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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.
Tech is special, because we're tech workers and we're special.
Tech jobs are being outsourced faster than shit through a goose. Working conditions are suffering, job satisfaction is suffering, their work week is getting longer, pay is lagging, and we don't need to organize, dammit! Because we're special.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unions do have a place and need in certain industries... it's just that tech isn't one of them. Anyone sufficiently competent in the tech industry can improve him/herself and get a better income over time - far faster than the typical Union could ever get you.
You don't organize in a union for salary unless you are minimum wage earner. They have a big role in IT, but as legal assistence, being able to call on highly specialized lawyers to review your contracts, instead of paying 10s of thousands for one of your own, is worth every single fee. On top of being able to call them in as legal muscle if management is trying to screw you over.
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.
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
We're not "special" - our circumstances and mechanisms just happen to be unique. Just the way it is.
Yup - there's outsourcing, but 9/10 times, it comes back to bite the corporations that do it, and bites them right in the ass... usually in a spectacularly expensive way. Outsourcing is often touted as a big, bad boogeyman, but it has been around for what, 10-15 years now? Given that amount of time, you'd think that the entire global tech industry would be based in Mumbai or Hyderabad by now - yet it isn't. That's why I'm not too worried that the next 20 years would somehow magically drain all the available work to India (or wherever).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
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.
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.
But the modern CEO very rarely stays at any company long enough to feel those effects. They come in, cut and slash, make their bonus...and their off to ruin the next company. Of course I might just be biased; I was recently "work force reduced" at HPE lol...but I got a severance package, so this time I didn't mind as much hahaha.
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
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.
Unions do have a place and need in certain industries... it's just that tech isn't one of them. Anyone sufficiently competent in the tech industry can improve him/herself and get a better income over time - far faster than the typical Union could ever get you.
Have you considered that it is not just about income for you but having an appropriate body to represent the political interests of the tech industry to legislators? That as a group of professionals there is no one there to represent us at a government level or lobby for or against laws that work against our individual interests as professionals. That a government or corporate level no one takes us seriously because no-one has our back.
Overall, why would I (for example) want to chain myself down to the disadvantages of a Union (seniority-over-merit, cronyism, locked/lockstep wage growth and scheduling, monthly dues, aforementioned dues going to politicians and causes I do not support, being forced to join in some states even if I didn't want to, etc)... but little-to-none of the advantages?
Because whilst you are a great tech, you probably don't read and lobby government about the laws that are going to affect your job and write to elected representatives to protect your interests and indeed, extend them. I'm reading 200-600 pages of legislation per year re technology and would gladly pay someone else to do it.
My own wage growth has far outstripped anything that any union could provide, and has done so for 20 years now. If I don't like my employer, I can have at least two job interviews scheduled by the end of the day, and interviews/screens lined up by end-of-week.
Well if it's just all about me then it's probably ok. However that attitude doesn't make it any easier for someone to get a foot in the door for who might just have less access to an opportunity because that job is overseas.
As a group of professionals I think we have to grow out of the attitude that it's all about what I can get for me. If we had professional body looking after our interests then we may not see things like the IP provisions in the TPP or the H1B visa arrangements that we do.
In all, we maybe taken a little more seriously.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
No, I'd rather have US workers in a system more like Germany's. a country of 80 million people that exports about as much as the United States w/ 350 million.
Don't let right-wing media delude you regarding organized labor. It's the main reason workers anywhere have a decent standard of living.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.