Comment You're all a bunch of corporate dupes.... (Score 1) 131
You know, for being a web site for the Linux and OSS crowd, it's amazing to see how many morons there are chiming in on this bbs with the same half-truths and cheap shots about unions that corporations (and corporate-owned media) spoon feed us every day.
A union does not equal contracts, or strikes or workplace rules. If those things exist, that's because that's what a majority of workers in those workplaces negotiated in their contract. But those are not the things that define a union, and you can form a union and have no negotiated pay scale, no negotiated benefits package, and never go on strike.
What is a union, really? It is is a group of workers who have come together to try and address their issues collectively, rather than as isolated individuals. That can happen in high-tech, just as it can happen in any other industry.
I can tell you that high-tech workers around Seattle have plenty of workplace issues. We talk to workers everyday about lopsided agency contracts, overtime, benefits, training, job placement and a wide array of other issues. These workers aren't clamoring to join a "union," because that word has been poisoned. By some union missteps, sure, but primarily by a concerted, decades-long frontal attack on organized labor by corporations and the union-busting mercenary attorneys they sic on workers any time they try to organize. But these workers do want to address the issues they are facing and many of them realize that they are better off working with others who are facing the same issues than going it entirely alone.
Mike Blain
Washington Alliance of Technology Workers
www.washtech.org
A union does not equal contracts, or strikes or workplace rules. If those things exist, that's because that's what a majority of workers in those workplaces negotiated in their contract. But those are not the things that define a union, and you can form a union and have no negotiated pay scale, no negotiated benefits package, and never go on strike.
What is a union, really? It is is a group of workers who have come together to try and address their issues collectively, rather than as isolated individuals. That can happen in high-tech, just as it can happen in any other industry.
I can tell you that high-tech workers around Seattle have plenty of workplace issues. We talk to workers everyday about lopsided agency contracts, overtime, benefits, training, job placement and a wide array of other issues. These workers aren't clamoring to join a "union," because that word has been poisoned. By some union missteps, sure, but primarily by a concerted, decades-long frontal attack on organized labor by corporations and the union-busting mercenary attorneys they sic on workers any time they try to organize. But these workers do want to address the issues they are facing and many of them realize that they are better off working with others who are facing the same issues than going it entirely alone.
Mike Blain
Washington Alliance of Technology Workers
www.washtech.org
