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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.
They are very interested in organizing globally, but 3rd world countries outlaw it.
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.
They closed down in America, a place where it is legal and you are under basically zero danger running a union, because of a drop in the dues coming in. It does not matter what laws exist in China, it never would of been a profitable enough a venture to begin with. The only reason they want a foothold in foreign soil, is to gain more leverage over companies so that they can benefit the real members who make enough to pay them. But without enough American members, they have no use for the foreign leverage.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
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.
Add back in tariffs (which makes free market zealots cry but we can sell those tears for a profit).
The Australians do that now. The result is not higher paying jobs for Australians, it has done little to improve their overall income.
What it has achieved there is to raise the cost of goods to 60% above what everyone else pays. Everything made in Australia is hideously expensive, but the import tariffs run 50%, or the imports are outright blocked by crooked regulations. At the end of the day, Australia is a case study in why protectionist economics is a disaster.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
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
Try to organize a union in China and see what happens to you. You go to prison ... it is illegal to unionize.
Unions are not illegal in China. Many foreign-owned factories are unionized, and unions are allowed at any private company. They are not generally tolerated at state owned factories, but, in theory, they are not needed there since the government already represents the interests of the proletariat.
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
Then those countries will immediately retaliate with tariffs on American goods, and everybody loses.
Remind me again how many of the monumental number of televisions manufactured in the vast factories of America are exported and sold in China?
...if all the pressure to unionize and all the headaches that that entails might have at least early on, been part of the PROBLEM, causing more and more jobs to move overseas from the US?
It didn't have anything to do with it.
I was at IBM when they were just trying to get the union ball rolling, and for a while after that. Everyone inside IBM though they were a joke. The problem is, it was the CWA -- Communications Workers of America -- and their primary bailiwick was radio and telecom. They were desperately trying to diversify their membership base, as the jobs in that industry were drying up, and being replaced by communications over commodity infrastructure based on the Internet.
So they tried to tell us we were all communications workers, and that we should join their union because we happened to have IT related jobs, and people were using computers to communicate.
It didn't work, mostly because we were well paid and well treated, because we were in high demand, and demand was oustripping supply by a large margin; it still does, unless you are a useless lump.
They only got a bit of a bump when IBM converted their pension plan from fully funded to a cash balance plan, and that quickly went away when IBM agreed to grandfather the plans of those people within 5 years of retirement -- which was about all the people who expected to retire with a company pension, and successfully live the rest of their lives on it, anyway.
The only thing that's pushing IBM out of the U.S. at this point is costs, and the fact that you only tend to go to IBM (and IBM Global Services, in particular) for contract work on larger projects, and you kind of don't care who does the work, so long as it gets done.
It's actually a false economy, based on quality of work product, but IGS has always overcommitted their resources -- they were in fact proud that they had more contracts than they could possibly deliver on, and announced the fact at company meetings -- and has always been focussed on giving customers exactly what they ask for, as opposed to what they need, and thus keeping the consulting relationship ongoing. If you aren't going to deliver what the customer needs anyway, it doesn't really matter who delivers the wrong thing, or its level of quality, it's going to keep the contract chugging along.
So really, there was no reason to unionize, and a union wouldn't keep the jobs from bleeding to elsewhere, so why bother giving them money for no services rendered?
Remind me again how many of the monumental number of televisions manufactured in the vast factories of America are exported and sold in China?
China imports aircraft, CPUs, capital goods, movies, and billions of hours of services from America.
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.
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 with this like of thinking is it doesn't mean the quality is worse, either. I'm old enough to remember when US blue collar types would pooh pooh Japanese products for their low quality.
Once the jobs are in China (or India or wherever) the expertise will follow. Eventually they will be able to compete on quality.
What I don't understand is why the union-company relationship in the US seem to be so adversarial compared to other countries. Seems like either the corporation is on top and does whatever it pleases, or the union is on top demanding (and getting) ridiculous work rules and gold-plated benefits.
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.
He did say in theory.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Restricting and filtering all internet communication is in the interest of proletariat?
It is in the interest of the communist party ruling class, and since they constitute the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and personify the interests of the workers, it is clearly in the interest of the proletariat as well. At least that is the theory.
Remind me again how many of the monumental number of televisions manufactured in the vast factories of America are exported and sold in China?
China imports aircraft, CPUs, capital goods, movies, and billions of hours of services from America.
Aircraft: yes. Tariff that, and you've just killed Chinas air industry. I guess they could go AirBus instead. They don't import much in the way of capital goods. The movies, they generally just run a "third shift" and press a bunch of extra DVDs: the DVD players don't really care if it's a binary copy of a "content scrambled" DVD, as long as it's an exact duplicate. Not a lot of import there. What services do they import from the U.S.?
It's kind of entirely moot, however, as we are not permitted to tariff China for many things, because they have WTO "Most Favord Nation" status, granted to them by the U.S., which means they can't be tariffed any more than the least teriff on all other U.S. trading partners, even if their factories are being powered by burning babies born to Falun Gong families in their power plants.
On a per-capita basis, Americans produce far more pollution than Chinese, Africans, etc.
Eh? per-capita basis? Who cares?! If your government has to close the schools in your city, and tell the old folks that they should do their morning Tai Chi at home, instead of an open park . . . your country is . . . well, let's just leave it at that.
You should try to visit China sometime . . . in a major city . . . and take a deep breath . . . I never knew that New Jersey smelled so sweet!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Where on earth did you hear that from? Australia has less import tarriffs than the USA.
The US tarriffs on sugar and steel are on the other hand a case study of unintended consequences due to protectionist economics. The first has you all getting fat on expensive corn syrup instead of very cheap cane sugar from a choice of many of your southern neighbours, the second resulted in manufacturing moving offshore to where competition has driven down the steel prices.
Australia's economic problems are due to completely different reasons - such as ignoring nearly everything apart from selling dirt to countries with more money and being run by a bunch of used car salesmen.
Thinking of a modern union as anything else shows that you've been keeping your head in the sand for the last few decades. Ask any union supporter why unions are still relevant and they'll no doubt prattle on about things unions did 100 years ago. Remember that time unions bilked the MA tax payers out of 10 billion dollars in their big dig scam?
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