I often see this argument (in posting and in print) that the move of jobs is inevitable, but hey, it'll mean higher-level jobs for those that remain. Bull. If we want to keep these jobs and this industry here, we need to organize.
A lot of people think unionizing is for lower-paying, lower-skilled professions, but historically, high-skilled workers (draftsman, architects) were the FIRST to organize, both to counter unfair competition and lower-quality work.
Target companies that outsource labor
For Shareholders:
Demand the project timelines for each project using outsourced staff
Expose the slippage
Highlight systems failures that involve outsourced labor
Ask "what's the value"?
For the general public:
Question the sending of citizen information overseas
Expose companies that do
Employ direct action (confront the person responsible, ask him to stop) to get more attention
At the same time, technical professionals need to raise the profile of this field. Recently the State of Texas had some story recommending not to accredit software engineers because software types were not subject to the same stringent safety responsibilities that physical engineers are (indirect mention). Techies need to combat this directly by organizing into professional unions that discourage bad programming (code-like-Hell), bad security (Microsoft), and bad data modeling.
But most of all, we need to take the fight for ourselves. In the beginning, we don't need the sympathy of the American public. Even if the US public is not inclined toward the tech worker, they're not inclined against them either. Everybody likes to hear the story of a group fighting back to rightfully protect their jobs.
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A lot of people think unionizing is for lower-paying, lower-skilled professions, but historically, high-skilled workers (draftsman, architects) were the FIRST to organize, both to counter unfair competition and lower-quality work.
Target companies that outsource labor
For Shareholders:
For the general public:
At the same time, technical professionals need to raise the profile of this field. Recently the State of Texas had some story recommending not to accredit software engineers because software types were not subject to the same stringent safety responsibilities that physical engineers are (indirect mention). Techies need to combat this directly by organizing into professional unions that discourage bad programming (code-like-Hell), bad security (Microsoft), and bad data modeling.
But most of all, we need to take the fight for ourselves. In the beginning, we don't need the sympathy of the American public. Even if the US public is not inclined toward the tech worker, they're not inclined against them either. Everybody likes to hear the story of a group fighting back to rightfully protect their jobs.
ORGANIZE.
For more information, check out From the People who Brought you the Weekend , The Activist's Handbook and Organizing for Social Change .