I do not at all think I have "made [your] point". It is a little bit unreasonable to say that the airline industry's woes (and therefore the massive layoffs) are due to the high wages of airline mechanics. I imagine that the number of mechanics required has something to do with the number of airplanes in service and the number of flights flown. Whether or not there are unions doesn't really change that. Were it not for the unions, given the intense pressure that airline executives are certainly feeling, I am certain they would be pressuring mechanics to work all kinds of unreasonable hours.
It seems to me that programmers do, to a certain extent, compete with each other. Those who are willing to work fifteen hours a day have outbid those who will only work eight. Quality and productivity of work is very, very difficult to measure in both professions, especially for workers who are generally competent. However, hours worked (or not worked) is readily apparent.
I can only imagine what a VP at Amex would have said if I had declared, "I will only work eight hours a day, but those will be very productive hours and the quality will be very high." When crunch time came, they would have said, "put in the hours or quit." The programmers who were willing to stay late would retain their jobs.
I definitely agree with your point that unions can be a leech on the side of a company or even an industry and, over the long term, self destructive.
However, they can also solve problems for workers. As you pointed out, unions have extracted lucrative contracts in the airline industry. Doubtless there are strict controls and contractual agreements on the hours worked as well. I bet those airline workers are pretty happy with their union compared to the alternative.
What exactly is the distinction between a "professional" and some other kind of worker? You imply that the distinction is that "professionals" need to learn new skills, but others don't. To give one example, I daresay that an airline mechanic (or pilot) needs to constantly be learning about new equipment, new regulations, new tools, new procedures, etc.
I was a coder for several years and then became a first level manager (on the IT side). As a manager I managed some but also wrote some of my own code. Most of that experience was at American Express, mostly in Minneapolis but with frequent trips to Phoenix.
Amex definitely managed projects with the expectation of coders working ridiculous hours in the latter half of projects. This happened both on the business side and on the IT side. The business side would invariably miss all deadlines for coming up with specifications, requirements, etc. But launch deadlines were never moved. They used the pressure from the IT side to force themselves to come to consensus. This was ingrained in the culture.
On the IT side everyone knew they'd just be signing over their lives to Amex for the second half of projects. So they paced themselves. Everybody goofed off until things really got down to the wire. And then when those fifteen hour days kicked in, people paced themselves throughout the day. Work never really started until noon or even 3pm. Of course, people were there, but nothing really got done. This, too, was cultural.
Ultimately I left IT entirely because of frustration. The most productive period of my life was when I didn't have a car and *absolutely had to* catch the express commuter trains. I arrived every morning at 8:17 and left at 5:32.
Now I work for myself in a completely different industry. Personally, I think unions are the only solution. If a few of the larger companies (like Amex) are unionized, then other companies will get the picture quickly -- be reasonable or suffer the added headache and inflexibility of a union.
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I do not at all think I have "made [your] point". It is a little bit unreasonable to say that the airline industry's woes (and therefore the massive layoffs) are due to the high wages of airline mechanics. I imagine that the number of mechanics required has something to do with the number of airplanes in service and the number of flights flown. Whether or not there are unions doesn't really change that. Were it not for the unions, given the intense pressure that airline executives are certainly feeling, I am certain they would be pressuring mechanics to work all kinds of unreasonable hours.
It seems to me that programmers do, to a certain extent, compete with each other. Those who are willing to work fifteen hours a day have outbid those who will only work eight. Quality and productivity of work is very, very difficult to measure in both professions, especially for workers who are generally competent. However, hours worked (or not worked) is readily apparent.
I can only imagine what a VP at Amex would have said if I had declared, "I will only work eight hours a day, but those will be very productive hours and the quality will be very high." When crunch time came, they would have said, "put in the hours or quit." The programmers who were willing to stay late would retain their jobs.
I definitely agree with your point that unions can be a leech on the side of a company or even an industry and, over the long term, self destructive.
However, they can also solve problems for workers. As you pointed out, unions have extracted lucrative contracts in the airline industry. Doubtless there are strict controls and contractual agreements on the hours worked as well. I bet those airline workers are pretty happy with their union compared to the alternative.
What exactly is the distinction between a "professional" and some other kind of worker? You imply that the distinction is that "professionals" need to learn new skills, but others don't. To give one example, I daresay that an airline mechanic (or pilot) needs to constantly be learning about new equipment, new regulations, new tools, new procedures, etc.
I was a coder for several years and then became a first level manager (on the IT side). As a manager I managed some but also wrote some of my own code. Most of that experience was at American Express, mostly in Minneapolis but with frequent trips to Phoenix. Amex definitely managed projects with the expectation of coders working ridiculous hours in the latter half of projects. This happened both on the business side and on the IT side. The business side would invariably miss all deadlines for coming up with specifications, requirements, etc. But launch deadlines were never moved. They used the pressure from the IT side to force themselves to come to consensus. This was ingrained in the culture. On the IT side everyone knew they'd just be signing over their lives to Amex for the second half of projects. So they paced themselves. Everybody goofed off until things really got down to the wire. And then when those fifteen hour days kicked in, people paced themselves throughout the day. Work never really started until noon or even 3pm. Of course, people were there, but nothing really got done. This, too, was cultural. Ultimately I left IT entirely because of frustration. The most productive period of my life was when I didn't have a car and *absolutely had to* catch the express commuter trains. I arrived every morning at 8:17 and left at 5:32. Now I work for myself in a completely different industry. Personally, I think unions are the only solution. If a few of the larger companies (like Amex) are unionized, then other companies will get the picture quickly -- be reasonable or suffer the added headache and inflexibility of a union.