asinus sum et eo superbio
in omnibus veritas

That is a very arrogant and uninformed attitude. So you think machinists, electricians, teachers, police officers, firefighters, craftspeople, and nurses are unskilled? Come on, many working people are much more skilled than the average office worker. If fact, most unskilled laborers aren't in unions anyway, they're the guys you see in the morning hanging around 7-11 waiting for someone to pick them up for a day's work.

Unions exist to protect workers from exploitation from their employers and to promote a more equitible split of the fruits of their labor, pure and simple. And if you think unions are bad because they let working people earn a reasonable living, well, think of the alternative where our middle class evaporates and we have a somewhat sizeable well-to-do group and a HUGE poor population. Doesn't bode too well for the future, does it?

Even if you aren't in a union you benefit from their existance because they tend to normalize the employment market and keep corporations from acting too avariciously. Do you enjoy only working 5 days a week? How about getting medical insurance and retirement support? Do you like paid vacation? Thank the union movement.

One of the things that always strikes me as odd is peoples dislike of unions. A union is the sort of thing that would be able to really help out with the ungodly work hours that most technical people get. When management says something like: "yes, we're happy to pay you 100,000 a year" and then 2 months later say, "we expect you to work 80 hours a week, no overtime pay". That sucks.

Organized labor can help stop that. Hell, organized labor did help stop that and give most sane jobs the 5 day work week and the 8 hour work day. How can management get away with taking that away from technical employees? The employees aren't organized.

Unions = undignified.

No, really. And you know it.

The exploitation has moved from business over employee to union over employee. And shouldn't people have the choice to join a union?

Unions might help certain people, but they also hold back the talented and the achievers. I could go on, but suffice it to say that it's a two way street - as many unions have shown themselves to be just as corrupt and exploitive as businesses.

As long as seniority issues stay out of the mix, having a union to deal with issues related to training, work hours, benefits and sometimes even salary could be very beneficial to talented and untalented alike. Who wants to work long hours? (Answer: Those without a life, a family or a clue).

Talent isn't hampered at all by an 8 by 5 workweek. In fact, it's arguable that it would make the talented even more productive than they already are.

Steve Magruder
Decide this.

read Dune, by Frank Herbert, especially books 4 through 6.

In my circumstance, the union officials sit in the same group as I do. I'm speaking primarily about stewards & chief-stewards - I have no contact with those higher than that role.

And shouldn't people have the choice to join a union?

Absolutely. I work at a closed-shop, we all pay a percentage of our earnings to work there. Some pay union dues, others pay an agency fee. It all works out the same, the non-union employees are afforded the exact same benefits as the union folk.

As an "unofficial" tech worker, I am upset that I have to deal with the union re: raises - in fact, I haven't had a raise in several years (not counting the cost-of-living BS that my union manages to wrestle from management every 4-5 years).

I work at a university and have been in 2 unions in my 15 year experience there. I've worked my way from janitor to system admin plus. And yet I was offered absolutely no assistance from my union(s). In fact, I was attacked by 1 union for trying to advance myself through tech ability.

Am I bitter? Sometimes. I troubleshoot their PCs, I install/maintain their CMMS systems, I write their reports (& then have to run them), I create their web presence (including cgi), I am a help desk, I train, I analyze, I code, and I also perform the job I was hired to do.

All this and yet I'm paid less than a parts-chaser. Wow, looks like I'm extremely bitter.

That is a very arrogant and uninformed attitude.

Anyway, what I meant was that if you can threaten to quit, and have it actually mean something to your employer, then you'll be treated fairly or you'll go somewhere else. The trouble is for people for whom threatening to quit doesn't hurt the employer; basically, those who are easily replaced.

So yes, I suppose that "unskilled" was an unfair characterization. Perhaps I should have said "easily replaced". That includes me as a teaching assistant: if I quit, they'll find someone else.
--
Patrick Doyle

...Amazon is at the front of the IT unionization battle.

Perhaps, but I don't think of Amazon as an IT company. Although they like to portray themselves as the vanguard of the "New Economy", Amazon is essentially a mail order operation that happens to have just a web storefront and no brick&mortar stores. A lot of the job functions at Amazon (warehouse workers, customer support reps) are unionized at other places. IIRC, Bezos has long been telling the workers there on how they don't need to unionize, because they are owners in the company. Worked great, as long as the stock kept going up. I'm not surprised that the unionization efforts have got some traction, now that the workers' net worth has dropped a bit.

That's the key word, "unskilled".

I'm in a union, and I'm not unskilled. Just easily replaced.
--
Patrick Doyle

Why do you think so many people have weekend hobbies that are radically different from their day jobs? A lot of people are capable of doing numerous things very well, but their jobs don't allow them to.

Think about it. Carpenters who rebuild cars. Plumbers who build furniture. Telecomm engineers who landscape. The list goes on.

I once knew a software engineer who did construction, electrical and telecomm in his spare time. He had some big players in those industries fighting to be on his projects because he was so good at it all. Yet in his day job, he was bored to tears because the companies he worked for "had people who handle those things." He ended up working for himself and doing all those things and more.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

Wrongo!

• Unions say where you can work. "Sorry buddy, that's not a union shop, you can't work there."
• Unions say what your job description is. "Sorry boss, I'm a programmer, that's a DBA's job
• Unions say what you're qualified to do. "Sorry, I can't do that, I haven't been qualified on Perl."
• Unions determin how you are to do your job. "vi is the standard editor, we deleted emacs."

You laugh, but a one time IT workers were union, I knew one of the. Job description's were very narrow. Analysts wrote the specs, Programmers then coded, and loaders then loaded the programs into the machines.

Unions give security to unskilled labores because unions have the standard of last hired first fired. In IT shops when times get lean, managers pull out the performance reviews, rank everybody, then draw a line and can everybody below that line. At least that's the way it worked at every IT shop I've worked in. In a union shop, if your performance is borderline incompetant, and they have to hire additional personel the newer guys will be canned before you are when times get lean.

- Crusadio

I'd love to have 40 hour work weeks, get overtime for any time over my 8 hour day. Time and a half for saturdays, double time for sundays, and double time and a half for vacation days that I am forced to work (and triple time for anything over 8 hours on that forced work day on a holiday).

Then why the hell don't you negotiate that yourself? Are you that weak-willed or are you that incompetent? Where I work you'd be at the bottom of the food chain just because you are too cowardly to stand up and say what you want, instead hiding behind some union rep.

Grow some balls already; if you are that easily replaced then go to a union shop, pay yer dues and learn on the side so that you can negotiate your own terms with confidence.

Christ. "I'd love to this... I'd love to that... but I'm too scared to ask! Someone please take my money to do it for me?

Well, hello, guess what's the # 1 occupation injury? I'm 28, and I first started showing symptoms of a repetitive stress injury (RSI) about 5 years ago - my forearms ached, and my hands felt limp to the extent that I couldn't work for a week. A bit of research suggested that the problem was that my chair / desk combination (low chair, wrists stretched over edge of desk) was at fault.

I've managed to deal with that by correcting my posture, and religiously taking breaks every 45 minutes. If I don't, it comes back. And last month, I had another problem - my mouse hand seized up, to the extent that I could barely move 3 of my fingers. I seem to have that under control now with anti-inflammatories, a trackball, and a program to replace my mouse buttons with keys.

But there's a reason that another term for RSI is cumulative trauma syndrome - this stuff builds up, and it doesn't go away. The equipment to deal with it (ergonomic keyboard, fancy trackball, better chairs) is expensive, and your productivity level drops (pain kinda does that to you).

Now, apart from the fact that I'm kinda worried about the prospect of losing effective use of my hands, I'm in a situation in this small, non-union company where I have to raise my problems as an individual. It's ok here, but in other circumstances, I can well see that I might be judged to be too much of a burden on the company, first in line for downsizing, etc. A workers collective - i.e. a union - could be rather useful here.

(Note: in South Africa, unions emphasise mass involvement much more than in e.g. the UK and no doubt the US. I've been a union member in both countries, and the South African model emphasises member control and involvement, and union democracy, much more. Not to say that everything's perfect in SA unions - it isn't. But the contrast is worth keeping in mind as an alternative to the 'business unionism' prevalent in the US)

And remember, in the US Bush has just cancelled the OSHA ergonomics standard - a collective, co-ordinated voice, from the workplace all the way to Washington - could have stopped that.

Oh, and another thing - remember the early to mid 1990s, when the hype was that programming in the future was going to be pulling together components (ala. VB, Delphi, etc). It didn't pan out like that (and Open Source is in part a way of programmers fighting back), but that kind of stuff was a management wet dream - reducing programming to a much less arcane, much more manageable, Taylorised thing.

We already know that many IT workers - e.g. support staff, helpdesk workers - are deployed in cookie-cutter jobs. Programmers who believe that it would never happen to them need to look back at the history of skilled trades - e.g. typographers c. 1980. Programming's status as a profession might not last forever - we're already familiar with the split between a small number of high end, high paid programmers, and a grow army of lower paid 'grunts'. I know many C++ heads don't consider e.g. a VB programmer as a real programmer - i.e. VB coders are beyond the 'professional' pale. So then ultimately maybe 10% or less of IT workers end up in the stereotype of 6 digit salary ubergeeks, and the rest end up as frustrated, undercompensated grunts.

And you're still going to tell me that IT workers don't need to unionize?

Peter
P.S. Someone should mod-up the AC who also replied to the previous post. They said good stuff.

Unions have their place in many industries, especially those industries that lend themselves to worker exploitation or in times of massive economic downturn. I do not believe the IT industry fits into this category even in a bad economy.

First let me speak to what I consider one of the major drawbacks of standard unions and that is the seniority system. This has absolutely no place in IT at all. Much more so then almost any other industry IT lives off of talent. This is not to say that experience does not have its place, it is just recognition of the fact that two individuals of similar experience but differing levels of talent will perform very differently, with the advantage going to the individual of greater talent.

Those who have this talent, drive whatever you would like to call it should be rewarded, greater pay, quicker promotion, more responsibility etc. This thought is anathema to almost every union that I have ever read or heard about. That a person be rewarded for ability instead of longevity is against the basic union credo.

To speak to a second point, one of the union’s main goals is to ensure a fair and even distribution of wages and to negotiate contracts. For reasons expressed in the last paragraph this has little or no place in it. If I do a better job then another person with more experience I should be rewarded to a greater extent then that person. Also to a large extent IT people negotiate their own contracts, for better or worse. I know I would never allow another entity to negotiate my contract; I would never be comfortable that I had gotten the best deal. If came into a shop that was under a mass contract I would leave immediately, mass contracts generally leave no room for rewards directed at individual accomplishments

One of the other major functions of unions is to protect the worker from the employer. In IT all the worker generally has to do is leave, usually (based on the tech he is familiar with) he will get an overall better deal anyway. Employers, for the most part, realize this and try to at least make their IT employees happy to a small extent.

Now I don't think it is a bad thing for a group of IT workers, devoted to their craft, to get together and share ideas for improvements. Even if this group becomes a legal organization and puts some pressure on companies to improve their policies in reference to quality of code, etc. These areas, however, are not the usual domain of unions. This may be a simple semantic issue. Perhaps the group described at the beginning of this paragraph could be called a guild or similar name and that might solve the problem.

In all of this, unions in the traditional sense of the word have no place in the IT industry.

Skycapping is undoubtedly a union job. It would be against union rules for the ones working the continental area to help someone to the American sections and take that groups tip. Also, that would mean the continental people would have to walk a little bit farther than they are supposed to.

This is in great contrast to other countries i've been to where the baggers (they are not actually skycaps) who are definately NOT union have to just about fight eachother to carry your bags. If they don't carry bags, they don't eat... that's customer service, having 12 guys race over to you to help you out. THAT is what's bad about unions, they are out for their own interests, and customer service lacks.

Apply this to the IT field, imagine if the Union price for desiging a website were $40,000 dollars. Because of union rules, you have to pay $40,000 dollars for a website, or you aren't getting one built for you by the pros. Imagine if you are not a large corporation and can't design a site on your own (yes, i know even trained monkeys can make websites... but bear with me) you are stuck coming up with that cash, or hiring sub-par people to do it... not a good proposition in the internet economy.

Customer service sucks in union houses. Compitition is non-existant. Union workers are encouraged to do only X amount of work, no more, no less. Seniority is an issue. Which is absurd in the IT field. The oldest guys (not in all cases, but most) in the IT field are the most obsolete. Also, at the rate IT folks change jobs, seniority is retarded. In IT it's stupid to base rank on anything other than merit and it's especially stupid to do it based on HOW LONG you've been there.

For those reasons and many others it would be shooting ourselves in the foot to unionize.

*steps down from soapbox*

This was a prime example of bad union management. The leaders of these unions wanted only to promote their political agenda and not that of their members. Those same leaders did not suffer after a year on strike, many of the members, however were broke, jobless and without prospects.

Now I live and work in Germany, which is more unionized than England, but I find the unions here are less confrontational and try to develop a more constructive relationship with the management. This is also helped by employee friendly goverment legislation. IMHO this is a better way to go.

The bottom line? Unions can a force for good, or they can cause lots of problems. It really depends on how they are run. Personally at the moment I don't feel the need for a union. My company recently changed my working conditions, I didn't like it, they said tough, I found a better job within two weeks.

Training and development standards shouldn't be the responsibility of labour unions, they should be the responsibilities of trade certification organizations. My understanding is the in the USA you do things differently thant he rest of the world: the rest of the world has apprenticship programs that lead to certification in a trade, but in the USA people join a union and the union claims all it's workers are "up to code".

Give me independent certification any day.

Independent Certification is only half of the equation though-- so what, you've passed a test and proven you have memorized some cheat sheet, that doesn't guarantee you a good salary, benefits or fair work treatment. I'll never understand where the stigma for unions on Slashdot comes from, but it's unfounded and without merit. So far the only people I've seen reply to these stories that are anti-union say they make enough money and they don't want some leech mooching their salary. Again, unfounded and no merit.

If we don't unionize, the practices that IT currently evangelize, such as 6-7 days of work a week, 10-12+ hours a day, won't quit and will become the norm.

Is that what readers on Slashdot really want once they've settled down and formed a family?

1. not everyone in IT makes $100K/year.
2. Unions would be able to help restrict corporate NDAs/non-competes to be more fair for the employee.

I had recently sent an e-mail to my companies legal council asking the what if I want to work on Open source projects and what the company policy would be seeing I had signed an non-compete which took all my creative rights away. Well they said that basically the way the company saw it was that they owned me and he used those exact words, so say I had a part time job on weekends working at say McD(not that I would) and they wanted me to work work on saturday even though I had that second job. They feel that they come first. Not exactly fair.

There are people here who for the past 3 months have been working 15-16 hr days 7 days a week manditory because some management idiot didn't spec out a project properly.

Keep thinking that way. We are in the eyes of most IT company "Slaves"
 

• 27" plasma monitor
• X Terminals in toilets
• periscope in server room (for occasional glimpse of daylight)
• I'm only half kidding

I have seen offers of 1% or 2% (per year), but that's just a bargaining position on the part of the corporation. Unions normally start off at a higher level. Talking about losing a weeks wages for .2% raise is merely 'poisoning the well'. And do you really think that any increase in union dues is going to offset the wage gains you get through negotiation?? Hell, in your bracket, sunshine, your entire union dues wouldn't equal the usual salary increase.

Pfui!

Unions had their place, and that place will come back if they disappear. Nonetheless, I don't think that we have such a complaint to lodge that WE need one. And, for the record, as someone who once had to deal with them from a management perspective, I hate unions.

A fool and his money are soon venture capital.

Not exactly true. yes, I can still counted 10 but I've lost significant use in both arms, can no longer write code, and must use speech recognition to write text such as this message. This came about because of eighteen years worth of hours at the keyboard using what ever furniture was available. I was fired from my job, tried to work with workers compensation Hell to get basic medical treatment for my condition. My regular doctor could not treat me even when I had pain so bad I could not hold a spoon and feed myself because the condition was work-related. Workers compensation requires many lawyer hours to get permission to schedule a single appointment.

Eventually, I gave up, paid for my own medical, and built my own business so that no employer could ever hurt me that way again.

Second of all, you were able to start your own business with the skills you have. Was that really an option for the typical unskilled laborer working in the mills? We are not dependent on our employers to the same degree as the workers of days past, or even the industrial workers of the present. An autoworker cannot go off and start his own company doing what he did on a factory production line, but a developer can freelance or start his own firm entirely.

A fool and his money are soon venture capital.

Well, guess what pal - the odds are somewhere around, say, 50-50 that you're below average. It reminds me of the stats that 80% or whatever of drivers say they are an "above average" driver...

So sure, unions are designed around the average, but given that half of all employers are below average in how they treat their employees, maybe the protections a union can offer are useful.

And given the increased power management has been given by the government and stockholders over the last few decades to screw their employees at no cost to the managers (how do you "accidentally" hire thousands of people you then decide you need to lay off and not get fired yourself), now might just be the right time.

Silly Rabbit, sigs are for kids.

Odds are not a factor in this.

Speak for yourself. By most measures (IQ, SAT score, GPA, income level, credit rating, average salary increase per year, NTN Trivia Player's Plus score) I'm well above average. Odds are not a factor in this.

Odds ARE a factor here... at least in what the original poster was writing. If I meet you and I don't know how smart you are, or what an egomaniacal libertarian you are (is there any other kind?), then the odds that I choose correctly and peg you as above average are 50-50... the odds that I peg you as overestimating your own abilities are probably higher. If I *do* know you, then yes, odds aren't a factor... I will know to peg you as overestimating your intelligence based on these rubrics (credit rating???) but that's not what the original poster was proposing.

If I don't like what my employer does, I'll find another job. I've done it before, I would do it again. I don't need to pay a union to bargain for benefits or salary for me, I can do it myself perfectly well with what I bring to the table and what I can do for my employer. If you can't say the same, find another field to work in.

That's good for you. Given that most IT people are still in high demand, and that the conditions, while not ideal, are not that bad, unions aren't really that necessary here. Unions are designed for those industries where workers are easily replaced because there is an oversupply of them. Thus, if the workers in place aren't willing to work in sub-human conditions, the employer can still find those who will (try reading Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck for a good idea of how this works).

As for you, just wait 'till the next few years worth of CS majors enter the workforce... then the market will be saturated with people who are above average (don't you love how professional circles are skewed to above average? It really helps deflate a persons overconfidence). Perhaps you're actually good enough that this won't impact you much, but sometimes I think that the world would be a better place with actual Karma.

Oh, and I have a perfect driving record. Guess I'm not average there either.

Why do I get the feeling that there's another area where this guy is not quite average, and that he's desperately trying to make up for it?

Bring 'em on!

Most CS majors can't handle the real world. The best programmers, in the REAL WORLD, are the ones who have experience in life, and industry outside of hacking, cracking, and IP theft. CS degrees are useful only in the Ivory Tower, unless you decide to get one later in life, after you've seen what works, not what's theoretical.

Youth, (and CS degrees) are no match for crafty old-timers.

You actually have at least 50% at or below the median and at least 50% at or above the median. Another, more common example where this definition applies is where you have an odd numebr of samples.
-Want an iguana?

Well I take your point but Steve would probably not score that well on IQ tests given that the MND would slow his responses down to the point where his score would depend entirely on the amount of time given to respond. Give anyone in the upper 10% on math puzzles unlimited time on an IQ test and they can score 100%.

Fact is that IQ tests are bogus as heck. Stephen Jay Gould gives the (largely racist) history of them in The Mismeasure of Man.

IQ scores above 130 are actually pretty rare and the correlation to actual ability is completely lost. Stephen got where he did because he had the imagination to think of potting one half of a virtual matter/anti-matter pair into a black hole. He did not get to be Lucasian Prof by getting high scores on brainteasers.

Look at it another way, the ability to paint a house fast does not mean that one is up to painting the Sistine chapel ceiling.

What this comes down to is that statistically most people are above average in at least one skill. Stephen Hawking scores above average in figuring out Hausdorfian Manifolds with Lipschit signatures, put him in a table tennis tournament and he will score way below par however.

Now statistically there are also folk with absolutely no redeeming features just as there are people who get perfect grade score averages, excel at athletics and make money on the side winning beauty pagents. However we scientists have a term for such statistical anomalies of both types, freaks.

It depends. That ceiling isn't that big. A couple of gallons of Dutch Boy and a roller on a long pole, I could have that puppy done in a day, 2 tops.

It reminds me of the stats that 80% or whatever of drivers say they are an "above average" driver...

What this means is that if you ask 100 random drivers how good they are at driving, 80 of them will think that they are above average. Now, as you've astutely pointed out, this is impossible. 30 of these people (~38%) are wrong. They are not above average, but they think they are.

Are they bad at math? No, they just don't realize that their driving isn't that good. Take /. for example... given the /. population, we could rate everyone and score them for programming ability (I know there's no good way to quantify this, but let's say we could). We could easily determine an average score. How many people here would say that they are above average when it comes to programming? I'd guess that way more than 50% would... same deal.

Basically, people are really bad at determining how good they are at something without direct measurement... which is something you don't have unless you're in open competition with others... There was a sociology study about this on Kuro5hin a few days ago, but I couldn't find it.

The flaw in your logic is that you are talking about a fairly distinct cross-section of the IT sector - the Slashdot crowd.

I've noticed that people here *generally* have better IT skills than the average doofus that got a tech-school degree so he could get a "computer job that pays big bucks". So, I'd wager that the average Slashdotter probably does have above average IT skills.

Of course this is all just technicality nit-picking. ;-)


People who express their opinions in .sigs are morons.

Which is why I deny promotions that separate me from the hardware. As a pilot once said in response to why he didn't like promotions, he said, "Too many promotions and they don't let you fly."

Unfortunately, for reasons I do not understand, refusing promotions is grounds for firing at many companies. WTF?
 

I would say that there is a 85% chance that an individual programmer is below the 'average' (actually, we mean to say 'median' here). So, the point of my rant is to ask, "What are you averaging?"

So hell, fire them.

Now, rank all the people working at your company. Find the average. There will be people below this average.

Hey! didn't I just fire all the below average people!

From my personal experience of working 70 hours/week and working 40 hours/week, i came to the conclusion that:

Working more hours does not lineary correlate with producing more

To be more precise, there is a point in which you are working so much time and your productivity per-hour is so low, that you are actually producing less in total than if you worked less hours.

Please keep in mind that (contrary to popular belief) being productive IS NOT THE SAME as producing lines of code.

• Working more hours makes you more tired
• If you are more tired the ammount of bugs in your code increases
• Debugging a program until you find the bug and then correcting the bug and testing the correction may consume 10-100 times more than than the actual writting the code (debugging and solving DataModel design problems can be much worse and consume 1000s times more that the initial Design and Coding because it usually implies massive code rewriting).

What this means is that if you keep on working bellow a certain level of mental "freshness" you can actualy have a negative productivity (because you are introducing loads of bugs that later will take time to be tracked and solved)

As with everything, there is a point of balance in which you work the adequate number of hours to get the maximum total productivity. This will vary from person to person.

Knowing the right moment to stop and go home is what distinguishes the Really Excelent Programmers from the Simply Good Programmers.

IT workers will never unionize, and for one very simply reason: They're Wimps!

The very first time some IT weenies tried to start a picket line, their corporate masters could have strike-busters there immidiatly. Those guys could clear the ITsters out in minutes. They wouldn't even need guns, just a few hits from a strong club would ruin these weakling's resolve.

The miners, the factory workers, the teamsters, the real men who started the Unions in the US, they did it by standing their ground, fighting the opposition, be it with rhetoris, clubs, knives, or guns. They didn't take any shit, and to try and believe that some asshole who gets paid to sit in an ergenomic chair all day could get off their ass and form a Union makes me laugh.

I can see it now...

Picket line of geeks get's busted up by big burly guys. Geeks go home, hack into the company system (not that hard if they're already working for the company.) Find names and info on company executives that ordered the strikebusters. Proceed to do more damage than a thug with a club could think of doing.

With our power, the suits should be afraid of us. We just never flex our information muscle. We control everything, let's use that to our benefit.

Using the internet as it was originally intended... for the further research of pornography and pipebombs.

Yeah! Hack the Planet! Kill the Gibson! Do it for Joey and that hot Acid Burn chick!

Try 'plant Kiddie porn on one exec's home computer, introduce another exec's mistresses to each other, drop some cocaine in a third's Porsche and report it stolen'.

Or, in a nicer vein, from the IBM commercial - 'Hey, this manager makes twice what this other manager makes. I'll bet he doesn't know that. Oh well, he does now; I just mailed the salary list to everybody.'

They might get a sunburn ;)

Unionization would do more harm than good. There's too much of a cult thing going on with most companies to begin with. "We'll pay you $100K if you can put in 80 hours a week." Not to mention little perky things like in-house coffee shops, bohemian dress codes, etc. that make leaving the office guilt trip fodder.

Unionization is the feces of mass production. Putting everybody on a singular pay scale and demanding cheap benefits does not solve the single biggest problem of corporate America: the vastly overpaid CEO. That's what needs fixing.

Here's a little data to consider in the context of this discussion:

Between 1990 and 1998, overall inflation was about 22.5 percent.

Average worker (non-executive) pay increased by about 28 percent (minus inflation, natch).

Corporate profits rose about 104 percent.

The S&P Index rose 224 percent (yes, we all know that's in the tank now).

And CEO compensation?

Well, that rose about 481 percent.

Unions are far from perfect institutions. Like any organization they are prone to take on a life of their own. Like any nexus of power they can acquire nasty relationships with nasty people.

But the fact remains that there is still plenty of room for collective bargaining on the parts of non-executive workers. It's fairly clear who's really reaping the awards under the current power structures.

Source: 1998 Executive Excess report, United for a Fair Economy and Institute for Policy Studies,
-- the kingdom is coming...

what would you say a reasonable compensation package should total for a CEO who keeps a company humming along nicely?

I am saying that CEO getting pay increases nearly 4.5 times the rate of growth in profits is clearly out of line. I am also saying that considering that the average worker starts out with a much, much lower baseline pay, the fact that CEO compensation increased at a rate over 17 times that of workers demonstrates a real inequity.

Am I saying that CEOs are getting paid too much, more than they deserve and more than they're worth? Hell yes.
-- the kingdom is coming...

Someone you trust is one of us.

Perhaps that was due to the decisions that were made by all those expensives CEOs."

Yeah, and perhaps it was due to a rise in worker productivity, and perhaps it was due to unwise consumer credit spending and a generation of permissive parents empowering their materialistic children with too much cash. The point is, Monte, did those CEOs deserve to get their pay increased 4 and a half times faster than profits increased under their tender loving care? Did they contribute 17 times more to the bottom line than all the other workers did? Or were they simply the only ones in the position to really lobby for their own self interests?
-- the kingdom is coming...

An excellent way to avoid the problem of expressing an opinion of your own. But just for giggle, tell me: do YOU think CEO salaries should grow at a 4.5X faster rate than profits? At a 17X faster rate than average employee compensation? I promise not to impose your third part standard of fairness on anyone. I'm just curious as to your opinion, as you seem so quick to defend CEO salaries.

"Using the word "deserve" in this context implies that there should be some 3rd-party standard of "fairness"."

It could be argued that 3rd-party standards of fairness are what made this country great and are indeed the basis of our constitution and system of justice. I would note that putting the word "fairness" in quotation marks does not invalidate it as a meaningful concept.

But in any event, you miss my point. I support no outside imposition of an external standard of comparative executive versus non-executive pay. I offered these facts about disparities in compensation as context for people to consider whether there is a reasonable case and justification for unionization for the purpose of collective bargaining. To make this determination individuals must decide, among other things, whether they think they are getting a fair deal, even though in doing so they run the risk of imposing a third party standard of fairness on reality, although we all know that the Market should really be used as the baseline for fairness. I would argue that by the same philosophy that a CEO has the right to lobby for his value to a company, so too do other employees. But employees at lower levels are hard pressed to make their individual voices heard and so it makes sense for them to seek methods to act collectively.

No doubt shareholders (overwhelmingly represented by the richest 1 percent of the world population)and boards of directors would consider this advice to be "kibitzing." But it's not them I'm giving the advice to, so their judgement of whether it is wanted or useful is not really germane.

"I tend to interpret the phrase "level the playing field" as "bend over, here it comes again"."

A fascinating analogy (or is that a metaphor?). Exactly who are you suggesting is being screwed by whom?
-- the kingdom is coming...

How do you negotiate salary for a group? Programming depends too much on individual skill, which is pretty hard to quantify. Some programmers are just way more skilled and productive than others. Certification doesn't measure that skill very well. Lines of code doesn't measure it - a better programmer will write the same functionality in less lines of code. Years of experience doesn't predict it either. It's not like working on a production line, and the better programmers want to be rewarded for what they can do. Unions be damned.

Someone you trust is one of us.

1. Dang, where can I get a 20% raise annually?
2. No kidding. Tom Harkin is a jerk. I remember back in the Gingrich days ('94?) when Clinton visited Drake. Harkin introduced him, and since he couldn't think of anything to intelligently criticize the Republicans about, he resorted to name-calling. "Newtie and the Blowhards" indeed.
3. Very good point. Some people don't mind doing the same thing for their entire careers. Many, though, want to move on to other things.
4. Yeah! Forget the fluff, gimme the money.
5. Ditto on that, too. More freedom please, not less.

I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.
Unfortunately common sense isn't very common.

There are no 'shop organisers' and none of the usual 'the workers' versus 'the bosses' rhetoric. So there is no conflict of interest; I don't tell them things that are commerical in confidence. This organisation is not interested in forcing a one-size-fits-all on employee or unions. (Although it has worked towards saftey net conditions.) This is not quite the balanced organisation you might like to see -- but it does balance my own country's employer body, the AIIA.

I've also found APESMA membership to be better value than my other membership of the more traditional IT professional society, the ACS, which seems more concerned with prestige and suit-ish stuff that I do not understand. But apparently others do, because Lawyers, Accountants, and the like see membership of the ACS as being a badge of 'professionalism' of the same value as membership of their more established professional societies.

Information about the work enviroment in each company (country).
This allows for informed decisions about the questions:

• Should i move jobs (country)?
• Where should i move to?

Social Skills so that you know how to handle your current manager and know how to negociate your next job

• In the "Handle you Manager" side of things this allows you to avoid overwork - for example by explaining to your manager that doing that project in 3 weeks instead of 3 months will fail and leading him to suspect that you will put out the word in the correct ears so that when the project does fail the blame will all fall in the manager.
• The "Know how to negociate your next job" is obvious.

And, at the same time, can be used as a respectable licensing body.

Let's face facts here. IT is now at the point where an imbecile with a community college degree can get hired and do a lot of damage through sheer ineptitude. Last night, I had an ICQ conversation with a good friend of mine, who is A+ certified, who had no idea where to start to fix BSoD from VMM.VXD.

Step 1, I told him to open the machine and make sure that all the fans are still working, and that the memory and cards were properly seated.

Step 2, check for strange software, probably old 16-bit stuff loaded from config.sys/autoexec.bat/win.ini/system.ini, etc.

Step 3. Create a system disk without any memory managers or extended memory drivers, copy the program that I e-mailed to him onto the disk, and run the comprehensive memory and motherboard tests.

Well, it was step 3 that stopped him dead in his tracks. He dutifully went to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, Startup Disk... [sigh] It would have been so much easier to just format a diskette and type "SYS A:" at a command prompt.

Of course, when the Windows startup disk was used, himem.sys was loaded and the RAM check didn't work. I had to explain to him how to kill himem.sys...

He's an A+, and I've got no certification whatsoever. Guess who looks better on a resume? [sigh]

Well, at least I've got Linux and FreeBSD skills. [grin]

But we really need some sort of formalized licensing for various platforms, low or minimal cost, just pass the test and you're in - as we all know on Slashdot, many of the best computer geeks are self-taught. It would keep the employee signal to noise ratio a lot higher.

Until we do that, we will never be seen credibly as professionals.

I'd rather take my chances with a jury of "my peers" than with organized labor.

Someone you trust is one of us.

He was.

'They are just monopolies. /.ers are anti-monopoly and pro-individual. We don't believe in collective bargining.'

I'd tend to think that most of the collectivist, leftist thinking on /. would be in favor of Unions.

Listen, keep you generalizations to yourself. Some of the less naive here realize that statements like: 'IT professions are highly skilled workers and are in demand'

Absolutely true in most of the world where smart people choose to live

... is a highly localize phenomenon in our time, and that it's naive, wishful thinking to believe that this will always be the case.

When your skill-set becomes irrelevant, or your economic value declines below your income needs, you make adjustments. You retire, or go back to school, or reduce your expenses, or change fields. It's called adaptation.

All of the things you've mentioned you could bargined for by yourself and have put in your employment contract. You don't need a union for any of these things. The difference is that with a union, everyone gets the same deal. That means if there is something that you want different, tough. You get no say with a Union.

Someone you trust is one of us.

Unions don't appear out of thin air -- they appear when a bunch (multiple hundreds at least, I would guess from history) of people get really pissed off about how they're being treated.

You missed one other critical part. "...how they're being treated..." and can't work elsewhere. The benefit of a union is to give leverage to a group of people that depend on that job for their livelyhood. If they could switch jobs as easily as I, an IT worker, can, they'd just quit and work somewhere else. I'd much rather quit and work somewhere else than wait for the months/years it takes for contract negotiations to get anywhere.

Does extra money make up for more time to yourself, hobbies, friends and loved ones?

What if we organized and won the right for each worker to refuse or accept overtime?

Like many, I see unions as top-down organizations that disempower members at worst, while winning them better pay and benefits at best and working for a host of social and environmental causes at best.

Around the world, the people who worked in unions which empowered working people and mobilized them on stopping pollution, empowering women, and making it possible to work and to survive on the money you make have been imprisoned and murdered, at worst, and encouraged to become union bureaucrats, at "best".

In the eyes of the US military and the words of the establishment press, and in Java

if ( person.has_been_called("communist") ) { System.out.println( you.getName() + " can kill " + person.getName()); }

I want unions and unions of unions...and I want the unions to look like this:

1) diverse - why only one union per plant, what about a union of unions of people w/ similiar conditions/wants or maybe similar ages or races

2) cross-company - If we organize across companies we greatly increase our power. This will prevent unions from being anti-competitive as well, with the advantages this brings (as well as possibly some disadvantages of prolonging capitalism a bit).

3) cross-racial and cross-national - We don't want companies moving to Mexico, or India, or the US because of their lower wages and/or benefits and/or legal protection for workers, do we?

What you just said is what I see as one downside to unions. Everyone moves in lockstep. I want the opportunity for a big leap. As a result, I gravitate towards jobs where there's a potential for me to earn significantly more money by working smarter and/or harder than everyone else.

"I'm so skilled/important/eL337 that the company will treat me with respect/pay me what I'm worth/never fire me."

"All unions are filled with thugs and crooks who just want to take your union dues and are effectively useless."

etc. . .

(sigh)

To begin with, being skilled does not guarantee you proper treatment by the company.There are a number of circumstances where your skills will not save you, for example:

• You get a new boss who is:
  1. Stupifyingly dumb (It happens.)
  2. a sadist
  3. a technological illiterate (and therefore doesn't understand how Very Important you are.
  and is therefore quite willing to let you go/treat you miserably/etc.
• the industry you are in suffers a panic in the stock market. To keep the stock price from tanking, Upper Management hands down the diktat, "Lay off 10%! So let it be written, so let it be done!"
• Oh heck, I could go on and on . . .

In which case, it would be nice for you to have a nice big organisation backing you up.

As to the point about the honesty of unions, they vary. I speak from my own experience. When I was fired by one employer (because of my political activities), the union I belonged to at that time said, effectively, "Tough luck!" The next union I belonged to had the motto, "Nobody Goes For Free!" (Which meant that if you were fired, and wanted the union to take your side, they would automatically go as far as second step grievance. After that, the union would have to spend money on lawyers, so there was an evaluation on how likely we were to win before we went to the next level of the grievance procedure.) Some unions are good and some stink -- sorta like corporations that you work for.

Nor does being in a Union. All being in a union guarantees is that you'll have absolutely no say in how your are treated. A percentage of what you normally would earn will be paid to manage the union, whether you like it or not. You will not be able to negotiate with management. You will be compensated as the lowest common denomenator in typical union fashion. Your stock options will be worth less and you'll have more work todo because your company will be afraid to hire the help it needs because it wont have the flexibily to fire them if times get tough.

When I was fired by one employer (because of my political activities)

As you should have been bring politics into the office place

Someone you trust is one of us.

FUD. As a free citizen you pick your CEO when you pick your job. If your CEO leaves you can leave with him. If your CEO is replaced, you can choose whether to stay or go. When your in a union, your vote in contract negotiation is narrowed down to 1/n, where n is the number of people in the union. Without a union, you can negotiate 100% your contract.

Someone you trust is one of us.

FUD. As a free citizen you pick your CEO when you pick your job. If your CEO leaves you can leave with him. If your CEO is replaced, you can choose whether to stay or go. When your in a union, your vote in contract negotiation is narrowed down to 1/n, where n is the number of people in the union. Without a union, you can negotiate 100% your contract.

What are you smoking? The value of something is determined by what it can do, not what it has done. I'm assuming that you'd argue that an IBM XT (having been around much longer) is better than a brand-new 1GHz box?

Doing something for 20 years doesn't mean anything if you suck. Some people can pick up a book and in five minutes do a better job at something than someone who has done it all their life.

You think the new kid getting promoted over you is unfair because you've been working longer? How about the old guy getting promoted over you even though he can't work for shit?

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

What are you smoking?

Since unions generally refuse to distinguish between employees based on some, perhaps arbitrary, definition of merit (favouring certain workers, either by management or by the union is a no-go), they're left with only the option of rating workers on their senority, which is fair as far as it goes -- all else being equal, those most likely to be the loyal workers deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Otherwise, the hotshots will start to bargain independantly. That may be good, or it may be bad, but it certainly defeates the purpose of the union, which is to achieve solidarity among the workers.

What all of that means is that unions are neither all good nor all bad. Unionisation definitely has its tradeoffs, and only the most intellectually dishonest people (usually politicans) will refute that.

<IMO>
If freedom is a concern (it is!) then people ought to have the right to go it alone. That includes appealing to management for raises. But once you forgo the union, just don't expect it to save your ass when the management tells you to go screw. You're also entitled to band together for mutual benefit.

What people need to realise is that in traditional manager-employee situations, the worker and employee need to be regarded as opposing forces to be balanced. If they're too far out of whack, in either direction, bad things start to happen. (Profit goes down, workers get screwed, whatever.)

It takes a smart and forward-thinking company (and perhaps it needs to be operating in an industry that attracts a lot of smart and forward-thinking people) to try to act progressively and proactively to stop these sorts of conflicts before the need for unionisation.
</IMO>
--
Ask me about my Jimi Hendrix theory sometime.

When we're young, our needs are less, and they grow throughout our lives.

This is not a given. It's typical of our society, but is in no way an absolute fact of life. For most people, when they receive any raise in pay, they tend to increase their expenses also. Example:

"Guess what honey. I just got a raise at work. Now we can afford to buy a house."

The underlying idea behing rewarding seniority is that someone who has worked longer has more experience and therefore is more knowledgeable and a more valuable worker. However, there are a number of assumptions made in that concept and we all know what happens when one makes assumptions.

First, just because somebody has worked longer doesn't necessarily mean they're more experienced. Maybe they've been sleeping in the truck for 20 years.

Second, just because somebody has more experience with something doesn't necessarily mean they've learned anything from it. Maybe they've spent their entire career doing things the exact same way they learned it on their first day 20 years ago.

Third, just because somebody has learned new techniques over the course of their career doesn't necessarily mean they apply them to their current work.

If a person works in a job for a long time, learns from their experiences and applies that knowledge, then they may very well be better than a newbie. However, if that's the case, then my previous argument stands -- It's all about what you can do, not how long you've been doing it.

An example drawn from your industry...

Person A is a cinematographer who has been working in the motion picture industry for 20 years. They're very good at their job -- They can load an Arri 535B blindfolded with one arm tied behind their back.

Person B is a relatively new videographer who has just been hired on to film Star Wars Episode II. They know nothing of film grain structures or characteristic curves. They've never even touched a light meter. Yet they can record images with the same quality as Person A, maybe even better. Why?

Different tools and techniques. Person A has to rely on their experience with film stock, exposure latitudes and development processes. Person B (using a Sony HDCAM) can see what they're shooting live on the set. They can see the signal levels in the waveform monitor and vectorscope. Luxuries the film-based Person A doesn't have.

Person B has many more tools to help them achieve good images. Person A has more years behind them. In the end, it's their work which determines who is better. Nothing else.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

Person A is a cinematographer who has been working in the motion picture industry for 20 years. They're very good at their job -- They can load an Arri 535B blindfolded with one arm tied behind their back.

Person B is a relatively new videographer who has just been hired on to film Star Wars Episode II. They know nothing of film grain structures or characteristic curves. They've never even touched a light meter. Yet they can record images with the same quality as Person A, maybe even better. Why?

The point I was trying to make is that given a different set of circumstances, a person with less years and experience can do just as good of a job if not better.

Somebody using QuickBooks Pro can close out a company's fiscal year in 10 minutes, having no knowledge of accounting. 50 years ago, it would have taken a highly-trained and experienced accountant two or three days to do the same job with the same level of accuracy. Granted, the first person may not have any idea what they actually did, but they got the job done properly. In business, that's what matters.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

That's part one. Here's part two. You have to be different in the eyes of those you're negotiating with. You may think you're the shit, but if your employer doesn't think so, you aren't getting that raise. This has an important side-effect: if you are really good and deserve some benefit, but your employer doesn't realize this because he a)doesn't know you, b)is clueless, c)whatever other reason, you aren't getting the bennies because you're no different in *his* eyes than anyone else.

Should that be the case, unions come in and can improve the negotiations by making you (along with all the others 'just like you') important to the company.

Granted, no system is perfect, but Unions have their place. Is that place IT? At this point in time, with relatively low supply of IT people and high demand, probably not. Should this change, it wouldn't suprise me to see more unionization for just these reasons. You become easily replaceable to the company, and there's no reason for them to give you a good contract when there's someone else who will do the same work at the same quality with fewer perks. You still won't be able to negotiate with management because you'll have no power over them. Hopefully, union management will be decent and won't cost you too much (however, don't confuse the goals and functions of unions with those of a few corrupt/poorly managed Unions). Until that time, feel free to do what you want.

Right now, there are fewer of you than there are jobs. But that's changing. Then you will effectively be, compared to the huge pool of programmers looking for work, an incompetant hack. When your boss then demands that you work 70hr weeks standard... are you going to argue? Or are you going to sit and do as he says because there are hundreds of programmers out there who want your job and will work those hours for it. Then you'll want a union to give you some bargaining power.

And the strength of a union depends of course how many workers put how much time and energy into the union and also how much of the decision-making gets made by the workers and how much gets made by the union leaders or AFL-CIO. Also how much community support it has, how much the media hates the union (.. actually I've seen some positive corporate media support of IBM's union effort ... ), as well as how many other unions are active in the area.

How much the governor and president works against unions matters too.

One of Democrat Harry Truman's claim to fame was making it illegal for working people to go on strike for people in a different part of the country and different industry, say.

So you could have your union, as long as you only worked on your own plant's workers and worried about your own asses... An effective way to disempower people...

On a different note, I also want to point out that we can not foresee whether or not computer programmers would continue to do well in a future capitalist economy. One could argue that we might one day make computers so easy to program With the experience I've had I have to smile real big after writing that. A more realistic threat to our mass employment would be smart machines, which have displaced so many of our brethren and sistren workers in so many other industries, and which might be better programmers than us some day. Or you could argue the other way... Also, all other things being equal, employers prefer to dumb down jobs.... for details I refer you to a search on Harry Braverman's writings about work.

but the point is there are lots of circumstances where if you are being mistreated by management, you will be unable to defend yourself despite your Mighty Coding Prowess. The company is bigger than you. It has more money than you. It does *not*, I repeat *Not!* give a Flying Fiddler's F**** about you.

But isn't this basically what unionization was supposed to be about in the first place -- the means to the (Marxist) goal that the workers own the means of production, and that by owning the means of production, workers can get better treatment.

I happen to have a strong personal distaste for Marxism, but let's take this particular notion at face value: that workers should own the means of production", presumably because doing so allows them to extract better working conditions from management.

In a steel mill, a worker cannot own the means of production in any meaningful sense of the word. Collective bargaining is required by virtue of the fact that it takes dozens - often hundreds, maybe thousands - of people working together to make a steel mill work. If a worker leaves, he or she can be replaced, as the means of production (the physical plant and tools required to maintain it) remain on-site. The workers themselves are interchangeable.

But in most software shops, the means of production are the neurons in the head of each IT worker. Each worker already owns the means of production; a departing worker takes with him or her a significant body of knowledge, and you can't just hire another off the street. Sure, the new hire may know C++ just as well as the guy who just left -- but do they know all the ins and outs of the class structure your application uses? Not by a long shot.

Hey, those on the right don't believe in unionization in principle; I'm not addressing you, because we already agree ;-)

But if you're on the left - question your motives. Is unionization supposed to be an end in itself? Or is it merely the means by which one ought to put control of the means of production in the hands of those who do the producing?

If you believe unionization is merely a means to this end, and you believe that this end (workers controlling the means of production) is a desirable one, is it not logical to conclude that unions are, by definition, redundant, when it comes to the IT profession?

If you work in IT, you already own the means of production.

Hell, I'll go one step further. I'll put my Marxist glasses on and look around. I work in a nicely air-conditioned office, and just got a double-digit percentage raise, and a bonus of triple that. I guess the Marxists are right - ownership of the means of production really is the way to go!

Of course, since I already control the means of production and have managed to use that control to extract concessions (a high wage and an excellent working environment) from management, it's too bad for the union organizer that I no longer need him as a middleman.

You are confused I am afraid. In both the steel industry and the software industry the workers ARE the means of production. The Marxist point of view is that the workers should benefit from the fruits of the labour. In reality the person who owns the company benefits from other peoples labour.

The IT industry fails squarely into what in the UK we call someone mistakenly the "middle classes". I guess from a Marxist point of view you could use the term "petty bourgeoise" although its not quite the same thing. Whatever you call it its a class of people who though they are essentially working class, think that they are not. This class was created deliberately in the last century due to the demands of the increasing enfranchisment of the population.

Now what is the purpose of the union in this set up? Collective bargaining often makes a lot of sense. The problem would be however that an IT union would probably be split and confused. Is it a working class union or a professional body. This is the case with the union that I am a member of. As many of its members feel "middle class", it spends a large amount of its time pretending to be a professional body. Its pretty ineffective as a result.

"it's too bad for the union organizer that I no longer need him as a middleman. "

Of course the union organiser should generally be a part of the working class population that the union represents. The problem is that the traditional unions have been around for a long time now. They tend to have lost their original revoluationary roots, and have become incorporated as part of the capitalist system. I say a union official laying into a friend of mine because he was being "too political" during a demonstration. Rather funny to be honest. The modern day union organiser that you are talking about is as a result of the corruption of the ideal by the ruling class though, rather than being indicative of the idea of unionisation in the first place.

Phil

I see the point that people are making about developers needing to work overtime as releases come up and other similar situations, but what about operations people? I'd say that just being in operations, I average 50-60 hours / week, and I average one 90+ hour week ever other month. I'd be living PHAT if I had a union-style contract instead of being an "exempt" employee.

Marx on sex: From each according to his virility, to each according to her need.

Wait that's not true at all!! All the ATEC commercials say that brand-new MCSEs make 100k+. They couldn't possibly be lying, could they?


Enigma
.sigless

The article mentions some of the same tripe you hear over and over again when people wonder why so few developers are interested in unions. I’m not going to go nuts here, but a couple things irked me…

…some companies are reluctant to spend money on training, especially in times of economic distress. Blain says companies fearing that their workers will leave with their newfound skills for a higher-paying job elsewhere should be relieved to know that unions want to provide classes for their members.

This helps how? [RANT ON] Folks, if you are not growing your skill set – company sponsored or not, boot to the head. Staying current with the technology requires effort, but it almost always will put you in a better position. If a company decides Bob or Jane are only worth a 3.5% increase each year – never mind they picked up Java Developer, an MCSD, Oracle certification while they were watching your phone lines – that should be a good hint to move on. Then next company will appreciate this, usually with cash. How many developers do you know that “won’t learn something till the Company sends me to training”? How about those who don’t even have a home computer of any sorts? Classes can be a good thing, so can certification – the key thing is keep learning, regardless how you go about it.

So how would unions help here? Give everyone the same watered down classes? How about rewarding those who went the extra mile. Just look at those in the education field and see how much pushing forward helps them. Work for so many years, get x bump, earn masters get Y, and so on. Any work outside the formula does not count for squat.

…"There are no processes. There's no R&D. Everything is about the bottom line. It's a sweatshop. You're not making good software. You're doing spaghetti code. Unless some type of professional organization is formed, we're going to see a lot more [interest in unions] going forward," he says. ….

Yah sure, unions will fix this problem… they are renown for efficiency and cost effectiveness. You get process, but I’m not sure that is a good thing – last week I spend an extra 45 minutes stuck on an airplane while they worked through the paperwork after a light bulb was replaced. Not that I am bitter, cause I’m not…

Got to get back to the sweatshop before they notice I'm not coding Nike shoes...

Like we want the Union to set up development standards? "Sorry kid, you'll have to ditch xemacs for VisualAge; its Union rules."

Someone you trust is one of us.

My Dad worked for a large equipment manufacturing corporation and was a member of a union, for about 30 years. I remember repeated contract negotiations at regular intervals (2-4 years) which generally resulted in additional pay and benefits for the workers. Sometimes there were work strikes, one or two in that 30 years extended for at least 6 months. But the union got a little cocky in my opiniun. They tried asking for a bit more than they should have, from a company that they knew at the time, was losing money because of a slowdown in their current market.

My Dad didn't like the idea, but he nevertheless went along with the Union's decision to strike. Almost all of the townspeople, and the local press, thought a strike was a bad tactic. They were already well paid and compensated. But the Union wanted to squeeze blood from a stone, I guess.

Eventually, my Dad noticed the talks went nowhere and it was a useless waiting game. I'm proud of my Dad for making the decision to cross the picket line and think of his family and his welfare at a time that it was completely obvious that the Union stopped doing so. The Union was blind to what was going to happen, even though everyone else knew that the company must shut down their operations in this town to survive as a business. Still, the remaining Union members supported their side of a losing battle. For those people, I have no sympathy.

The company hired temps to fill in positions and rewarded those who did cross the picket line with available overtime work and continued benefits coverage, even though the original union contract ran out.

My Dad made a fortune on overtime pay, so to speak. He was able to pay off all his bills, the mortgage, etc. To him, nothing was different as before the strike, except maybe loads of voluntary overtime and doubletime with the associated pay.

The company did eventually shut the doors, even while the picketers were STILL standing at the front gate. Those, like my Dad, who decided many months ago to cross the picket line received various compensation depending on their seniority. My Dad recieved early retirement, with pay and benefits. Not bad for a guy who is more than a decade away from federal retirement age.

He's not filthy rich from it, but with his mortgage, bills, and cars paid off, he can still live comfortably with what he makes with his retirement benefits. Had he stuck with the almighty union, he wouldn't have the time he has now to spend with his grandkids.

Also... This was no two-bit union. It was the UAW

People today know all about unions, at least as they stand today. Here is what we know happens when a union comes in:

• you get a raise, enjoy it because it'll be the last major raise you'll get, but don't get too excited, you haven't seen your union dues bill yet.
• you won't have a choice, join the union or you're out of here.
• forget about that promotion you've worked so hard for, that guy next to you has 2 weeks seniority on you, get in line.
• pay raise? what pay raise, you're on a schedule buddy, and the dot in 0.5% isn't misplaced.
• some loser cow-worker pissing around and wreaking havoc with your project? get used to it, he's not going anywhere.
• feeling a little tired and don't want to start your day until 9 or 10? trade in a day or an afternoon for weekend work? pulled an all-nighter with a wonky router and would rather take the morning off than fill out endless paperwork for overtime pay? forget it, there's a clock to be punched 8:00-4:30.
• like chatting and hanging out with your boss, because he's a friendly guy? that's enemy territory now buddy, just remember what can happen to you when you side with management when push comes to shove.

Did I miss something? I'm sure I did, those are just my major beefs unions. Unions have been highly successful in industries where the worker org structure is very flat, or the work is extremely dangerous. The second one is understandable, lets look at the first part.

Factories, physical labor industries... there are a bunch of front-line floor workers, some foremen, the rest are all management and administrators. At a table they sit opposite unions. Factory floor workers have virtually no chance of ever advancing beyond their current position. They had no new skills to acquire to do a lateral career change.

Compare this to the information industry, where the org structure is very deep, from data entry and html code monkeys and tech support to high level architecture designers, there are plenty of opportunities for upward advancement, well into upper management, even for the lowest of the low given enough determination and education. And there is a lot to learn, new skills to acquire and so forth to do a career change in case things go awry. So you're a java programmer right now? No problem, take a few evening courses and you can be a db admin, or a network admin, technical sales, even management. IT is a highly competitive and fast moving industry, and quick changes are made on a regular basis.

If you're putting bolt DF878454A on part Y2643-L 8 hours a day and your company decides they no longer need as many of you, or they have a robot to do your job, or maybe Y2643-L is now obsolete, they're very motivated to fire you. It's not like they're losing thousands of dollars in recruiting and training, they're not losing any critical knowledge or skills. If you lose a finger while putting on that bolt a similar situation could occur. This is where unions come in, to protect the ones with the least leverage.

The most common argument for unions in IT is that not everyone is making 6 figures and working in a lavish environment, not everyone is l337 (not even you), and even if you are, for how long? Who's to say your company won't suddenly change into another Ford plant? The truth is we're not all highly skilled, highly paid and highly sought after, we're not really arrogant or think we're so great we don't need unions. But, the IT industry has it good, and will for many years to come, until the next huge business ideology develops in a couple hundred years (space travel/exploration/mining comes to mind here). And by then we'll (well, our great-great-great-great-grand kids) be the cogs and automatons of IT, easily replacable, and the next wave of workers in the new industry will again be hot dogs. And the same question will be asked; should we unionize like our IT employed fathers were a few generations ago, and we'll have come full circle.

Maybe unions can change, but history so far shown this is not the case, unions are (almost by definiton) highly resistant to change, change is bad, change is when people go on strike, when they get fired and when they're forced to retire. Change is not opportunity for unions. So excuse us if we're a little slow in seeing a need for unions in IT.

• Need time to take a class - okay, union offers deals with local colleges and training locations to keep everyone's skills up to date.
• Health plan doesn't cover eyeware or RTS? Union health could cover that.
• Layed off? Unemployment running out? Union pays out unemployment and covers you COBRA payments or puts you in their health care plan.

The guild fights for additional training, for example, for IT pros. The IT pro's agree that for a mutually agreed period of time they wont leave their job for another. If they do, they are kicked of of the guild and loose the guild seal of approval (read certication). If the Guild actually enforced rules on its members in a such a way that companies would no longer see the Guild as a threat, then IT kiddie could actually start seeing better mobility and a promising future within a job rather than by changing jobs and companies would have the piece of mind that their Buzzword compliantly trained emplyees won't leave them for a bigger and better position upon learning a new craft.

Burn Hollywood Burn

Labor organizes when organized management takes a few too many liberties with their workers. In my company, most people are treated well; even a few years ago when we went through a very bad patch individuals were still well treated even as they were let out the door. So even though the CWA is (weakly) trying to organize my location I don't see it succeeding.

But there are a few companies around my town that mistreat their people. Fortunately, a good person can still get a job eaily. But if the situation got a bit sour we can see organized labor making inroads.

In the early 70's, the aerospace business fell apart. Many smart engineers lost their jobs, but the survivors were still treated well by their employers. From what I've seen, the current dot-com meltdown has a lot of people on the street, and the survivors are scared. Though in the current scenario doesn't seem ripe for organization since the companies are also losing maney (though the CEOs seem to still make out nicely.)

Unions exist because people [have not been able to/have not been willing to] gather information on the labor marketplace.

There is no reason for unions to exist in a capitalistic environment: Where work is demanded, employers compete for empolyees. All that is needed is for independent groups to provide easy access to this employment data. Viola! No need for unions.

In my opinion, unions can only cause long-term harm to the economy by providing unnatural stress on businesses when economic pressures mandate change. With unions, these necessary changes are much harder to implement, and hurt union members in the long run.

Thats very kind of you to say so. I never felt that my membership of a union required me to be lazy or unintelligent.

"they probably got some benefit from unions in the past."

I have got lots of benefits from unions. If you want to stretch it back in history these would include the right to vote, the right to free speech. They would include pension rights, the health and safety executive, protection against unfair dismissal, the right to representation on pay bargaining, the right to paid holidays.

"Unions are just a symptom of a desire to socialize everything "

Gods above. McCarthy did a really good job on you lot didn't he.

Phil

Does anyone else feel that way?

Additionally, most programmers I know care very deeply about how their skills are perceived (myself included). Most of us like to think we are the top 25% of programmers (myself included)--although it isn't possible for 75% of programmers to be the top 25% :-) That being said, why would programmers want to unionize, to protect, in many posters' words, the lazy and the inept?

No, it won't happen. There will not be an effective programmers union.

BUT, I strongly believe there will be a network support/IT tech union. Those poor schlobs have it rough. Being on call and never getting paid (or whether they get paid or not is a point of debate with the employer), working long hours over outtages, not being able to take vacations. Those people will probably unionize. Especially with MCSE certification programs churning out so many, their jobs are probably in jeopardy. Whenever they start to get paid decent money for decent training, they could get fired for some fresh MCSE who is willing to be paid anything.

If managing programmers is compared to herding cats, and cats (due to their independence and "you can go to hell" atttitude) are the most accurate description of programmers, how the hell is a union ever going to work?

Like this.

This industry changes very quickly. Unionized information labor doesn't strike me as something that promotes keeping up with technology. It seems more like job security in case you find your skills are outdated.

I'm all for Unions. Corporations rip off every single one of their employees, except in the case of effective Unions, where the employees are the ones doing the ripping off. What's not to love? I'd just hate to see it at my employer, because I don't feel ripped off enough to want to reverse.

No one was talking about IT unions 5 years ago when VCs were pissing money away on ludicrous business ideas. People will obviously resent losing their jobs over this, but hey, did you really think you had a future in tieclip.com?

Seriously, anyone who deserves to work in IT should have no problem finding that their skills will always be in demand. When I hear people demanding Unions, I question the motivation. Maybe my outlook will change some day, but right now, I'm happy with my rugged individualism.

Take it to the labor board.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

Why do you blame teachers when they strike? Why don't you blame the school boards who will not pay them what they deserve? Why don't you blame the citizens in that district that vote down pro-school referendums, and then complain why schools suck....and then have the nerve to blame teachers for the lack of "morals" in our teens (maybe parents should take time off of work to parent!!).

As for IT professionals.....I am a union IT pro. Two hours of pay a month goes to my union dues. In return I get a benefits package worth an additional 35% of my pay and includes full paid medical, dental and life insurance for the whole family and a generous retirment contribution that is vested immediately. Also, any overtime I work results in 1:1 comp time. All of this and our union has never had to strike! YES, unions work without strikes! Unfortunately, the only time you hear about unions in today's media is during strikes...you never hear about all of the good things they do for the employee (day care, same-sex partner rights, etc).

Finally, just becuase you are a union member does not guarantee job security....a common union myth. I can be fired just like everyone else in the world, however, there must be a reason for it. If my employer wanted to can me because I am doing a poor job, first they would have to notify me that I am doing poorly and give me a chance to improve (usually a month), and if I don't me their satisfaction I am a goner.

Being a union member does not make me a lazy, do-nothing employee. It makes me a happy, appreciative, hard-working employee....one that works to live, not lives to work.

Õ¿Õ
Join Team AnandTech

You don't want your union to protect lazy people? Don't do it then!

I can't imagine a tech union forming that didn't let everyone get a vote/say in how it was set up. If it didn't allow that, no one would join after someone tried starting it, right?

Basically the process is similar to starting a new country/organization with only technical people in it. The rules get to be written by the technical people as they start it. they get to elect CmdrTaco president when the time comes. They get to make CowboyNeal in charge of the SlashUniondot setup.

A tech union can't happen without technical people wanting to join it. So therefore, for it to occur, it has to be set up the way you want it to be set up. You get to set the rules. You set the policies. You define everything about it!

You don't have to whine about how you don't like unions because they do blah blah blah. Make your union only do the things you want it to do!

Not all middle-aged people (geeks or otherwise) choose to have families. Therefore, this argument doesn't necessarily apply.

1) As I mentioned-- medical, dental, pension.

I've never worked for anybody that didn't provide these things already.

2) Overtime for working beyond 40 hours.

I already get this -- guaranteed by state law.

3) My pager stays on my desk when I go home at night; i.e., I can have a Real Life(tm) with my family (and my compilers).

My pager goes home with me because that's the whole purpose for having a pager -- to reach me after hours. It's part of the job, which I didn't have to accept if I didn't like the terms. If someone needs to get in touch with me at work, they can call me, walk over to my desk or send me an email.

4) I'm not an at-will employee-- I can't be fired just because the boss can hire someone for less money.

So what? Whether you're at-will or not, you're not entitled to a job. You have to earn it.

5) I can't be fired for my continual, unabashedly militant leftist political and union organizing activities.

Neither can I, and I'm non-union. Again, state law.

6) I don't have to kiss suits' asses.

I've never encountered nor heard of this being a job requirement anywhere.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

5) I can't be fired for my continual, unabashedly militant leftist political and union organizing activities.

Which is interesting because leftist political union types will stop at nothing to get people who disagree with their ideas fired.

Any union with real teeth is going to have strict rules about work on the side. Open source work will be regarded as scab labor and threat to the commercial interests the labor unions work for.

Imagine if unions really took root in IT. Maybe you'd like to run a small business on the side. You might do a little web development to help make the bills at home. Not if you are in a union. You'll be blacklisted for that kind of behavior

Are you a political type? So are unions! As long as you're a democrat you probably won't think twice about how much unions spend of your dues (oh yeah, you'll owe dues!) But if you're republican, you'd better shut the f*ck up.

Then there's always the lovely posibility you might get to enjoy a long, drawn out strike! Ask anyone who's ever been through one (me) and they'll tell you it sucks going without a few months of income.

I want to remain a free agent. My skills belong to me.

Training
At Boeing, training is offered only to the most senior permanent employee of each development group. Only employees that have completed Boeing training on new software packages may be granted a seat license for that software.

In practice this is (obviously), a living nightmare. During my contract, the decision was made to use WISE for the development of deployment packages. Unfortunately, my projects always seemed to miss the production dealines, simply because I could not create WISE packages for my own software.

Establishing standards for software development
What, you don't like Windows? Hate Microsoft products? Free software fanactic, eh?

If you answered 'yes' to any of the above, unions are not for you. When unions say standard, they actually mean 'lowest common denominator'. And that means Microsoft.

At Boeing, only one permanent employee in my team had even the most rudimentary knowledge of the C language. No employee had knowledge of C++, Java, PERL... What they did do, though not very well, was develop VBA applets for Access 97, using OLE for Oracle to link the 'rich client' forms to the databases.

Imagine writing a server with Visual Basic. That is exactly what was suggested by the team when I was assigned the task of writing a new security service. And that wasn't the only thing... I had to code every client that used the service on evry platform used by Boeing, using every development language sanctioned by Boeing. Twelve clients in all, all documentation, all design (No knowledge of UML, either), not to mention the server itself. What fun!

Protecting Benefits
You really don't want the kind of...er...benefits that unions provide. For example, during my contract, I was forced to move to new cubicles twice, due to the fact that someone with seniority wanted the seat. Choosing to take over someone's space (and vacate them on no notice) was a benefit senior personnel enjoyed. It was not one that I enjoyed.

Nor did I enjoy being forced to leave the building for a lunch break. At Boeing, every employee is required to take an off the clock lunch, and you must do it away from your desk. It matters not how busy you are, or how badly you want to finish what you are working on.

Forced overtime and H1-B visas
If you have been following the news lately, Boeing's attitude is pretty clear...any non-permanent employee of any kind is dogmeat. Contractors are treated with the utmost disrepect, and you won't find IT working there on visas of any kind.

As for forced overtime... well, contractors get paid for overtime, period. Not that you will get any; overtime is reserved for senior employees only.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. - Andre Gide

1. Why do unions seem to reward seniority over ability or acomplishments? Why should somebody get a higher wage simply because they've worked longer, when the quality of their work is inferior?
2. Why do unions try and force workers in their industry or company to unionize instead of simply accepting some people's desire to remain non-union?
3. Why do unions create such strict and incredibly small divisions of labor, thus requiring many more people to do a job than it should require?

So here are my thoughts about the above questions:

1. Paying members more money the longer they work seems like an incentive for them to stay in the union. After all, when someone gets passed over by a collegue half their age, it makes them want to leave. Translation: Longer memberships at progressively higher salaries equals more dues for the union.
2. True, the more members there are in the union the stronger their voice is against employers. However, the flip side is that more members equals more dues for the union.
3. Strict division of labor increases the number of workers required to accomplish a task. Five people doing the job of one person equals five times the dues for the union.

You never actually stated what the reason was. I know that paper credentials go a long way in this world when they shouldn't. I'm asking why that is.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein

I do first-level phone support for Windows 98 in the Seattle office of what used to be Keane, Inc. When I was hired three years ago, I supported Adobe's type products. That ended in 1999 when Adobe decided to move their front-line support to North Carolina, Adobe having decided that the $11-12-an-hour positions they were obliged to staff in the Puget Sound area could be filled elsewhere for a lot less. I transferred to the Windows project, immediately discovering that while the work load grew in response to Win 9x's grievous flaws, the pay did not. And it was not expected to -- at Keane, you either moved upstairs to a senior tech position or outward to the then-robust dot.com world.

Keane had, I believe, a 150% attrition rate, mainly people who either left for better-paying IT positions elsewhere or got sick of the entire industry. Because the position was considered entry-level, Keane found plenty of other people to fill the positions.

Earlier this year, the branch was purchased by Convergys, which decided that the entire Washington operation was too expensive to maintain; they're shutting us down next month. During the last few months, WashTech took an active interest in the branch, not so much to get dues-paying members into the union as to give employees a way to discuss the frustrations they were experiencing on duty. Even during the Keane period, Microsoft decided to increase the amount of documentation and customer callbacks required by its phone techs, without increasing pay or changing the job definitions. With Convergys in charge, phone techs were required to take calls continuously until the end of their shifts, even if that meant working overtime (although Convergys didn't use the term "mandatory). In this case, WashTech wasn't aiming for a work stoppage; they wanted to give employees the opportunity to do the jobs they wanted without the like-it-or-leave attitude typical for entry-level IT positions.

Would a union have preserved our positions? Maybe not, but having one would have let management know that its employees are far more than just entry-level serfs who can be replaced by someone else for less.

Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith

If a business can find some resource elsewhere for less money, they will usually switch over to it. Sure, this seems unfair for the losing side. Welcome to the world of economics.

...they wanted to give employees the opportunity to do the jobs they wanted...

Excuse me for saying so, but this sounds like a very spoiled attitude. Most people work to make a living. Few end up doing what they want.

Nobody is guaranteed a job. Nobody is guaranteed a job they enjoy. Nobody is guaranteed the job they want.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

If somebody is able to do the same for less, more power to them. Competition is one of the major driving forces in economics. If the new guy on the block is making things difficult for you, maybe you should make some changes in your own situation or get out of the market. You're not entitled to a job.

How would you like it if only certain brands of products belonging to certain organizations could be sold at certain supermarkets? Imagine no Rice Krispies because General Mills has a contract with Safeway. You're advocating this exact same principle in employment.

How would you like it if you couldn't have the job you wanted because you weren't a member of the union and couldn't join for one reason or another?

What a good IT union would do is...

...assure your pension/401K where ever you worked.

...provide uniform health benefits for you and your family, which would allow you to freelance, contract or set up your own business without worrying every time Junior gets the scooter.

Provides death and catastrophic injury benefits for you and your SO.

...provide training and financial advice for you.

...help you find jobs without recruiters

...arbirtrate workplace disputes without resorting to lawyers.

...would not establish a maximum wage, nor would it prevent you from being promoted or becoming a manager. It would not mandate hiring and promotion.

Each of these things can be obtained by anyone without the assistance of a union. The only thing a union does it serve it all to you on a silver platter instead of requiring you to take some initiative in your life.

...the top executives get millions of shares apiece and the 500 workers get to split 400,000-1m shares in options.

Yes, the more critical positions for which demand is higher and supply is lower typically get more money than the average worker. That's economics again.

...how much freedom you would have if you didn't have to worry about being covered by every company you worked for and switching 401K's every year.

I think you summed it all up right there. Let someone else manage your affairs for you so that you don't have to.

- Milo Hyson
milo@cyberlifelabs.com

• Unions typically attempt to influence political issues via large donations to lobbyists.
• I've witnessed union members get irate because a non-member was selling union stickers at a garage sale.
• Unions try to increase their membership bases (thus leading to more money for the union) by distributing propaganda to the public.

In a place where the rights of workers had been looked after to a fairly high degree, I was surprised to hear that DEC had -NO- unions at all.

It turned out that DEC paid so well, and provided such good perks on top of that, that it would be counterproductive (for its employees) to have to bring their conditions into line with (local) market conditions.

So, like other issues, I'd say that there aren't any Yes / No answers that work for all situations...

Only those who take leisurely what people are busy about can be busy about what people take leisurely

But with regards to overtime pay, how about legislation that requires IT workers to be paid 1.5x (or whatever) for overtime like many other laborers.

As a side note, please refrain from trying to make "unskilled" and "union" synonymous. Unions are comprised of skilled and unskilled workers alike. If you're a machinist (one example), you're a skilled laborer.

-- Don't open your mouth when you look up!

I wonder if people have thought of the ramifications of what could happen in a truly bitter strike.

'Round where I'm from, when Teamsters (or the most recent example, the Detroit Newspaper Strike) go on strike, it's almost inevitable that some poor truck driving shlub is going to be shot at by a highway sniper, property will be destroyed and people will be beat up or murdered. Of course the Union will claim that none of the perpetrators of these crimes are really union members, just people who want to cause trouble. They might even go so far as to imply the company did it.

So, when routers mysteriously stop working properly, or a companies web site gets DDOS'd, or a really nasty virus somehow makes it into the network and the AV is turned off it'll be the same thing.

I wonder if the folks who make up the membership of the AFL-CIO and other unions have really thought long and hard about exactly who they're trying to organize. I wonder how long the mutual support of other unions will last when the payroll server crashes on Friday morning and the backup tapes have been erased.

My prediction is that programmers will remain white collar. Network techies will become unionized. However, once someone realizes who is organizing and what an extended strike could mean, the BOFH Brotherhood will become similar to other "critical" unions like the Air Traffic Controllers.

They'll pass a law saying, "You can organize all you want. You just can't strike."

Unions exist because some employees feel (or felt) abused by their employers, and rather than voting with their feet, they stayed, organized, and bludgeoned management into better behavior.

The catch is that many unions outlive their usefulness, and become parasites on the employees themselves.

The key to fixing that situation is to guarantee, in law, that union membership is always voluntary. That way, so long as the employees feel that a union is doing them good, membership goes up, and dues get paid. When the union is doing nothing, and still skimming a percentage of the employees' paychecks, the employees can individually stop that. The union must constantly demonstrate its utility, and convince everyone to be a member.

These sorts of laws exist in some states; they're often called "right to work" laws because they guarantee that you have a right to work at any job without becoming a member of any union. With that sort of set up, union problems become self-correcting.

So employers can conveniently coerce employees into not joining--if they join, they just be opposed to management's view of what's best for the company, right?

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein