Aussie Techs Threaten Chaos 267
tintinaujapon writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that NCR staff with key responsibility (among other things) for fast food & supermarket chains, banking ATMs, schools and baggage handling at Sydney airport are preparing to walk off the job next week, in industrial action aimed at resolving a pay dispute. NCR's general manager thinks few people in the general community will care about the plight of the palest workforce, but the union claims potential disruption and financial losses could be huge. The strike could last up to a week and is the most significant action yet taken in Australia by the techie workforce."
E.A. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We should do that in the US (Score:3, Interesting)
"Thanks you very much for the strike. Now you all are fired. Please hand over your knowledge and terminals to Mr. Venkat and his company arriving from India on H1-B this morning to take over you jobs. They have promised not to bitch about how less they get, while agreed to work 60 hours a week without even a lunch break."
Re:If workers want more money (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Biased headline (Score:1, Interesting)
Who put you in a position where your job could be sold to the lowest bidder without management seeing a difference?
To use a cliche: if you're not part of the solution of moving the company forward you're part of the problem (or participate).
Re:Biased headline (Score:3, Interesting)
Labor unions did manage to require railroads to keep "firemen" on the trains long after the job was eliminated. However, today the job is gone. Along with a lot of the railroad companies that employed those firemen.
All a labor union can eventually do is drive the company out of business. It might be able to grab some more benefits and salary for the members of the union, but eventually it will catch up with them. Look at auto workers in the US. We will not be making cars in the US much longer because of labor costs.
Transportation has reached the point where labor will move to the cheapest location, worldwide. No union is going to be able to prevent that.
Re:We should do that in the US (Score:3, Interesting)
There are many critical industries and professions that are suffering from the offshoring craze, if enough people could organize a walkout, something would get fixed. It's not just IT, but software engineers, electricical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. all over the country are pissed off. We can't be replaced quickly, and companies will suffer incredible losses.
I hate unions, I don't advocate forming one, but they do have one tactic that gets the attention of the rich: turning off the money machine.
Re:NCR! They still exist? (Score:2, Interesting)
NCR has always been a company with tons of potential that few managers had the talent to bring out. Apparently none of those managers made it to the land down under.
The strength of NCR, at least here in the states, has always been in it's employee's. During the breakup of AT&T, the worst performing employees were transferred to NCR, average rated employees to Lucent, and the best employees remained with AT&T.
We all know the result; NCR has been by far the best performing company of the three, reliably delivering on their contracts, mainly due to a workforce that underpromises and overdelivers.
I can't see something like this happening under Hurd, he would have never allowed something so nutty to get to this stage. those employees ARE NCR's chief assets. I just hope some activist investors talk some sense into NCR management before it's too late.
Re:Biased headline (Score:1, Interesting)
Lets just say that I am not yet in enough pain while at work to make me willing to ingore the politics of the unions.
well, in my case... (Score:5, Interesting)
Every union struck every workplace as often as possible. In the mall, there would be at least one store which was being struck every time you went. The workers didn't seem to notice that a strike is a (legal) act of industrial sabotage, one which will hurt your employer and thus you also. It should be used as rarely as possible, or else you'll just put the company you work for out of business.
GM workers were apparently in need of new contracts, despite having work rules so lax that many would show up to work drunk, or not show up at all. Workers would clock each other in, then work their own job plus that of another, then next week the roles would reverse. This of course led to awful product quality. I do realize there was also a good dose of poor engineering going on at GM at the time too, but that wasn't why you'd get a car with the windshield wipers not properly attached or a wrench thrown into a closed space before it is welded shut.
It was during this time that the UAW agreed to changes which should have changed things so that the most desireable job occupied by the highest-paid workers wasn't a chip handler (floor sweeper). And so that it didn't take 13 people just to repair a press (the mechanical-expert repairman would not be allowed to even flip the switch to turn it back on afer he was done, that was against work rules, it required an electrical specialist). See, the union liked it when a press couldn't be repaired, because then the workers on the line still had to be paid, but didn't have to do any work. Because of this, often equipment would break on Friday, right when some services became unavailable until Monday. If the line was behind on production, the workers would sometimes be paid overtime to man the presses all weekend so that when it was repaired (which it couldn't be), the line could be restarted to catch up.
It was during this time that the UAW extracted the concessions from GM that are strangling them right now. Those are very very high-levels of expensive health care, and the "jobs bank" which pays workers 92% of their salary for up to two years to do nothing but show up at the union hall and not work. GM knew these would be expensive, but the UAW's side of the deal was to work toward a Jobs Classification Reduction to fix the problems I mentioned above. Well, as soon as the contract was signed, the UAW forgot about what they were supposed to do, and GM took it in the shorts badly. They know how much this would cost them in the future, and so they were trying to move out of union strongholds like Michigan and to the south. Meanwhile, Michael Moore reports why is GM closing plants in Michigan when they are profitable (on a current account basis)?
And as to the government not being involved? It's just not true at all. Unions are exempt from anti-trust laws so they can work across state lines and company lines to extract higher wages and benefits. Whereas employers cannot collude to maintain their end (see the rulings against major sports leagues, even though one of them is exempt). Also, some states (Michigan being one of them) have a "union shop" law that says that if a workplace is declared a union shop, you must join the union to work there whether you want to or not. Every grocery store is a union shop in Michigan.
Finally, if there actually is a strike, the unions employ thuggery and illegal sabotage. My grandfather personally beat up replacement workers (called "scabs" even though many aren't even replacement workers, just people who want to continue working) on the strike lines against Westinghouse in Ohio (of course, Ohio doesn't do nearly as much manufacturing now, and Westinghouse is destroyed as a manufacturing company and the last useful
Re:well, in my case... (Score:4, Interesting)
I realize this may sound like flamebait, but _most_ of the people asking for unionizaion of IT come from the least skilled end of the curve. You won't see the guys who run Google's data centers sweating it over unionization -- they don't care, they're irreplaceable (apart from HR violations, I guess) and they know it.
Now, most IT guys aren't irreplaceable -- hard to admit but it's true, especially in a company for which IT is a core/strategic area. 50 years ago a punch card operator used to be a big deal. Today they have been replaced by people who keep our networks running, our OSes patched, our backup tapes safe. They are the equivalent of clerical staff in an 1880s office (being a clerk then was a big deal, btw) -- not key to the business but essential to keeping things moving.
Ultimately, the issue is also one of trust. IT has to necessarily deal with some of the biggest secrets of the company. They get access to the CEO's laptop, they get to guard the salary database, the works. I don't know if managers would be comfortable having unionized employees in those roles.
Re:Biased headline (Score:3, Interesting)
However the only 2 things they [unions] are responsible for are: (a) Provide for their own survival. (b) Increase benefits to their members.
The problem, as I see it, is too many unions look only to short term gains and not to long term ones. It is the difference between viewing things in terms of "win-win" or "win-lose". Unions and the company could work together to both provide for the workers and build a strong and healthy company. Instead, the unions "won" in the case of GM at least in the short term. Long term they will both lose when GM goes bankrupt.
For a different example look at the case of the NFL. The Players Union could completely screw the owners if they wanted. Short term, the salary cap prevents money from going to players. So they are decreasing potential benefits to players. However, in the long term the competitive balance of the NFL has caused its marketshare to skyrocket and has allowed the NFL to pay its players hundreds of millions of dollars more than MLB or the NBA pay its players.
Re:Biased headline (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm so it is true, Unions HAVE become like big business.
Re:Biased headline (Score:3, Interesting)
Aye, because too many long term deals have been reneged on by employers looking for short term and long term gains.
Re:well, in my case... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't come to Australia to do IT work then.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - The IT industry in Australia is big fucking joke.
Upper-management generally knows less about computers than a grandmother, anyone's grandmother, even a dead one. Middle-management generally knows enough to fool upper management, but doesn't know enough to fool the techs beneath them, and therefore aren't respected by those techs. The techs on the ground floor, the guys that actually do the work, are ignored until something breaks, and then answers are demanded to certain questions, expensive questions, with expensive answers, that management wants made cheap.
If you're in IT in Australia, either work for yourself or get into another industry. The way things are going at the moment, IT is only going to get worse as more ignorant people get into it either directly - management - or indirectly - customers who want appliances instead of computers.
The humble janitor gets paid more than common IT people - help desk, assembly and repair, the usual grunt work - and the minimum award for IT is about $484 per week for full-timers, or $12.11 per hour for part timers.
Re:Biased headline (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Biased headline (Score:2, Interesting)
Just like with the pay I receive, the payment should be sent to my pension at the same time my salary is sent to my bank account.
I still don't understand how a company could "BILLIONS" behind in pension payments?
Re:one example? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another aspect to this that I haven't seen mentioned yet is the origin of the labor union. A century and a half ago, there were no labor laws, no workers' rights, no OSHA, no government busybodies of any kind doing anything for the worker. Working children 'til they dropped (or died) was perfectly acceptable. In that environment it would have been surprising if the workers hadn't banded together to form a mutual defense. But times change, and whether unions are still deserving of the power they currently wield is a question that needs to be answered.
Re:Biased headline (Score:3, Interesting)
Everybody these days - corperations, politicians, unions and even workers - thinks "short term".
Plenty of listed companies cut staff at the insistance of Wall-Street "analysts" so that they make the share price looks good for end-of-quarter. 3-months isn't exactly long-term planning. Look at the "new" HP - basically the old HP with all the good bits either wound down or sold-off.
How many people in their 30s are planning for retirement? How many politicians give a damn about what will happen after the next election?