for your skillset to be commodotized and turned in to an expense item on a spreadsheet.
Or until someone finds you inconvenient. Or wants your job. Or thinks you're after his job. Or doesn't like the way you looked at his wife. Or thinks you make too much money. Etc, etc, etc.
Point is, at some point the scales of power will tip and you'll find yourself needing help. The big, entrenched, rich, old companies didn't get that way by playing the short game. They're looking to screw you the moment it becomes viable. That's just history.
Don't buy in to the delusion that you're "valued". Don't buy in to the idea that you're special and that you'll be ok without help.
Organized labor is your voice, and you're a fool to have no voice.
Australian GDP growth has remained steady over the last 40 years. What are you basing your assertions on?
GDP growth has been steady. While it may not be perfect it clearly doesn't result in what you're describing.
Don't blame the unions for what trust-fund babies running daddies company did to the US car industry. If the guy on the shop floor could see the Japanese coming what could he do? Requisition a few hundred million for a new assembly line for a new model?
If he could? He'd then run into the unions sobbing about jobs lost because the new assembly line no longer needs widget adjusters & sprocket polishers and possibly also the issues involved if retooling the current factory would require an extended closure, the EPA refusing to allow the upgrades to the old factory unless it suddenly meets requirements only an entirely new building could manage (never mind that the changes would result in less total pollution), and a nice random boatload of governmental and special interest groups who don't like the idea of building a new factory from the ground up because of the environmental impact (once again, even if it reduces total pollution) and various flavors of woo.
This is roughly what people who were high enough in the companies to both see these problems coming and actually do something about it ran into in many industries, and it doesn't help that the car industry unions' upper levels basically sold out their members' long-term interests in order to secure votes for themselves when union elections came up like the politicians they are. This is a problem that isn't necessarily inherit in the system for nor intrinsic to unions in and of themselves, but it is unfortunately very business as usual for US unions once you get past the local level and probably part of why the IBM union failed to gain traction. (Why join a union if you feel you cannot trust the union's management?)
This a systemic failure, and trying to fix it by changing only one part would be like trying to fix a system error in Windows by changing the color scheme.