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GEEK Unions?
Aaron Scott writes that he's the "Head Geek" at his high school, which means that he works for the tech administrator doing IT work and coordinating the other work study nerds.
"As you may imagine, we catch a lot of flack from other students because we spend so much time and energy on the computers at school, not to mention our own machines at home," he explains.
When this happens, he says, "one of the things we do to shrug it off is to joke that if they didn't have us to keep their computers running, the school would cease to function." This belief, he says, is not altogether untrue.
Aaron says he was watching the movie "Dune" one light last week "It occurred to me that what is true of my school is also true of other organizations, from small businesses to the federal government. Just like the Freemen in the movie stopped the universe by stopping the export of Spice, if computer geeks stopped working en masse, the whole country, and even the world, would grind to a halt." Aaron was thinking in particular of how geek politicization might help fight actions like the recent Australian government efforts to censor websites in that country.
How would this work, wondered Aaron? Could some Teamster-like union arise to work on matters of importance to geeks?
Aaron's fantasy, as it happens, is widely shared. When geek began to become a positive rather than negative term in the 90's, geeks and nerds alike began to talk about some form of Geek Union to battle the various corporations thundering onto the Internet, the blockheads in Congress with a penchant who passed the Communications Decency Acts to curb free speech, (or who, more recently wanted to post the Ten Commandments in schools to ward off Geek Evil).
There was talk, too, of a Geek Truth Squad to combat phobic media reporting about the Net, from mis-representations about what hackers really do and are to the alleged perils of game-playing, to the supposed ubiquity of perverts and pornographers online.
One manifestation of that early movement - geekforce.org - surfaced again during the post-Littleton hysteria.
Efforts to organize geeks have proven difficult. The Net population is idiosyncratic, wildly diverse. Many find the very idea of a geek organization too similar to the posturing and rule-making of the offline world. Efforts to form broad-based political communities online have all been quickly done in by epidemic online hostility. Anybody's who's tried to participate in public discussion of online issues knows to expect flamers swarming like fire ants.
But Aaron has a point, and it's significant one, particularly timely around the Fourth of July. Geeks are increasingly becoming a separate entity. They are no longer on the margins of life; they are at its epicenter, running the systems that run the world. Few corporate, political, governmental or educational institutions could function for long without them. And many, like Aaron, yearn for some sort of political community.
Aaron is definitely in the vanguard of a social revolution. There are "Head Geeks" at every school, college, modern company and organization in every technologically - advanced country in the world. They are now among the world's only truly indispensable workers. Nobody would have paid much attention to them a decade ago. Now, people mutter at their special privileges (they never, ever have to wear ties, and can wander school hallways at will) and at the fact that they are increasingly relied on to operate the system - whatever it is - that governs work and business.
If they ever did band together, they would constitute a powerful, communicative and influential political force, especially as Presidential elections edge closer. It might even make the increasingly-persistent efforts to corporatize, profit from, politically exploit fears of, and censor the Net politically untenable. If even a small number of geeks around the country were to call in sick, for example, the next time Congress passes some noxious law curbing free speech, or journalism promoted unthinking hysteria as it did post- Littleton, our political and journalistic institutions might, however briefly, be forced to act rationally and sanely. Idiocy and hypocrisy would become dangerous instead of politically advantageous: they'd cost money and disrupt business.
Maybe Aaron's idea could work this way: Geeks could form a Union. They could agree upon a narrow, simple agenda: freedom, the sharing of technology and the advancement of neat stuff.
It might work, as long as the geeks don't ever meet in person, ask for or pay dues, adopt by-laws or regulations, or even think about choosing leaders.
I agree, a PAC is what is needed. However as a look at history PAC's are often abused, and I fear that a GEEK PAC would be used as a blunt instrument by a bunch of flamers. As has been noted in previous posts, the Geek community at large is often prone to very vicious (and irrational) attacks on that which does not perfectly fit into their view of the world. A GEEK PAC would be horrendously powerful to say the least, however the people behind it need to balance intelligence with open-mindedness. If a GEEK PAC were to start up right now, it would be akin to a semi-truck being driven by a disgruntled postal-worker.
Let me spank your whelping .edu butt for a moment.
Geeks don't command anything. We are the labor that builds products and keeps the systems running much like many of the other occupations mentioned above. Granted we are *highly* skilled and educated laborers with a diversity that allows us to get ahead by the three methods you describe, but you can only get so far. You, individualy, will never be the "boss' or "commander" or "policy setter" or any other position that wields the power to make signifigant changes (i.e. management or operations). If you think that is not the case, explain to me how you would go about enacting change *individually* other then walking out the door. We don't decide when and who to layoff and what our salaries are to be (granted we can negotiate and choose not to take a job, but thats not nearly the same).
If you do not beleive me you need to spend several years consorting with management, sales, marketing, accounting, etc... The image that they possess of us will *truly* frighten you. Attitudes of: no employee is irreplacable (which is truer then you think in say 95% of the cases), younger workers are *far* more productive then ones who are 20 years older, younger workers are far cheaper (timewise and moneywise and overheadwise) then older workers, why pay for the wise, experienced, and business savvy worker at twice the price when I can hire two much less experienced, naieve ones who will outperform, outwork, have more current knowledge then the old at just a little bit higer price (say 85k vs 2x50k, but instead of 40-60 hours a week, we get 80 to 120!). Hearing stuff like the makes me quake in my boots. Remember folks compared to the youngings there are very few 40+ year old techies out there.
This is a boom time for us. We should make the most of it. Perhaps not a union but a professional organization that accredits us like the Bar association, or the AMA, and forces tech workers to keep their skills current and ensures the quality of our work. From that we could gain lobbying forces and political power.
Anti-organisation people are bitching about mediocratity and seniority set slary levels?
Let me ask you something, a semi-literate auto worker who punches buttons on a machine all day should probably be making $7/hr, but the industry average is $22/hr, with nearly the *best* health benefits in the USA. Thats over 3x salary inflation. Think about what that would be like for organised technical labor. Do not know about you, but I would not mind making a minimum of $60/hr.
Tell me what will happen when (not if) the economy takes a dive.
Will management say "hmmm we can keep the folks we are sponsoring for visas and not give them raises this year, they are not going anywhere else" (don't take this a a nationalistic slur, I have actually heard a proiject manager and a operations manager refer to visa'ed employees as "indentured servants").
Will they say: "hmmm, we need to make cutbacks, layoff 95% of all labor making $60k+, include the contractors in that lot too" (if you think contractors do well in recessions, think again).
Or will they say "gee lets kill off our marketing and sales team, who cares if nobody knows about or buys our products, that wont hurt us".
Or "we could lay off our top earning sales guys, imagine the bonus money we would save! Of course our top sales guys usually do bring in the most amount of money."
Or "lets gut our accounting department so we cannot track any of our revenue?"
Think about it, and think about it hard. They don't think like we do, so we have to think like them.
Jon, I don't think so. *Most* vocations, perhaps outside of advertising and entertainment, are indispensable; to think that one's own job is vastly more important in that way reeks of hubris.
Ever read a short story titled something like "Keep the Roads Rolling", featuring workers trying to blackmail society?
Let's think about this. How 'bout:
* teachers
* sanitation engineers
* police
* soldiers
* highway maintenance
* farmers
* truck drivers
* roustabouts
* telecom workers
* food/drug testers
Well, guess none of them are necessary and geeks are "special". Wow! *SMACK*
Learn to read. Read to learn.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- Unions really came about because the workers worked in very harsh conditions, for meager salaries. We sit in our nice, air-conditioned labs and offices, and we make good money doing it.
- 'Geeks' in general, are a fairly anti-authoritarian group. They won't take sh!t from either The Man nor the corrupt union leader.
- The Western system needs lots of people.. The 'geeks' would be screwed if the electrician's union went on strike. Or the carpenter's union. Especially the airline unions.. Get the point? You may be getting a hard time from the non-geeks, but without them, you'd be completely screwed.
Open your mind before your software.--
--
=8^
The only problem I have with this idea is that it would give NT admin geeks too much leverage when it comes to strikes. If a strike was called, which admin to you think people would miss first? The NT guy or the Linux (or *nix-whatever) guy? sheesh.. it could be years before the Linux server developed a fault which needed the admin. That's really going to bring the PHBs to thier knees... not.
:)
I notice that most people are thinking (unfavorably) labor union here. I agree that most geek jobs are better than average. The exceptions can be delt with locally since unlike factory work, replacement employees could take weeks to come up to speed on a project if everyone walks.
Political unions are another matter. Geeks to polititians: 'You want key escrow huh? Imagine that, the entire worlds newsgroups accidentally got dumped into your email'. 'That's your final word on strong encryption? Now I wonder why *.com quit working?'.
Or perhaps conversations like:
The examples are based on the US, but could apply anywhere. "I really don't know why the filters are blocking everything but porn and the PeeWee Herman home page, I could DISCONNECT them for you."
The question in my mind is wether or not a Geek political union could get enough solidarity on ANY issue to pull it off. As someone here pointed out, the general lack of solidarity would help avoid silly responses to silly issues.
A geek union wouldn't solve anything.
It won't help the writer of this essay from being laughed at or teased by high-school students -- and if that's happening, I doubt its the result of being a geek, but more the result of the way he's presenting himself to people.
It won't help in jobs. Unions help only when a workforce is in a position to be exploited by management. Once that situation is resolved, they just serve to foster mediocracy, by making it difficult for companies to fire incompetant workers.
There are more open positions in IT than you can shake a stick at. If you're not happy with your job, just take another. You'll probably get a 20% raise in the process. Kind of hard to bitch to a union about that. "Oh no, my job is so hard, they're paying me six figures and expecting me to be there past five... what oh what can I do? I don't want to quit my job and make twenty grand more at the place across the street!"
A union would prevent one person from making more than another person on account of their skills, since unions typically work to smooth out differences like that so their incompetant members are still kept employed at a good salary.
The only problem I see in the IT field is that so many introverted people end up in it and may be unwilling to speak up or take a stand on issues at their job, and they'll get walked upon. More so than with any other field, today's IT workers can speak their mind with their feet as they walk out the door.
Us SysAdmin types already have a trade organization in the form of SAGE, the System Administrators Guild, a part of USENIX. I think forming a SAGE lobbying group and/or PAC (political action commitee) would be one way to go. Of course we need a good portion of the SysAdmins out there to join and support us... It probably wouldn't hurt to have IEEE and ACM start PACs representing their members as well. I'm just surprised that all of these trade organizations were ignored by Katz *and* the Slashdot readership. I only saw one post mention the ACM! Wow.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
... "The same thing we try to do every night pinky: try to take over the world!"
We don't need divine intervention to take over the world. Some help with getting IE5 out of windows would be nice though.
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The idea has been kicked around on several listservs, as well as among a few of my friends. You're not the first one to notice the discrepancy between geek "workplace rights", and others. We're the ones usually staying well into the evening when the server crashes, we're the ones called in on holidays when a project is running late. Holiday vacation? Yeah, right - not until you finish your Y2K work.
Geeks may be getting the highest pay, but arguably the lowest QoS in the workplace. Stock options aren't as important to most of us as doing stuff we like to do - namely hacking code, gaming, and just having fun online. All those things are routinely forbidden in today's modern workplace.. where productivity reigns king.
The 1930's through to about the mid 60's brought in organized unions for the masses - auto workers, factory workers, ad nauseum. It was the unions that created public education - to ensure that their kids got the same right to an education that a rich person did.
Those unions were smashed to pieces by cunning political moves, corruption, and plain stupidity on the part of union leaders, and the whole thing slid off into the sea, never to be heard from again.
Most unions today are technical in nature - high demand workers who cannot easily be replaced. Plumbers, electricians, teachers. Government unions are also common - Airlines, Postal Workers, etc. This definately speaks something to the legitimacy of organizing a geek union.
I do believe it's possible. Geeks have shown repeatedly an interest in having their fair share of the pie in political issues. Strangely enough though, when pressed, they seem apathetic and indifferent - preferring to talk about the issues, but would rather not invest the time - "I'd rather be coding" would make a fine bumper sticker on most geekmobiles.
I honestly don't know whether it's possible. Technical unions are usually the most successful due to high demand and low availability. The question is - can you really herd cats? Can you convince the geeks of the world to unite in a shared vision (a better workplace)?
Contact me at this address if you'd like to talk more.
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The Computer Industry lobby that is out there isn't always acting in in the best interest of it's geeks. For example, it's recent struggles to loosen up visa restrictions, with the explicit intention of increasing wage competition.
Especially considering how many in the computer industry are contracting or consulting or working for small shops, a worker-based trade association makes alot of sense.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Yes, a union is a bad idea for a group of people who are generally about as herdable as cats. And let's face it, unions are essentially lower case "c" communist in nature ("Workers of the world, unite!") whereas the geeks I know are the pinnacles of entrepreneurship and self-determination. I personally would sooner drop out of the technical field altgother than be forced to join such an organization.
On the other hand a group that advocates truth and education about high-tech concerns would be a worthwhile proposition. Especially if it is friendly and readily accessible to the mass media (who unfortunatly rarely let ignorance or lack of facts get in the way of a good story).
Question: Wouldn't this be a good issue to be addressed by the ACM?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
While I recognize that unions might be useful for those workers who on their own are not particularly powerful vis-a-vis employers (i.e., not well educated or skilled and therefore have few options, or narrowly skilled, also few options), and that employers can and do screw people with impunity, the idea of a programmer's union (whatever you want to call it) is absolutely abhorent to me, and I imagine most people I know and certainly anyone I would want to work with.
If I don't like my working conditions, I will find a job that better suits me. I wield considerable power in the marketplace to demand a certain salary and working conditions based on the fact that I am competent, have a good repututation and am honest.
While recognizing that unions do serve a good purpose for some, I would think in my field they would only serve to as a shelter for the incompetenent and lazy and could only hurt me by limiting the options I could exercise in a free market.
Furthermore, I have found that in the business world, the best guarantee for screwing yourself is to rely on others. I would stand nothing to gain by such a propostion and everything to lose... so much so that I would rather switch careers than be forced to join a union.
As far as the press goes, mass ignorance will always be with us. Anyone who doesn't understand that 90% of the press is made up of people too stupid to do real work (compare requirements for a journalism degree with anything other than an education degree and see what I mean) and legitimate and worthwhile journalism is being pushed further and further into the fringes. I generally find the level of intelligence expressed on slashdot to equal or exceed most newspaper columnists (and certainly reporters), particularly since I can see so many viewpoints easily.
Ignorance is a fact of life, and I don't really give a d*mn what people at large think since they will always misunderstand someone like me anyway.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I would have to say the Brett Watson that you are living in an ivory tower. You are educated, intelliegent and able to negotiate and understand the issues in an open society. But what about those who do not have the voice that you have? Those whose work or study situation does not allow them to be vocal. I'd say you have never had a real job, one where your rights are invalidated on a daily bases by being underpaid, overworked or put in situations that are dangereous.
The ability of workers to unite against a common enemy, usually the management is a powerful and important part of working life. Lets take an example. In New South Wales in the early 1990's, the Liberal Government of the time, brought in enterprise bargaining agreements. One of my friends, a secretary who was earning about $300 a week, had their boss come in and tell them that were now to get $215 a week. A little more then the social welfare payments at the time. That was their enterprise agreement. They did not have the education, ability or knowledge to use the justice system to hear their case, which might have taken weeks, and cost more then they could afford. If they complained they were sacked. They needed the money, and so couldn't quit to find another job because of the recession.
If they had a union, then the union could have represented all the workers at real enterprise bargaining meetings, where someone had the knowledge and understading of the system to help the workers.
Let's take another example. In Australia there is a large community of outworkers in the textile and clothing workforce. These people, usually immigrants with little english skills work from home and are paid per-garment that they produce. Since they are not in a factory situation, and have little english, they do not realise that working 16 hours a day for $5 an hour, 6 or 7 days a week is not the norm. They don't have anyone to go to for arbitraition, as they need to keep to working and may loose their job. It is the work of organisations like Fairwear and Asian Women at Work ( http://www.awatw.org.au, may not be up) that lobby on behalf of these people.
But lets not forget the point here, what about VSU and the Austalian University System. The rights of students are also constantly being erroded. Have you never been locked out of class due to lack of seating? Have you had to fight for computer resources and lab time? You are an english speaking, probably upper north shore ex-private school student (Knox? Barker?). Perhaps you should go down to your union office, and get involved and try to understand what they do. Just because you can't see an advantage to what they do, try and see the picture of an overseas student, or migrant-enthinc minority student who gets low marks because they have a racists lecturer who can't be disiplined bacause of tenure.
So, I say to you, Unions will always be required in a Capitalist society. While there are still those trying to minimise the wage and status of the general worker, who are unable to represent themselves in discussions.
-- Huh, what?
What's ridiculous about it? People hire intermediaries for negotiating purposes (attorneys, brokers, agents, auctioneers, group purchasing organizations, etc.) all the time.
[General rule: 90% of the complaints people have about unions would be self-evidently dismissed as ridiculous if they were directed at an entity that dealt in widgets instead of labor.]
The last thing we need is a union. Unions homogenize the workforce. You get x dollars per hour, no matter how good/terrible you are. What we need is performance-based pay, and no sane union would ask for that. Unions are the antithesis of geek demands. Unions demand uniformity in workplace conditions. Geeks demand flexibility. Unions demand standard pay scales. We like to see 15% pay increases. Unions cater to the average worker. Geeks despite mediocrity.
:)
Really, are we as geeks that mistreated at work? For the most part I agree that the accounting departments of the world loathe us, but who cares? When I meet people outside of work and they learn that I'm a software engineer, they are always very impressed and excited to talk to me. That shows respect right there. Managers are afraid to lose us, as they know that we keep the machines running and the software coming. That gives us amazing leverage right there. Any of you ever wriggled a few extra vacation days out of your manager? Wondered why he/she gave in? Ever notice that most geeks only work about 70% of the time? Try that at McDonalds. Although that would be par for a union job...
Opinions change daily as new information arrives. Stay tuned.
Your examples sounded like something straight out of BOFH. Maybe that should be required reading for system administrators.
:)
Oh, it is? Never mind, then.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Perhaps what we really need is a trade organisation. Something that will lobby to protect the rights of freelance consultants, open source software developers, etc. Something that can provide portable retirement savings and health plans that we can take from employer to employer.
If you are not getting what you want out of your current job, then LEAVE! It is a seller's market right now for computer professionals. Don't be afraid to ask for what you want. I am working as a freelance consultant. I only take contracts that meet specific requirements. Sometimes that means I go without work for a few weeks while I sift through available contracts, but I just treat that as vacation time. I make more than enough as a freelancer to make up for those periods.
Join a union? I don't think so.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Now THAT would be funny, if there had been a typo, and it was really "The GEEK shall inherit the earth".
doc
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Seriously, though, if all this potential union went after was more money for geeks, we wouldn't be any better off for it. What we need is to get someone up in the board room who knows more about computers than 'point, click.' Then the progress can really start happening.
Viva Revolution!
I have long dreamed of the UFCW, The United Federation of Computer Workers. We need to protect our culture in the workplace and only a union could do this. We need a strong statement on more and better caffine, bigger better displays, faster networks, no flourescent lights, shoes optional, NO TIES-EVER, and the first 5 days
of each year above 70 degrees are holidays!