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Does Silicon Valley Need More Labor Unions? (salon.com)
Salon recently talked to Jeffrey Buchanan, who two years ago co-founded a labor rights group "that highlights the plight of security officers, food-service workers, janitors and shuttle-bus drivers in the region." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
The situation among Silicon Valley's low-wage contract workers has become so perilous that in January, thousands of security guards working at immensely profitable companies like Facebook and Cisco followed the shuttle-bus drivers and voted to unionize in an effort to collectively bargain for higher wages and better benefits. The upcoming labor contract negotiations between the roughly 3,000 security guards (represented by SEIU United Service Workers West) and their employers is one of the biggest developments in Silicon Valley labor organizing to happen this year. Buchanan says there's also a broader push this year to get tech companies to be proactive in ensuring these workers can make ends meet, even if these companies have to pay more for the services they procure...
A paper published last year by University of California at Santa Cruz researchers Chris Brenner and Kyle Neering estimates between 19,000 and 39,000 contracted service workers are employed in the Valley at any given time... An additional 78,000 workers are at risk of becoming contract employees, according to the study, a number which includes administrative assistants, sales representatives and medium-wage computer programmers. This is part of a larger societal shift in which salaried workers are converted to contractors -- a transition that benefits business owners, in that they don't have to pay benefits and can hire and fire contractors at will.
Buchanan's group represents contractors typically earning "as little as $20,000 a year." But Salon's headline argues that "programmers may be next" in the drive to organize contractors.
A paper published last year by University of California at Santa Cruz researchers Chris Brenner and Kyle Neering estimates between 19,000 and 39,000 contracted service workers are employed in the Valley at any given time... An additional 78,000 workers are at risk of becoming contract employees, according to the study, a number which includes administrative assistants, sales representatives and medium-wage computer programmers. This is part of a larger societal shift in which salaried workers are converted to contractors -- a transition that benefits business owners, in that they don't have to pay benefits and can hire and fire contractors at will.
Buchanan's group represents contractors typically earning "as little as $20,000 a year." But Salon's headline argues that "programmers may be next" in the drive to organize contractors.
What does keeping bad employees to do with unions? Union are there to ensure companies cannot fight competition by lowering wages, but have to be innovative.
We have strong unions in Germany and the productivity of our car companies is way better than those in the US. Also we have 30 days paid vacation, healthcare and a general retirement system. All things unions fought for in the past.
Just have a look at European countries (not the UK, real Europe). Labour rights protect people from abusive management. They even help to improve company performance.
I work in the US for a German company that is partially unionized in the EU. The US unions are nothing like the German ones. People sleep on the job, sabotage production, and generally don't care about their job or the company. They have no repercussions because the union protects them.
I work in the US for a German company that is partially unionized in the EU. The US unions are nothing like the German ones.
People sleep on the job,.
I guarantee you that there isn't a single Union labor contract in history that doesn't explicitly list "sleeping on the job" as a valid reason for termination.
sabotage production,
Forget Union contracts, you are decidedly in criminal law territory on this one
and generally don't care about their job or the company.
Trust and respect is not a given, it must be earned both by people and Corporations
They have no repercussions because the union protects them.
The contract signed between the Corporation and the Union requires that sufficient proof be provided for alleged infraction. If it comes to a managers word against a worker then figuring out who is telling the truth is impossible without resorting to a gut-feeling based judgment call
It's too bad the conventional union system has nearly all the rot and inefficiency of government.
I'd like to see the data.
I don't know of any (non-anecdotal) evidence that unions generally or even government generally has rot and inefficiency. I think there are good and bad unions and government agencies.
First, government. I once did a study of nuclear power plants, in which I interviewed engineers and managers in the best-run nuclear power plants around the country. (Nuclear power plants have well-defined, clear-cut criteria for good management, starting with minimum down time and good safety.) Some power plants are run by the federal or local governments; others are run by private corporations. Some of the best-run plants were government (Tennessee Valley Authority), and others were private (Commonwealth Edison). There was no correlation between government/private ownership and good management. I found the same pattern in other industries. (Despite what the Koch brothers would like you to believe, the Veterans Health Affairs system has among the best outcomes for major diseases like heart disease, if you believe in peer-reviewed literature.)
Second, unions. There are good and bad unions throughout the U.S. I haven't studied them so I can't tell you definitively which ones are good. But the first goal of a union is to negotiate wages, and union wages are about 50% higher than non-union wages in comparable jobs. Unions also negotiate working conditions, such as job security and safety. (If somebody has published a study I'd like to see it.)
I think economists generally agree that middle-class wages have remained static or declined since about 1980, and one of the major factors was the loss of unions.
One of the interesting comparisons is between American non-union jobs and union jobs in Europe, particularly Germany and Scandanavia, where salaries are about twice U.S. rates.
In the 1950s, corporate management, government agencies, and unions cooperated in many industries, like the aircraft industry. This led to the greatest expansion in wealth and industry that the world has ever seen. It seemed to work.
FYI: the NY Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch's, News Corporation and like FOX news and many of their other holdings, it is highly biased and closely aligned with Murdoch's political ideology
I know someone who came from the housing projects in Brooklyn.
He said that during WWII, they needed housing for the shipyard workers, so the federal government hired contractors (I think) to build the projects. It was good housing, and a good community built at a time where everybody was working at a good salary. After the war, the projects attracted a lot of middle-class working people, such as teachers and salesmen.
Then some politicians turned the projects into welfare housing. If the projects had 5% unemployment, the unemployed could plug into the network and get jobs. But if they had 50% unemployment, full of people on welfare, the projects would decline. Some projects are well-maintained and highly desirable with long waiting lists, while others are not.
As a person who works in IT and teaches, I am in a union (former president) in one world, but not in the other. The wisdom that I can share with you is this:
The first and foremost benefit to being in a union is collective bargaining. This not only determines wages and benefits, but also creates an equitable system for minorities. If you are wondering why there is a lack of women and black people in IT it is because they are systematically undervalued and discriminated against.
The second benefit of being in a union is due process. Contrary to popular belief, this does not protect bad workers. It does, however, guarantee a fair process when applying discipline up to termination.
The third benefit of being in a union is insurance and legal access. In the education world, when a principal threatened the employment of my wife for not volunteering to stay after school hours because she was lactating and needed to feed our child, the lawyer stepped in. Strangely enough, the school had been violating State mandated workplace time rules that the lawyer had actually written. His fees were paid for through insurance paid for with member dues.
Now, to dispel any FUD about unions:
Unions are prohibited, by law, from spending any dues money for political purposes. They do, however, solicit contributions for political purposes.
Unions do not prevent employers, such as GM from closing manufacturing facilities and moving production to other countries.
Unions are a victim of their own success. When asking yourself what have unions ever done for the general public, consider laws passed regarding:
maternity leave
overtime pay
40 hour work week
minimum wages
workers compensation
employer based healthcare / healthcare for all (ACA in U.S., Universal in other countries)
sick days
outlawing discrimination
child labor
workking conditions
OSHA
whistleblowers
People take these things for granted now, but businesses are either trying to weaken these laws or move labor to parts of the world that do not have these laws. Unions are therefore not a thing of the past, but something that are always needed to secure the future.
The bottom line is that H1B visas would not be an issue if IT workers had strong unions. IT workers would not always be on call or working 60 hour weeks if they had strong unions. IT workers would not suffer age discrimination if they had strong unions.
Last year, I filed 5 W-2 forms and a Schedule S (IT Consulting) on my taxes. I have the opportunity to work with lots of employers, including some that outsource work to India. I have perspective, and agree that IT workers are sheep who are convinced they are wolves.
The reality is that IT workers have no protection, and are blind to the fact that they need it until it is too late. With experience comes wisdom. Unfortunately, your colleagues are replaced before they acquire it. Don't be stupid. Unionize your workplace before you are replaced too.