Dial U for Union

An Anonymous Coward sent in this story about a communications union trying to expand into the Internet age. Any Slashdot readers with Internet/programming-type jobs in a union?

Unions? No need...

Why exactly do people join unions? With the state of communications being what it is I can't imagine a need for them. No employer could treat their employees terribly and get away with it, the media would be more than happy to do a story that got the company a lot of bad PR. There are also a lot of jobs out there so people could easily just leave to work for a competitor.

Unions just increase costs for the company and decrease freedom for the employee. The idea that they are there to work for your (the employee) best intrests is also a bit off the mark, all they really want to do is guarantee themselves a steady income from your paycheck. Coupled with the inevitable violence that accompanies a strike I just don't get it.

It seems to me that you accept your working conditions when you accept the job, pay, benefits, etc. You shouldn't be complaining about them after you are hired.

Overall union membership has been on the decline

Union membership in the United States has continued to drop steadily over the past several decades. As a programmer for a community hospital, I don't see how a union would enrich my position, since it would discourage management from negotiating with me, as well as putting them into a position where they are more likely to keep on under/nonperformers.

If you think unions are so good, why can't they keep manufacturing and other industrial jobs from going to Mexico and overseas?

I do not see union participation has particularly attractive, nor do I think that unions always work in the best interest of the greater good.

I think that in certain situations, unions are warranted, but even with the slowdown, unions wouldn't have been in a position to stop the tide of pink slips for technology workers.

Re:About time

If your boss wants you to work that 80 hour week, for no overtime pay and you say no, he/she can simply go out and hire one of the MANY other people out there willing to take on that many hours.

Read up on the FLSA, fair labour standards act of 1938. This is the law that provides for the 40 hour work week and overtime pay. You will find that if you are paid on a salary basis (i.e. you don't have to clock in, and you are not docked for missing less than one day) in the computer industry you have no right to expect overtime pay.

If you are in fact paid on an hourly basis, and you are refused overtime pay, call the department of labour. regardless of whether the employer says that the overtime was 'optional', 'unsolicited', or if they claim you are repaid with 'comp time', you have a good case for getting your time and a half.

Re:I'm in a union

Unless you are a "superstar" who sacrifices his social life to keep completely up-to-date on the hottest tech fads, it is impossible to negotiate a good deal with a large corporation or government agency.

Minus the hyperbole, what you're saying is that unions are great if you have no talent or ambition, are incapable of learning new skills, and are content to merely punch the clock and write another 100 lines of COBOL.

If unions indeed reward the adequate at the expense of the adept, then they are a Bad Thing.

Well, I'm a union member...

...But that's in Sweden, not the US. Unions and their relationships with the employers seems to work somewhat differently here; often, the employers prefer to have a union to negotiate with rather than having to do it individually with everybody. Also, since unions have a right to give input to cutbacks and other workplace matters, the decisions tend to be better grounded among the employees. Not that everything is peachy, but it seems to work...

As recently as two eyars ago, IT workers tended not to unionize, now, however, there seems to be a renewed interest :)

/Janne

CWA ATT

Interestingly enought I was a member of the CWA during my employment at ATT. I also was a tech employee working basically as a systems administrator.

So I am sitting here and thinking back over the time and asking myself if I benefited from the CWA's envolvement with ATT overall I think that I did.

When I went to work for ATT my salary was better than I would have expected, part of this was because of Union oversite of the hiring process, basically making the company have fair hiring practices which in turn allowed me to get my foot in the door.

I had medical/dental benefits which have been fought for by the union and made my life a lot easier.

When there was a disagreement with my boss, the union got involved and was willing to offer advice and council.

I had a minimum of 15-20 days of training per year which was a great incubator and helped me learn a lot. So that when my position did start to "evaporate" I had the skills to leave and find a new position quickly.

So it sounds pretty rosy, ehhh... Well, there definately were downsides.

ATT, in my opinion, has been trying to bust the union for the last 10 years, the problem being that other phone companies have to a certain degree limited union envolvement and thus ATT has higher costs, which hurts ATT in the market place.

One of the methods that ATT has used to bust the union is to give union representatives perks, they are buying off the reps with high paying jobs. It's a lot of power and ATT is attacking at the power center. Since CWA@ATT represents a lot of the non-technical positions as well as a small technical group, the techs a lot of times had their rights and positions traded away to get concessions for non-technical workers.

We also had the people that were incapable of doing their jobs, several times I saw these people promoted, because the company could not get rid of them, ie the union protection maintained them in their positions. So in order to protect company interests, they would be promoted, the old line being promoted because of incompetence is/was alive.

When I left, management did not have union representation and a lot of union positions were slowly moved into management in order to reduce the union's control on technical jobs. Seeing how most of my managers made less that 60% of what I made, I would guess that there were advantages being in the union.

I did at times see people promoted to management and then fired within 2 weeks of having lost union protection.

One of the reasons the ATT center that I worked at is located in Georgia, is because it is a right to work state, the union cannot have a closed shop. There is no doubt in my mind, that I would never have gotten the position that I did at ATT if it were a closed shop.

So good and bad:
Pro:
Manditory Training
Medical/Dental
Good/reasonable salary
Protection from abuses from management
Third party oversight of hiring practices

Con:
Incompetence rewarded with promotions
Power concentrated and easier to corrupt
Made less than people who had more tenure and less skill.

Overall, I would say that the union was good for me. I was able to take advantage of education opportunities. I received medical and dental care. I wasn't expected to work 80 hour weeks without compensation.

I'm currently split as to my opinion of the union, it did give a lot of protection that I would not have otherwise had, there was corruption and I wasn't able to advance due to low tenure.

My major problem with the union was the corruption of union officials and union practices, I have my doubts as to whether or not the union stuffed ballets... Most people when asked their opinion of one of the union votes said that they had voted negative, yet once the ballets were received by the national level interestly our area had a 80% approval rating.

Shrug, I look back on my ATT experience fondly, it was a major step up for me and I was able to learn a lot about not just technology, but how the system works. I can't say that I am 100% in favor of the union, but I do see that there were major benefits working for the union.

Lando

Organize, change conditions, then disband.

Unions have a place. If working conditions are bad (for whatever definition of "bad"), organizing the workers can help get things changed. This is a Good Thing.

On the other hand, the big unions are also corporations in and of themselves. And, as such, they exist to propagate themselves. Have you ever seen a union voluntarily disband itself after the workers' needs are met? On the other hand, I've seen unions try to enter a shop where they're clearly unwanted by both the management and Joe-line-worker.

In an ideal world you'd have ad-hoc unions form when the workers collectively feel screwed. And that would dissolve again after an agreement was reached! There's really very little need for a strong-arm union in any industry in the USA these days.

Chelloveck

Re:Inna Union

• Work is in a city which has air brown enough to see as I descend into the valley in the morning. I watch the brown crud rise several hundred feet during the day, just before I escape back home.
• If the air doesn't get you, the traffic probably will. Some of the most dense traffic in the country.

And I'm sure have plenty of time to wonder exactly where all that pollution and traffic comes from as you SPEND 2 HOURS COMMUTING EACH DAY.

People don't normally know their history

Unions have traditionally been very important to make sure that employee rights are not neglected.
In bad times when some employers could pay people obscenely small amounts of money for hard work, because people seriously couldn't afford loosing that income either, unions played a pretty important role, at least in some countries.

Just because things are generally better now, doesn't mean that it will always be that way.

I know plenty of people that work in professions where the employer have all the power, that are very glad for the added security that union-membership gives you.

Unions (as long as they operate within the current system, instead of trying to destroy the system), isn't necessarily a foe of the free market, it is actually part of the free market. Just as coorporations make alliances and merges, so must employees be able to.
If me being a Union-member can get me some benefits, I see nothing wrong with it.

Of course, the norwegian law sucks in the way that in some professions you are automatically a union-member, and the union provides funds for the election-campaign of the Labour-party in Norway. This means that some people are forced to support the Labour-party with their union-fees.

Well, just my 2 cents...

Re:Dear God stop this now

You seem to have had a particularly bad experience. Up until recently I was the union rep for a bunch of programmers in a telco, and I can tell you straight people did need the union.

Yes, everyone has rights, but the management are often clueless or deliberately lax in applying the rules. Far from promoting by merit when left to themselves, management promoted cronies, and almost exclusively male cronies at that. Managers in some projects had told their team that if they applied for their time off in lieu (the alternative to overtime) it would count against them at appraisals; and so on. I was personally involved in discovering some duplicity in company pay negotiations - as a result of which 10,000 people did not get their pay cut by £150 pa.

Asking the union for help in the UK at least is not like the Teamster example earlier in this thread where we smash up cars. In disputes workers here have a right to be accompanied by someone else in any meeting with management, and 9 times out of 10 they chose a union rep rather than a friend because we'd been through these meetings before, had been through courses on employment law, and could make sure the employee got a fair deal.

If the company wanted to sack a lazy, theiving or stupid employee as characterized by you they had procedures they had agreed to follow to make sure it was fair and not the product of a local grudge. If the company gave the worker a fair hearing and they should be sacked, they were sacked. We didnt stand in their way.

On the politics angle, our union (given its white collar background) was fairly apolitical, and under UK law the union members voted to stop political contributions. I personally knew members who stood for elected office for each of the 3 main parties in this country - hardly evidence of losing your political views.

Re:Unions are not really a good thing

You're right, this is an example of a bad apple of a union.

The solution to this isn't to disregard unions entirely, but to consider the benefits of a union that's run by more honest and less shady people.

(FYI I'm neither for nor against them in IT, but I am unionized in one of my current jobs and there are some benefits to that, even if it isn't worth what they take out of my pay).

An anecdote on Unions

I've already this story before, but I find it necessary to bring up when people bring up the issue of Unions.

My father owned an HVAC Company. His workers were not unionized, and his company did not make enough revenue to pay them at what unions would force him to. Of course, his workers decided that they wanted more money and benefits, so they tried to unionize.

My father didn't want them to unionize. The Union wanted them to. The decision boiled down to him allowing them to unionize, or the Union driving his business into the ground. As a matter of principle and simple economics, he chose not to unionize.

As a result, the union took him to court for several years. They made his life a living hell, both legally and illegally. Some of his trucks were vandalized, with their tires slashed or windows broken.

In the end, his business became no longer profitable. He sold it, after having seen it driven into the ground.

You can tell me that he was a greedy bastard for having not unionized. Me, my brother, and my mother hardly thought of ourselves as filthy rich. My father built that business himself, and it was driven into the ground by selfish, lazy people.

Yes, works have a right to form unions, but it unconstitutional and immoral to tell any business owner how to run his business through the strongarm of the law.

Quality of work goes down the toilet

A union is the last thing tech workers need. The sector is already swamped with substandard workers who command ridiculous salaries and benefits for the work they do. Unions will just make it so that employers can't fire those who don't do their work, and have to promote the clueless because of seniority. No thanks; I prefer to work in a world where I get rewards based on my performance.

Re:No Thanks...

I don't want to say that unions are meant for unskilled people only, because you have teacher's unions, etc.

Teachers' unions (and I'm speaking of the NEA, the behemoth here in the US) can be the worst. First of all, they certainly aren't getting done what they supposedly exist to do -- getting teachers paid more. My hunch is that they actually are keeping salaries down by not allowing school districts to evaluate teachers and introduce competition. Really, all the NEA does is work to maintain the public education monopoly, claiming they're fighting "for the children".

Teachers are professionals, should be treated as such, and should not be forced to be unionized to get a job. Perhaps then we can start paying the good ones what they're worth.

Unions Were GOOD to My Family

Twelve years ago my father was diagnosed with a rare genetic liver disease called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. While he had problems with his liver all of his life, they had not been able to diagnose and treat this new disease until recently.

When my father's symptoms got worse and worse, it was clear that there was only one cure for his disease. Liver transplantation was the only way to save his life. Because this treatment was "experimental" 11 years ago when it was performed, the insurance company flatly refused to cover it. The doctor told my father (quoting here)... "If you do not come up with $250,000 for the transplant, you will die". Did I mention I come from a fairly poor family? There was no WAY we could afford that.

The person who saved my father was a union manager. My father was a truck driver, a car hauler, who had been in the teamsters union for many years. After making the right calls and talking to the right people, the union stepped in and provided the money needed to save him.

After waiting a long time on the waiting list and with an estimated 2 weeks left to live, my father got his transplant. They gave him a 50/50 chance to survive the surgery at this point, and much less to even survive for the next 5 years. It has been 11 years and my father is still alive and enjoys a quality of life that's better than it ever has been.

Now I know this is slightly off-topic, but I saw many anti-union posts and I knew I had to say something. I'm always for expanding unions wherever possible, because I've seen in my jobs and in my life that sometimes the only ones who will stand up for you, is a union.

Re:I will never work for a union, just for HR!

Unions are diverse I don?t think that there is anyone on /. who believes that these so-called independent Unions are not all tied together by one common organization, know which one I mean Tony?

I assume you're talking about the AFL-CIO... sure their tied together, just like most the corporations in this country are members of chambers of commerce, political organizations, and the like. Unions are about people working together so it is natural you'd have a national alliance. If you're insinuating that the AFL-CIO controls all these unions, then you have your head in your ass... as I said, sure some unions might be under outside control, I know that my union (which wasn't part of AFL-CIO untila couple years ago anyway) is locally controlled.

Unions can better bad policy Do you like workers who have no motivation to do quality work? Do you like workers who have little or know fear of being fired? Do you like having to kiss the ass of every low-life Union supervisor just to get his people to do their job. Come on. Everyone has had experience with the wonderful work ethics of Union workers.

Once again, quite a generalization... 13% of the workforce is unionized, 48% would be if they could (stats courtesy National Labor Board) All these people are bad workers? Just because you're in a union doesn't mean you wont get fired. And I don't quite know what you mean when you say "Union supervisor?" Supervisors aren't in the union, that's kind of how it works. Furthermore, you are using the same argument here as you do later on... Maybe you've had a bad experience with a couple folks, I know a LOT of IT people that are total fucks too...

Unions give you a voice Yes, let?s just remove any reward for being better at your job than the schlub next to you. We?re all equal in the IT industry and should all be treated the same. While we?re at it lets remove any competition completely and give everyone the same wages irregardless of their abilities.

First of all, you're not addressing the points I made in any arguement, instead you're railing on about the myths of medeocrity. I said specificly that unions don't require the same wages across the board... maybe you should learn to read.

Unions don't support mediocrity AHH, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!!!! You?re killing me Tony. As soon as you pull your head out of the sand you let me know. AHH, HA, HA, HA!

uh-huh, maybe one day you'll realize that nearly every benefit you enjoy as a worker here in America is the result of union activity... you think before unions we had a 40 hour work week? You think we had widespread benefits and healthcare? Retirement? Safety standards? Don't think so.

Unions start with you Sure, I like your mentioning those ?stupid management decisions? because we all know that management are just a bunch of idiots who don?t know what their doing. You really need to wake up Tony. Management got to be management because they know how to get things done, something that the Unions seem to be very much against.

I am sure many managers are competent employees etc. And there are a lot that aren't, all up and down the line. I can't believe that you're saying, especially in IT, that most managers know more than their employees. That isn't the case. And when the decision-making power lies in the hands of those who don't know what's up... you get stupid decisions.

Not-Tony

Yeah, just a fucking coward.

I work for a union...

It's pretty sad. Reading the comments on this story I've seen about 90% FUD. For a readership that seems to hate megacorps and dislike misinformation, slashdot seems to have such a narrow band of knowledge that's sometimes scary. I work for a union. I'm an organizer for UPTE - CWA Local 9119 [upte.org] at UCSC [upte.org]. UPTE represents professional and technical employees statewide within the University of California system (all told about 11-12K represented employees). I've met a lot of people so far with a lot of the same ideas that I hear here and it's my job to convince them otherwise, so let me try here as well.

Unions are diverse I'm gonna talk about something most people on /. don't have in whatever subject they are writing about... personal experience. When I say a union can do something, that doesn't mean every union will. There are hundreds, if not thousands of unions in this country and each one is different. There are really bad ones, there are really good ones, and there are a lot in between. Employee's vote in the union that they belong to (often against very steep odds considering the tactics and "natural" advantage the employer has against its employees) and they can vote to decertify a union as well (which, when it happens is most often a switch to a different union rather than choosing to go unrepresented). In my opinion, the best unions are the ones with the most member participation. This means that people need to be active in their unions for them to serve their needs. More on that in a bit, to get back to the bold, the point I am trying to make here is that your mileage may vary, just like some employers are better than others, some grocery stores are better, some parents are better. It's not realistic to assume that every union could be perfect and like with so many other things, you're not going to hear as much about the success stories than the failures (for every Jimmy Hoffa there are hundreds of "good" organizers like myself, who are really committed to building a better workplace).

Unions can better bad policy People think that it's all about wages or seniority. It's not. There are a lot of things that come standard in your average tech job you might not like. Do you like anti-drug flyers they make you sign saying that you wont do things the company doesn't like outside of its walls (13th amendment violation anyone?)? Do you like illegal non-competition clauses in your contract? Do you enjoy that your supervisor often has the power to enact pointless and ill-planned workplace rules that you have to follow and might have very little luck in changing? Those are all the type of things that a union, if its membership is motivated to do so, can change or work to change. The university has to notify my union when they change a workplace rule (so we can fight it if there is a complaint) and they are prohibited from enacting workplace rules that they can't prove are necessary or even beneficial.

Unions give you a voice I have a lot of friends that work for a certain LARGE corporation that hires a lot of programmers. One of them told me that at their company, you only matter if you're a vice-president or above. In fact, when you call tech support internally there, if you're a vp you go to the special pool of techs to help you, if you're just a worker, who knows when you'll get help. This point is to illustrate that no matter how important you think you are, no matter how much you think your boss loves you, it all comes down to the bottom line and quite often you're not on it. Unions give workers with common interests a common voice to negotiate as "equals" with their employers. If you're in a good union, it might be you that does the negotiations, or someone you know and respect. Working as a group you can get a lot more done that working locally, and I know, a lot of you might be thinking that you are doing fine on your own, well, there's probably a lot of people where you work that aren't getting the sweet deal that you're getting and that probably doesn't make your job easier.

Unions don't support mediocrity I should have made this point #1 cause it's often the #1 argument I hear. First of all, most union contracts don't prevent anyone from making more than anyone else. If you're hot shit and you're employer wants you, there's most likely nothing the union would do to tell the employer that they can't hire you at a higher rate than anyone else (however, on the flip side, if you're the boss' nephew and you're getting the big raise because of that, the union might, rightly so, have something to say about that). They also aren't entirely based on seniority (although they can be) but what is wrong with that anyway? The reason unions often choose seniority as the marker is because it's pretty objective. It makes sense that the longer you work for a company you should make more money. It also doesn't seem too horrible to me that if i work hard for my employer for 30 years, I'll have a little protection for myself. Most of us are real young here, when you're pushing 55-60 and looking a little less attractive, we'll see what tune you're singing then. It is true that unions work to benefit the majority of their workers. This might leave some of the very very best a little in the cold and bring the very very worst up a little bit more than they deserve, but for the majority of us (since we can't all be the very very best) it's much better (and the fact that the very very best can be expected to get their own additional increases since they are so awesome).

Unions start with you There is this idea that a union comes from the outside and does things to its members. This may be how a bad union works, but it's not how the one I work for works. In UPTE its almost all rank and file run. This means that the members make all the decisions and it's very locally based. There's not some guy in a limo calling strikes or making all the decisions here, it's the guy in the cube next to you, or hopefully you yourself.

Well, that's about all the rant I can handle right now. It's not everything I could say, but it's better than nothing. But even if it didn't convince you, try this. For the next month, anytime there's something stupid that happens at your job, some stupid rule or management decision that makes your job not-so-fun, think about if it's the kind of thing you might be able to change if you had the organized support of all your fellow co-workers.

Tony

Dear God stop this now

I doubt most of you have worked in a union shop at any point in your lives.

Imagine the most incestuos, concentrated group of incompetents on charge of your job, your welfare and your career, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. The people who survive 30 years in a union shop to get the highest union positions are not the skilled, not the caring and not the intelligent - they are the stubborn, backstabbing, self-righteous oafs who push everyone out. They are encouraged to do so by management, which of course wants to break up a union and how else to do so but by making the union turn upon itself?

Unlike (I assume) most people who read slashdot, I've worked in "real" jobs that involve intense physical labor, and two of them were complete union shops. While I understand there being a need to protect employees from exploitation, do you think a programmer earning at least 2-3 times the gross national average needs protection? Even in extreme situations (coal mines, heavy labor factories), the union is a necessary evil, not a righter of wrongs.

With unions come politics, internal, external, and "fringe", as in Jimmy Hoffa "fringe". Blue collar workers have learned how to deal with the downsides of the union over the past century, they know how to prolong its usefulness. White collar workers have no such experience, they will have their unions manipulated and twisted into the personal tools of whoever happens to have the most influence in the union.

What will your union provide you with? Medical benefits? Job security? Work safety regulations? Don't make me laugh. You have all that and more, and it's NOT worth giving up a meritocratic system of advancement, peace of mind and your political views over.

Re:About time

The IT community has done this too themselves (I am guilty too.) We have worked ridiculously long hours and carried beepers b/c our expertise has done two things for us:

1 -- Paid us well. Very well. How many IT workers came from a crappy job at a supermarket? How many IT workers have another *really* saleable skill. Being the world's best camper in UT is not a useful skill. To get the necessary skills to be IT gurus many other skills have been forsaken. Like social interation. A skill that is being heavily sought now that the IT herd is being thinned via the "new economy"

2 -- Validated an otherwise reclusive existence. As the IT guru at your shop you've spent years alone networking computers, hacking games, writing webpages about Gillian Anderson, and the like while your bones have become brittle from lack of sun. Now all of a sudden you're not weird. You're a God. You know how to print excel spreadsheets in landscape. You are *loved*, *feared* and *needed*. You're very willing to answer every phone call, respond to every beep. You're a star.

So now you realize that this is wrong. That 75K is really all that much money, or whatever pushed you over the edge. A union now is too late.
---

Unions are not really a good thing

--As an ex-Teamster from NY I can tell you that although there were imagined benefits of being in a Union none were realized. Union representitives never came to the aid of any of the employees in my ex-company. The shop steward was railroaded out of his $17US an hour job and the Union's response was to immediately appoint another steward. This wasn't a guy who was likely to make very much more than $17US bucks an hour. He lost his livelyhood trying to protect his fellow workers. The company wasn't evil or mean, but simply trying to save money by asking people to go home early. Most people jumped at the opprotunity.

--For $20US a paycheck ($40 US a month + $250 to join) we got nothing. The employees recently voted the Union out of their building. The Union sued the company and the company agreed to allow the Union to stay for 2 more years.

--Parking lot vandalism has markedly gone up. On 06.04.01 a Union Representitive was arrested for smashing windshields in the parking lot.

--Certainly this individual is not the whole of the Unions of America but one of the bad apples. However if the employees of a company decide they do not want a union protecting them they should be allowed to be rid of them.

--Imagine if you were at an ISP that was unionized and you were unable to get rid of them. Be carful what you wish for.
---

Did you learn to reason in the public schools?

You say the sector is swamped with substandard
workers who command ridiculous salries & benefits.

Then you say that you prefer to work in a world
where you get rewarded based on your performance.

Which world is it? One that pays substandard
people high salaries? One that pays based on
performance?

Re:Unions? No need...

It seems to me that you accept your working conditions when you accept the job, pay, benefits, etc.. You shouldn't be complaining about them after you are hired.

Wow! That takes care of the OSHA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and all sexual harassment laws. What the fuck, you probably could get rid of murder and rape laws if an asshole lawyer could convince a jury that these crimes were part of the "working conditions" of the job.

Don't get me wrong, I don't entirely trust unions any more than I entire trust the upper management of the company I work for. But any good capitalist has to believe in competition and that's all that unions are... competition with management.

I was in a union...

... when I was employed by a State University. It was an interesting place. On one hand you have job security and benefits.

On the other hand, since EVERYONE is considered equal, EVERYONE gets the same 3% (or less) annual pay raise. Luckily, I worked for a manager who fought for double digit pay raises for me, since I possessed a valuable skill set and was willing to work hard. I've seen people who in management positions, who were promoted simply because all the talented people had moved to better jobs. During one six month period during the time I was employed, almost the entire LAN systems staff quit.

I've seen people get shuffled off to meaningless jobs because they do the absolute minimum to stay employed. Firing someone for incompetence almost takes an act of God.

In the end, I realized if I wanted to something more than a 35 hour a week job with limited professional prospects - don't get me wrong, the pay and benefits taken together were a decent package - I needed to find a place where people are valued for what they contribute, not for longevity of service.

Now I know this shift entails taking on a lot of risk and uncertainty, but this is the way I want it. With greater risk and uncertainty, the rewards can be had. I shouldn't have to have a set lifestyle forced down my throat, which is what a union would do to me. In my opinion, life is by definition uncertain. There are pitfalls and hazards everywhere. It's up to us to navigate our way through it.

Re:I'm in a union

No, I'm not.

Due to the nature of my appointment, I am not allowed to strike by law.

If I decide I want alot more money, I'll start consulting, and increase my salary to around 120k.

Apparently YOU have been paying WAY too much attention to the right-wing propaganda and Alger Hiss road to riches stories to. It's also very cool that you have managed to be successful and raise start a family already. I consider that quite an accomplishment.

I haven't bought into the whole philosophy at all, but I've worked at a couple of tech companies and noticed alot of differenes. At my last job, my time was their time. I was compensated well and was in a responsible and interesting job. But I was responsible for things at 2am on saturday or during thanksgiving dinner without compensation. I am still responsible for things now, but get paid when i have to sacrifice my time. And now that it costs money, alot of 'mission critical' things are no longer 'mission critical' at 3am.

If you were put on this earth to toil and sweat to make others rich, god bless you. My 401k needs more people like you. But my loyalties lie with my familiy, myself and my friends, not my employer.

Re:I'm in a union

Please. Tell that to the 20,000+ people laid off from Intel in the last ten years in order to avoid having to pay for benefits & pensions.

The biggest problem in the technology industry is that 3733t techies like yourself do not realize that your jobs will be obsoleted by computers, new technology & cheap foreign labor in another 10 years. We are paid inflated wages because of a tight labor market. Once the market adjusts, 100k java programmers will be a thing of the past.

And don't tell me I have no ambition. I have gone very far very fast in this agency and will go farther.

I'm in a union

I'm a Programmer/Network Specialist for a state government agency, and required to join a Union.

I pay like $30/month but that includes good dental and vision benefits. I also get up to $2000 a year for tuition reimbursement through the union.

It's a great deal; I'm getting paid a good salary for interesting work, I'm not a slave, have a great pension plan (which is guaranteed by the state constitution) and 401k-like plan and am getting a free master's degree.

The union isn't a be-all end-all, but it serves a purpose. Unless you are a "superstar" who sacrifices his social life to keep completely up-to-date on the hottest tech fads, it is impossible to negotiate a good deal with a large corporation or government agency.

Canadian Government Computer Services...

...are unionized and are going on strike

http://atlantic.globaltv.com/mar/news/stories/ne ws -82312620010616-080643.html

Inna Union

Yes, I'm in a union. Came with the job, as all positions non-admin are in this public institution. It's got pros and cons. One con, atm, is trying to get telecommuting approved. Rather than treat us as professionals it's more of an US vs. THEM deal where each side seems to expect the other will exploit the workers. Unreal and a real pain, since I spend 2 Hrs and $8 in gas commuting each day.

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All your .sig are belong to us!

What a union could really achieve...

Someone suggested the other day (in the 'dot-commers in homeless shelters [slashdot.org] story) that

It's time to destroy the PHBs. Withdraw your expertise. Don't give them your minds. Don't enable their parasitism. Brilliant tech people are a direct threat - we represent intelligence and reason. Don't underestimate or think for a second that they aren't threatened by us and seek our destruction. [slashdot.org]
- Scoove [slashdot.org]

I completely agree. We, the computer literate - geeks, nerds, hackers, whatever you want to call yourself - I'd say the /merely competent/ for modern living -- should rise up, overthrow the clueless PHBs, the cookbook programmers in it for the money, the middle managers who choose our tools based on marketing hype and FUD, and (presumably) institute the First Republic of Hackers (something like the Republic of Perl?)

I've been hearing whispers that my employer is looking at a wholesale switchover to Java from mod_perl, entirely for marketing-driven reasons. Our intranet runs on ASPs and of course is a pile of shit - yet is touted as a "leading edge project management tool" in our PR guff. It goes on, and on, and on... putting massive investment into mobile data and WAP when any idiot could have seen months ago that it was dead in the water... drenching everything in Flash, unreadble arty fonts, blandest-of-the-bland 'Design'... and all the other signifiers of lameness [demon.co.uk].

It makes me sick - not just that it happens here, in what is supposed to be a nimble, aggressive young startup, but that it's seen as the norm, as something every company must aspire towards. Sadly, it seems that they're right to believe that our potential customers (blue-chip corporates) won't take us seriously without a sufficiently stinky pile of marketing bullshit in the pitch.

The hell with it, I say. I'm sick of explaining to these people why security is a Good Thing, or why it's Bad to have webpages that only work in IE 5 and above. Think I'm going to go work for myself in a bit, but (to get back on topic) a union of tech workers should stand up for those values. (Those SORT OF values, that is, rather than the things which just flew off the top of my head just then!) That's the sort of union I'd join, not one that threatens a nationwide PHP-monkey strike if their demands for at least two free soft drinks a day are not met... ("It'll hoit, buster, it'll hoit!" -HHGttG)
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"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

Delphi Automotive is CWA

My wife is a "line worker" at Delphi Automotive (formerly a division of GM). They used to be UAW, then Electronic Workers, now their CWA. Would someone please explain what welding and webmaster have in common (besides the w)? Their union "representation" keeps bankrupting its own strike funds, and squandering union dues on personal expenses, then merging with another union only to go through their money as well.

Unions are like locusts, and thats not the kind of problem I need at my job, thanks.

Would Unions stop burnout ?

Quick question for the midnight coders out there - how many years till you retire? Can you keep up this pace when your 30.. 40.. 50.. I'm not a great fan of Unions at the best of times, but it sucks the way some IT workers are expected to give up their lives for some company. If I'm going to burnout - I'll do it making ME rich, not my boss.

IT Unions a bad mix

Unions are built on the premise that workers rights need to be protected, and workers need to be compensated fairly. These are very laudable ideals and, in many industries, are still needed. IT, however, is not one of those industries.

For lack of a better term, IT is a talent based industry. You move ahead by knowing more or doing better then those others around you. You negotiate contracts that are individual to you and that compensates you for your skill level. If working conditions become harsh you may leave and get work somewhere else, usually pretty easily.

This concept of an individual worker being responsible for himself is the antithesis of what the unions are about. Unions are about the collective, about everyone being treated the same, about making it difficult to fire people, about contract negotiations en mass. These are concepts that are foreign to IT, and rightfully so.

As an IT worker I want to be paid based on my talent. If there is someone that has been with a company for 30 years and is mediocre at his job then I want to be promoted passed him and compensated better. Seniority means nothing if the person does not retain their edge and continually keep updated.

I also want to negotiate my contract. I do not want to share a contract with every other IT person in the company. Then the contract is based on the lowest common denominator. So if I was in a union I might get a 3% or 4% raise where if I negotiated myself I would probably get between 8% and 12%.

Unions support the collective, IT is based around individuals and individual talent. They are mutually exclusive in my opinion.

A union?

Isn't that some kind of SQL command?

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Living is a way of life ...