Unions in the Tech Sector? 217
nanogeek asks: "I've worked for a few years in the computing infrastructure/support department of a large university. In my time here, there have been organizational movements and/or strikes by many segments of the employee and student population (librarians walking out, grad-students seeking a fair wage for TA responsibilities, etc). However, none of this fervor for collective bargaining and fair treatment by the upitty-ups seems to have touched our department; and this seems to be rather endemic to geekjobs. In a year when commerce was brought to a halt on the west coast over a dispute about the change in the use of technology in the shipping industry, I have seen my department and my co-workers displaced, disrespected, displeased, and occasionally dismissed over the same kinds of technological shifts (in both my case and that of the longshoremen, the changes require retraining and reshuffling of workload, manpower, and payment). Common complaints have been that we were never consulted before these changes were enacted, and I wonder if a powerful union could be the answer. Is there room for such labor organization amongst geeks? Does the mutability of the technology involved preclude the kind of stasis brought about by unionization? Does the status of the economy currently make it so that any attempt at such broad-based organization could be circumvented by black-listing and purging members from the rolls? Or could a powerful geekunion bring about a sea-change after which a modicum of parity between the bosses and the drones could be established?"
wah (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh yeah, poor you, forced to work there. Unions are the last refuge of the inept and the inflexible.
People whine about the RIAA being anti-free-market, protectionist, etc, then turn around and propose something like a union? Gimme a break.
Unions - a different take (Score:4, Interesting)
1) H1B visa abuses.
2) Exporting IT and programming jobs overseas.
3) Significant layoffs across the board in silicon valley (yeah - some might think that it's deserved, but ask no for whom the bell tolls...)
I am quite concerned about being able to work as an engineer for 20 more years (I've got 11 years already). I think that the corporations will find ways to reduce our salaries. What will you do when your $100K/yr job is gone and the only things around are $30K work at Frys?
Arrogance (Score:4, Interesting)
Plenty of IT types see themselves as the backbone of the company, since they "support" the systems that are the "backbone" of most organizations. They work long hours without overtime and are often on call. Programmers often have it even worse, having to deal with short deadlines and an always increasing demand for quality.
To make this more palatable, companies have infused workers with the idea that they are being "entrepreneurial" by working outragous hours and doing unreasonable work. The lure of stock options and advancement has convinced plenty of people to abandon their lives and families in favor of careers.
In reality, most IT workers are tiny cogs in a wheel. As time goes on, distributed systems and offshore labor will either automate or export their jobs out of the market.
Re:wah (Score:5, Interesting)
RIAA is the antithesis of free market. RIAA is an organization of media companies who band together to fix prices and shutout competition. RIAA is why you cannot find music published by smaller record labels in music shops.
A companies actions are not necessarily capitalist just because a company is a private enterprise. In the past, meat packers, oil companies and steel companies banded into trusts and exerted monopoly influence over the markets. Coalitions of organized labor and progressive reform movements defeated the trusts, who are now re-emerging today. A great example of this is ExxonMobil. When Rockeffeler's Standard Oil Trust was broken up, the two largest parts were Standard Oil of Pennsylvania (Exxon) and Standard Oil of New Jersey (Mobil).
Whine about the ineptitude of organized labor all you want. When you find yourself paying $4.00 a gallon for gasoline to a giant oil conglomorate, you will be doing so because there was no powerful force like organized labor to counterbalance the power of oil company campaign contributions.
Unions can be very useful (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm actually amazed that IT wokers don't organize. IT workers are willing to bend over backwards for their bosses: 15 hour work days, no weekends, cancelling vacations, endless workloads, changing goals. You would rarely see this in a union shop.
I used to work at one of the only unionized IT shops in the US: www.igc.org [igc.org] (Some of you may remember IGC from the early-web days. We provided usenet, web, and mailinglist services to nonprofits and NGOs). I served as a union rep for 1 year.
After 2.5 years in a union shop and 2 years at a non-union-shop, I prefer the Union. Here's why:
- At the union, we all worked 40 hours a week, sometimes more to meet the deadlines. I rarely worked weekends. We got more pay for pager duty.
- Most union members get Wage pay vs Salary (but this isn't specific to the union). More then 40 hours = overtime pay. This financial incentive encourages management to hire enough staff. With Salary pay, it doesn't matter if you work 70 hours vs 40 hours, you get paid the same. Management has a financial incentive to squeeze you for as much time as they can get
- At the dotcom, I worked 50-70 hours a week. Refusing the work was not an option. Even though I made 20% more money at the dotcom job, I made LESS PER HOUR then at the Union.
- Equitable pay rates. None of this "John and Jane both do the same job and have the same experience, but John makes $30K more then Jane because he was hired during the dotcom boom" bullshit.
- You can still get more pay with more experience
- You can still get bonuses based on merit and goals.
- You can have a Union rep on the board of directors/management team/leadership circle . None of this "Managment is switching all of your tasks. You need to have project Y done by next week! Now get going!" crap that I see in typical businesses.
- The union reps have special legal protections in most states. A union rep can go to the head of the company, and say that their plan is doomed to failure. In a typical business, you might get fired or disciplined for 'subordination'. That can't happen to you if you are a union rep (In most US States).
- We had monthly union meetings to make sure that our shop was on track
- Union reps were elected in a fair, anonymous, democratic process
Note: Most of the above points can occur in any business. But it's rare unless the workers organize.
At the same time, none of the above issues are mandatory to a union. It's your union, and your membership can decide what it wants to do. You can be as strict or as flexible as you want.
Pledge of the Free Man. (Score:3, Interesting)
I swear by my job, and my pride in it, that I will never join any union, brotherhood, or "workers association", nor will I allow, tolerate or associate with any such entity in any job I ever work at.
My skills are my own soverign property-- no union, guido, flim-flam man, or other parasite will ever profit from them, nor will they be allowed to undermine my value by negotiating in my behalf.
As a FREE MAN, I know my value, and will never submit to the tyranny of others.
I will never allow myself to be in a position where someone can extort money from me under penalty of losing my job if I don't pay it.
I am a free man. I will not give that up.
No unions.
Re:Unions - a different take (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No Unions! (Score:3, Interesting)
Practically, those kinds of problems do exist with unionized workplaces.
It's too bad unions are that way, because they are a natural response to the kind of exploitation that can occur sometimes (cf 19th century industrial revolution) when very few labor purchasers swim in a very large market of individuals. Natural market forces will push wages down to levels where your serf society starts to look downright feudal and would make current poverty problems look mild by comparison.
The problem is that most unions are run for a blanket protection of the whole herd of sheep.
Scragly, mangy sheep get the same equitable protection as those bristly, wool-producing rams. The universal broad-based support needed to form a union seems to rely upon that kind of universal protection extended to everyon without regard to ability. In the same way, the United States Declaration of Independence got broad support by positing that "all men are created equal" and deserving of equal protection, when, really, many at the time probably figured that white, over 25, property-owning, non-enslaved males deserved more protection than other kinds of people. The framers just needed something general to garner broad support to fly against the much-hated system of ancestral rights based on family name of the nobility.
IMHO, it's symptomatic of the chicken-egg problems with teachers and teacher pay.
Teachers have to unionize to get paid anything decent, but once they have the union they resist merit initiatives that would differentiate and pay good teachers a lot more than bad teachers.
The justification for rejecting merit pay usually seems to be that deciding upon good and bad teachers is put into the hands of those no-good management lackeys working for a highly political school administration, whose sole aim in life is to destroy the union by firing the top organizers (I'm sure it does happen sometimes.)
But in reality, I suspect that the highest ranks of the union are populated by members who boast of seniority and good people-organizing skills, not necessarily good teaching skills, so there's a built-in conflict of interest.
If teacher's unions organized their own internal quality standards and ratings, perhaps they could get some sympathy from the administrations and voting tax base for higher pay. Otherwise, they could simply present data showing their good teachers were leaving for better-paying positions elsewhere and your Johnny and Sally are getting a 2nd-rate education.
I doubt geeks will organize in the same way for a while. There are barriers to entry to prevent the supply of knowledgeable and highly-trained geeks from increasing to where their salaries go down severely. Geeks can still get paid a lot better than your average high school graduate - certainly better than your average teacher.
The harm of Unions (Score:4, Interesting)
The main objective of Unions is to force through salaries higher than the market rate. If they are successful, they will get these improvements at the expense of:
- Other employees (unionized or not) - Company profitability
In other words, at their best, unions are successful zero sum game players. Typically they do much more harm than this: - Cause unemployment, as few employees want to pay above market rate - Attract employees to old-fashioned parts of the economy. For example, people want to become port workers instead of IT nerds because the former pays better (which of course would not be the case if wages were set by the market) - Cause strikes and other obviously economcially harmful activities - Fight technological innovation (i.e., stop bar code technology in the port).
It is a fallacy to say that the long work of unions have caused today's high standard of living. It is not like Rockefeller et al sat with enough modern cars, computers and TV shows to supply the entire nation, and that the Unions managed to take these luxuries and distribute them. Rather, it is the fantastic improvements in productivity in all sectors that have given the masses a descent living.
One can also observe the development of real wages in industrial countries. It turns out that these have grown more in countries with weak unions (US, Switzerland) than in countries with strong ones (France, Sweden).
Vote NO for an IT union.
Tor
Re:Some Links (Score:3, Interesting)
Had some altercatiosn with Washtech.
The suck.
First off, they are totally political. They are only interested in furthering the democratic socialist agenda. They have no interest in hearing from members who are libertarian or not interested in union dues being spent to further interests that have nothing to do with the union (like gun control, etc.)
Oh, and thier president thinks its ok to force new workers to join the union (though they don't do that currently) or they loose their jobs because the "union created the job". This is so absurd- the union doesn't create jobs, and to claim that you have a claim on my income because you lobbied the company in the past is wrong.
Washtech has done great at organizing no-skill tech workers like amazon box stuffers and MS receptionists, but they have not done well at getting programmers and other skilled people aboard-- this despite being in an area that is overwhelmingly liberal/socialist.
They look just like the teamsters to me-- promoting mediocrity, taking a cut of your pay, and undermining your ability to lobby for what you want. (not to mention spending your dues towards political positions that have nothing to do with the workplace.)
Re:No Unions! (Score:2, Interesting)
CEOs hire negotiators and lawyers when they are joining a new company. Why? To negotiate a good deal for themselves and to have a better bargaining position.
That's why they make the big bucks.
So Joe Geek goes to get a new job. It's Joe Geek on one side, and the manager, HR, and the legal department on the other side. Who's in a better position?
When you get a job, you sign whatever paperwork they tell you too. They have it printed in advance, you can read it (or not), but if you don't sign it, you don't get the job.
Now if Joe Geek had his own laywer (or a union rep), he can say, "Change this, add this, take out this."
A union evens the playing field. That's why someone with a union gets more pay, better benefits, greater job security, and more control over their work than people who don't
The Labor Movement - the People who brought you the weekend.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
The funny thing is that the republicans end up doing more for the poor by creating jobs than the democrats do by destroying them.
Helping the rich is helping the poor- we're all in the boat together and you guys are trying to drill a hole thru the bottom to get at the water.
Idiocy.
Re:Learn some history (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh, right, Because we all know that the laws we have now are near-perfect, and can never be repealed or changed, and are always enforced fairly.
At this time, most skilled tech professionals don't need a union, because we hold enough market power by dint of rare skills.
But as programming becomes a less-skilled profession, and as jobs migrate to cheaper overseas developers, the time will come when we'll want to pool our selling power to negotiate the best deal - just as buyers often pool their purchasing power to negotiate a good deal.