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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.
the decline of labour was ushered in during the seventies. as japan and europe completed reconstruction after world war II the trade-on-credit agreement from the US became decreasingly valuable to these nations and, instead, they began to outpace the dominant commerce sector in the US, namely manufacturing, with cheaper labour and higher quality in the void that was a reigning superpower resting on its laurels..
in the interrim US firms worked to fight directly what they could not compete with. Harley Davidson lobbied for steep tarrifs on japanese motorcycles while other manufacturing firms slashed prices and increased nationalism in their advertising. Behind the scenes labour and social reforms which began, albeit halfheartedly under the carter administration, took off in earnest in the reagan administration. Through a combination of outsourcing, labor deregulation, union busting, and reductions in the US social safety net (welfare, unemployment benefits, and healthcare) corporations were able to impose longer working hours and lower pay, without the risk of strikes. Reagan did his part by firing eleven thousand air traffic controllers as a show of force and a clear message to the masses: the concessions of a benevolent capital class to a newfound middleclass are over.
And now today, in this foul year of our lord 2016, the fact remains. Corporations no longer operate for the greater good of a people but for shareholder value. A corporation is now a job creator only as a last resort.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Corporate shills claiming victory and deriding unions as evil in 3.. 2..
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
The union did not give up on IBM, IBM gave up on America. The union is just not interested in protecting foreign workers rights, or at least knows that Chinese and Indian peasants do not have enough money for it to be worth their time taking some of it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Paid OT? What's that? Oh wait, I think I saw it once in a history book...
The union did not give up on IBM, IBM gave up on America
No, America gave up on America. IBM is just doing what makes economic sense: moving labor out of uncompetitive locales to competitive ones. There's nothing "magical" about US-based workers, not factory workers (as we've seen by the wholesale transfer of factory work to China) and not knowledge workers.
When factory work was being outsourced on a mass scale to China, the drum-beat from knowledge workers was, "if you can't compete, deal with it. It's nobody else's job to support your failing business model". Well, now the shoe is on the other foot. What happened to factories can happen even easier to IT workers, because it's easier to move those jobs than to build entirely new factories to take advantage of lower labor costs.
There exists no such thing as a "right" to a job. I'm sorry that you aren't living in a competitive locale, but that's no one else's problem but yours. Your society wanted perks that other societies didn't demand, and as a result, you became more expensive. Because you were more expensive, it made less and less sense over time to employ you when others could do the work cheaper.
This is economics 101. It sucks for displaced workers, but nobody OWEs you a job. You must provide enough value to be worth your cost, or the jobs will go elsewhere. Try to pass laws to stop that? Guess what, economics doesn't care about your laws. That'll make your entire country even more uncompetitive and entire industries will uproot and move elsewhere. This has happened before. It can happen again.
The only way you can recover from this situation is to be economically competitive. That means structural changes to your society. It will mean a drastic reduction in your salary, which means you won't have that nice 3 bedroom house in the burbs and a luxury car. But you are competing with people who don't have those things and are not paying for them, so they can work for $2/hr where you demand $50/hr, because they are living 8 people to a tiny inner city apartment and own no car at all, nor big screen TV.
So go ahead. Whine, cry about how it isn't fair. You're right, it isn't! Nobody ever promised life would be fair, or kind, or care one bit about your problems. It's down to a simple reality: compete, or don't. People buying the latest plastic widget don't care if it's made in China or USA, they care if it costs $2 for the Chinese one or $65 for the American one. Same deal with IT. You are competing with people all around the world. Deal.
I guess if you consider workers' rights and environmental protections to be perks, you must be happy living in a shack near a coal powerplant.
What the First World should do is tax products that are produced in factories that don't have equivalent labour and environmental protections in place, regardless of country of origin. If multinationals can export their abuse and pollution to corrupt countries, they should be charged appropriately, otherwise it's a rigged system. I'm all in favour of a competitive free market. This isn't one.
They are not "prone" to anything. Bad apples and jerks form in any large group of people or organization instances. It's human nature that a certain percent are jerks, or the majority of the group will act jerky at times.
Enforcement and regulation may be needed to tame organizations if they take advantage of lack of enforcement or regulation.
Unions are merely collections of people who work together for certain goals. They are not inherently better or worse than corporations, other than perhaps the enforcement and regulations they are governed under and/or external pressures from their environment of operation.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The fight over whether corporations or unions are the bigger sleazebags is a fake argument. They are made up of the same stuff: humans who follow human nature and who need some degree of governance and oversight.
Table-ized A.I.
This is economics 101. It sucks for displaced workers, but nobody OWEs you a job. You must provide enough value to be worth your cost, or the jobs will go elsewhere. Try to pass laws to stop that? Guess what, economics doesn't care about your laws. That'll make your entire country even more uncompetitive and entire industries will uproot and move elsewhere. This has happened before. It can happen again.
You are half right. If you step back a bit and look at the situation from a different point of view, you SHOULD see that what you said is only half the reason. What would you do to make you look good in your resume if you are a CEO to come into a big corporation? Of course, just cut cost and make the company book looks good while you are in the position. How to do that? Yes, reduce the cost by moving jobs to somewhere else that cost the corporation much cheaper as long as the quality is OK. Competitive work? Yes, the cost is competitive, but that does not mean the quality is as good as it used to be but rather just good enough. Many big corporations are doing the same thing because those few CEOs jump from one job to the other.
Have you ever worked for IBM in the US lately? Do you know that they work you like a dog and expect you to work at least 60+ hours a week. If you don't show your hours high enough, they will cut you (or lay off) because they said you are being lazy. If you don't show that you are improving yourself ALL the time, you are out as well. You are in there running non stop just to keep your job. You have no time to breath. If you have a family, then prepare to kiss your family good bye if you want to keep the job. Though, if you are very high up, it may be a completely different life quality in there. Yes, you just lay off workers and get a big bonus at the end of the year.
IBM offers both options to customers. US based, or offshore. Some must use US because of regulation.
Guess which one our customers take when given the option?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Union management is usually (in theory) decided by worker votes. Since it's their dues paying union manager salaries, the workers typically don't want to pay them more than necessary. If this mini-democracy is not working right, then there's some digging and fixing to do. Some other force is mucking things up.
Table-ized A.I.
The problem here is that corporate officer jobs have been gaining upwards of 4,000% compared to the plebes. Are they not also subject to the same market forces? I wonder what between these two extremes is different (if you think corporate boards don't operate as protection for the wealthiest, you haven't been paying attention)?
While certainly no one owes you a job, no one owes any business a market either. The fact of the matter is that laws have been bought and sold against labor (the TPP being the latest round) while at the same time workers have been told they don't need to organize when they have labor laws. And here we are.
Slash and burn economics isn't viable either, and eventually those chickens will come to to roost as well, often with bloody results.
"Benefit" which is to say extort the American workers. Most of unions are extortion rackets, and the employees are the victims.