Should IT Unionize? 1141
snydeq writes "Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you actually do — all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?' InfoWorld's Dan Tynan asks. To some, the odds against IT unions are long, in large part because the 'lone gunman' culture is pervasive. Diversity of skills and job objectives is another hurdle for rallying around common goals. But that has not dissuaded several union-minded groups from cropping up across the industry as of late, Tynan reports. In the end, the best bet for IT may be a professional organization modeled after the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association, one that could give IT professionals a single voice for speaking out on issues that affect everyone — such as H-1B visa limits or tax incentives to keep IT jobs onshore."
Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, gee, lets see. Setting aside the economic issues, the inertia and sloppy work that comes with systems where "seniority" is more important than "ability", lets talk about the Bar thing.
What does the American Bar Association do? Primarily it sets standards for it's members, and enforces them. Almost all professional associations do this, whether it's lawyers, accountants, or plumbers, you can't practice your trade unless they say you can...In Union strong states, you aren't allowed to hire plumbers and electricians who haven't jumped through the hoops, regardless of qualifications...Which is to say Joe Bob with his Master Electrician badge is more fit to wire your house than a guy with a PhD in electrical engineering who has 20 years experience in the field. Not only is he more fit, but you can't even hire the other guy because he can't get licensed without jumping through the union hoops.
Now, how many people get into IT through "non standard" channels? How many self-taught pros are there out there? How many people have a non-IT educational background? How many people from other countries?
Do you really want a bunch of senior people telling you what qualifications you need to have? This is a young industry, and it's changing all the time. What you need to know changes all the time. And they think setting up a professional organization is a good thing? Instead of clueless PHBs, we'll have 30 year vets telling us that our modern methods are crap compared to the work they did, back in the day, with punchcards.
Jesus. If you want to drive offshoring, that's the way to do it. Make American IT more expensive and less efficient than everywhere else in the world, and the work will flee this country and leave us longing for the days of H1-Bs and mere outsourcing.
Atlas Shrugged changed my life (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm not trying to defend my actions; but I honestly don't feel I was in the wrong here. After my mother posted bail ($35,000!) I have a few months before any more tough shit happens, and my public defender said I can talk about it as long as I change the names.
Anywho, I was driving down 495 to Providence when an Asian-American Woman driver cut me off. Now, I'm not racist, but my blood did boil a tad when I saw exactly what kind of person it was. Like fulfilling a stereotype that is obviously wrong, but I was angry that they fulfilled the stereotype. I wasn't seeing red or anything but I was deffinitely not happy.
I blame my father. He taught me the code of Massachusetts drivers: 1. Defend your honor. This means tailing those flip you off, act like an asshole, etc. 2. Drive fast. This is vital and ensures you get to your location quick. 3. NEVER let someone cut you off.
Naturally the way I was raised had an immediate affect on this greivous error by the Asian-American lady driver. I turned on Deffcon 3 and tailed them in the standard way; aka getting right on their ass and flashing my brights on-off for 30 or 45 seconds. This is where things go wrong.
The car SLAMMED ON IT'S BRAKES. I am not kidding. I swerved to the right and just barely avoided contact. The driver then sped off and THREW A COFFEE CUP OUT THE WINDOW. It didn't come near my car but I know the intent, and I'm pretty sure it will aid in my upcoming defense trial.
Anywho, I bring it up to Deffcon 5. I slam the gas and pass the woman, then cut her off. I then throw the car in neutral so I slow down without break lights, ensuring they have no warning. The lady hits the back of my car and her airbag deploys. Apparantly she broke both her wrists and fractured a rib, but her airbag naturally saved her life.
I keep driving because my car is fine and I was certain I did not have the obligation to stop. 10 or so miles later I'm pulled over by the Rhode Island state tropper and cuffed, and they tell me several other drivers witnessed the whole thing and I'm screwed. They take me to the station, mugshots, pictures, some bullshit reporter for some local daily even asked me a few questions and I basically told him to fuck off. They try to interrorgate me and I keep my mouth shut, even using that famous Goodfellas line and saying "what, you gonna bing bang boom me?" and moved my arms around, but they didn't laugh (lol). A few hours later my mom picks me up and says "you're moving with your aunti and uncle in bel air" I whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said "fresh" and had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought now forget it, yo home to bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight, And I yelled to the cabby "yo home, smell ya later!". Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to settle my throne as the prince of bel-air.
Should IT unionize? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
learn from history (Score:3, Insightful)
IT unions would turn Silicon Valley into the next Detroit.
Re:Fine by me but... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you unionize, your employer has far less rights regarding workmanship and professionalism than if he can simply fire someone who displays neither. He also has fewer options come hiring time.
By all means, lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper, rather than the actual ability. In my experience the people who want the former, are the people who lack the latter.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with what you said, except for one small nitpick. .Which is to say Joe Bob with his Master Electrician badge is more fit to wire your house than a guy with a PhD in electrical engineering who has 20 years experience in the field
Joe Bob may be better qualified. Code changes from year to year, and I doubt an electrical engineer is going to be up one specifics of what gauge wire is appropriate for a given number of electrical outlets to feed, or how far the circuit breaker must be from the gas line. The electrical engineer undoubtedly would have a better theoretical understanding, but I would not want him wiring my house.
You Have 2 Choices... (Score:1, Insightful)
The main problem with a professional organization (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that one of its first tasks will be to lobby for a law requiring that membership in it become mandatory for anybody practicing in the field. No thank you.
Unions are broken for very similar reasons. Basically, any large organization that claims to 'represent' you actually represents itself and only has your interests as a peripheral matter because appearing to cater to them is how it gets political power.
Tempary Unions (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't like political parties. I don't unions. I don't think either organization should have a long life span. They should create, fight for a cause and then disband. Standing unions I think become evil, like many large organizations.
Unions or bar associations would become money sucking parasites on the backs of the workers, as if the workers didn't have enough problems. Having said that, uniting against clueless management seems like a good idea, just don't call it a union, and don't charge dues.
Re:Hell no. (Score:2, Insightful)
Code changes from year to year, and I doubt an electrical engineer is going to be up one specifics of what gauge wire is appropriate for a given number of electrical outlets to feed, or how far the circuit breaker must be from the gas line.
Who do you suppose writes those codes?
This is akin to saying "a bank manager would never be able to work as a loan officer because of the bank's constantly changing interest rates".
Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime... (Score:5, Insightful)
...or comp time sounds like it's time to change jobs, not unionize. Unions correct for errors in the free market, and are not effective in situations where the market already has checks and balances in place. And in any case, there are few companies with large enough IT workforces to make unionizing a viable idea.
I think what you need to look at is the fact that IT jobs are becoming a blue collar skill. Just about anyone with a computer can pick up enough training to do the majority of desktop and server support work that the market demands. On-Site support for mission critical machines are increasingly being moved to co-location centers who have highly trained staff available. What this means is that there is an overabundance of workers in the field, thus decreasing the value of the service.
If you want to get more respect in the IT field, I recommend that you move to large data center work rather than desktop or small server support. Another idea is to develop industry-standard certification programs (not MSCE) that show qualifications for work in sophisticated environments, thus further helping differentiate desktop support from high-end IT support. These certifications would work a bit like the Engineering or Electrician certifications that differentiate true professionals from the trade-school material entering the field.
That being said, let me turn this thing on its head. Has anyone thought of addressing the reasons behind why you work 60 hour work weeks? Is it truly because the field demands it or is it because your environment needs improvement? Whether it be greater automation, additional help, or better procedures, you need to be making an effort to help reshape your environment so that you can accomplish your job more effectively. Not only will it help reduce the hours you work each week, but shaping your environment displays the true mark of a professional.
One racket too many. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this really what is comes to? You're just paying money out of your check for someone else to tell you what to do.
I already give money to one protection racket: the government. Why should I give money to another, run eventually by the mafia?
Hell no.-expertise,experience. (Score:1, Insightful)
"Which is to say Joe Bob with his Master Electrician badge is more fit to wire your house than a guy with a PhD in electrical engineering who has 20 years experience in the field."
The only thing they have in common is electricity. Otherwise different fields. Just like a nurse isn't a doctor even though they both have the human body in common.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, maybe not. The point should be whether or not the wiring passes code, not who does it.
The thing that bothers me most is the exclusivity, especially with craft unions. There is no way in except through seniority, so if you come from a non-union state (or country) with tons of experience and ability, you're automatically a second class citizen in your chosen trade, and the only way out of that is having to jump through union hoops for literally years, maybe even under the supervision of someone with less skill and experience than yourself.
As far as I'm concerned, the work is what's important. It all has to be inspected, so if it passes code, then what does it matter who did it in the first place?
Re:no (Score:3, Insightful)
Unions themselves aren't "bad". They are just bad for all who aren't members.....
Business are hurt by unions because of higher pay demands, strikes, etc.
Other businesses are hurt when they rely on businesses subject to unions (manufacturers impacted by shipping industry unions that are on strike).
Customers are hurt by unions in that higher business costs are then transferred to them in terms of higher prices.
Employees who aren't members are hurt by exclusion of job potential.
The Union members benefit from higher pay, better benefits, etc. For them, Unions are good.
Layne
Hell yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to take a purely myopic, personal stance on this. I got into IT because I was interested in technology. I have seen more burnout and sacrifices by coworkers in this industry than any other. I have seen people responding to Blackberry messages at 2 AM (when they work 9 to 5), spend their days freezing their bodies slowly in server rooms and watched IT managers lose their hair trying to explain that "technology" doesn't mean "magic all the time" to executives.
I always thought there were worse occupations out there. Surely the garbage man or coal miner has a less satisfying/harder job than me. However, at the end of the shift, these guys go home. The garbage man doesn't need to pick up heavy cans in his living room. The coal miner doesn't need to chip away at the walls in his bedroom. In no other industry is the disconnect between work and life non-existent like in IT. Hell, even doctors have calling services.
The joy of learning new things was quickly squashed by the nature of this industry. Even when I'm programming or building new hardware, I'm connected to the responsibility of maintaining 24/7 systems on a 24/7 schedule.
I know some are saying "You don't need to have a job like this. There are other jobs in the IT industry that don't demand this kind of schedule." Bullshit. We brought this unto ourselves. We were the ones arguing for telecommuting. We were the proponents of portable tech. And now we have to "eat the dog food". We sold people on it, we have to bow to it ourselves.
I was thinking about this the other day. I'm almost 30. The internet came about in my generation. IT has been going on much longer. How was it done before "always-on", "always-connected"? Surely it was less efficient. And yet, you hear about IT people from that time staying in their jobs for decades, loving what they do, etc. Nowadays you're surprised to see someone stick around 3 years in a "permanent" job.
What did we do to our industry? How bad have we fucked it up? Can we change it by unionizing? I'll do anything at this point.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention the idiocy of suggesting that everyone actually agrees on anything.
I'm an American, but I know a lot of very smart foreigners working in the U.S. on H1-B's who make normal U.S. wages, and who are as good or better than their U.S. "competition". Given what I've seen, the constant whining on slashdot about H1-Bs has always seemed petty.
Re:You Have 2 Choices... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me fix that -
1) Unionize and loose your job to outsourcing or contractors in a few years
2) Continue to be abused, until you work with your employer to fix the situation, or quit and go work somewhere else
Re:Fine by me but... (Score:4, Insightful)
"By all means, lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper, rather than the actual ability. In my experience the people who want the former, are the people who lack the latter."
So what are you saying? That people with the ability couldn't get the piece of paper?
Of course not (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that they have no bargaining power or that their skills are irrelevant when it comes to cutbacks
Be my guest. (Score:3, Insightful)
...just don't come crying to me when the union--after having gladly taken your money every two weeks in return for getting you a paltry night shift differential--tells you to fuck off when you ask about job placement options after the company lays off 60% of its workforce in an effort to bolster failing stock prices.
Hi, Lucent and Communications Workers of America! Not that I'm naming names or anything. At least, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention Carly Fiorina in there anywhere.
The ABA? (Score:3, Insightful)
An organization that gives "a single voice for speaking out on issues that affects everyone"?
Uh, what?
The ABA does play many important roles in the practice of law, but it is hardly the only body to which lawyers belong, and a great many attorneys are recoiling away from the ABA based on its continuing politicization of virtually everything it touches - everything from who law schools must admit to what recruiters should have open access to law students, etc.
If you're looking for an example, the ABA is probably not the best one.
Hell yes! (Score:2, Insightful)
The only way workers can have any bargaining power is if they organize. Particularly when management sees employees as "fungible" where it doesn't matter if the work is done here or in Bangalore, unionization is the only way to protect workers. This is especially true for IT and support departments where techs are expected to provide 24x7 support for bargain basement wages, limited time off and laughable job security. Engineering jobs probably aren't there yet (for needing a union), but in a lot of places it's getting close.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who do you suppose writes those codes?
This is akin to saying "a bank manager would never be able to work as a loan officer because of the bank's constantly changing interest rates".
A small group of electrical engineers of which your particular engineer may or may not be a member.
Joe Bob's job, OTOH, is to keep up with what that small group write.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I also would be against IT Unions--on the mere basis that (like SatanicPuppy said) my connections would outweigh my skills.
Most times, union or non-union, connections outweigh skills anyhow. I can't count the number of people I've dealt with professionally who talk a good game, know all the right people, and fuck up 90% of the things they touch.
Sweet Zombie Christ, No (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions rely on the ability to have a monopoly on labor (and violence, and backing from the government for their violence, but those aren't relevant to my point). With manufacturing jobs, where the physical presence of the employee is a requirement, their hold over an industry is far greater than it would be over IT services, since it's very very easy to utilize non-local labor that doesn't care about the fact that there's a union that went on strike.
Furthermore, I think that it'd be a straight up financially bad idea for almost everyone. In addition to making the barriers to entry for new developers and IT professionals higher, we'd all suffer in terms of the actual money we take home. Union contracts base pay around seniority, not productivity. In fact, most unions violently oppose productivity-based pay scales. That'd remove a lot of the incentive for new, young developers who are just _better_ than their older co-workers to excel at their jobs. They'd be locked into their pay level. It'd also make it MUCH harder to fire shitty employees.
I also reject the concept that there CAN be a single IT voice to represent us all. We're a fairly diverse group of people, from all backgrounds and with all goals in life. The incentives of, say, a sysadmin working for a NOC are not the same as a web developer working for a small business. They have different sets of priorities, both of which are completely valid to their particular situation. Say, for example, that the NOC guy is a little older, has some kids, and wants benefits, while the young kid doesn't care, and just wants as fat of a paycheck as he can get. How do you resolve those competing, equally valid desires? As it stands now, we negotiate our own contracts according to our desires. With unions, we'd be locked into the choices made by other people.
Another problem with unions, highlighted by this article, is that they're often ideological tools of the leadership. I don't have a problem with H1-B visas (except that I think they're too restrictive) or offshoring. I think both things are awesome. It's the market at work, and forces us all to be competitive at SOME level, whether that be on quality or price or reliability or whatever. Competing against a guy in India or a new Chinese H1-B immigrant is no different than competing against a college kid. The idea that we need political protection from that is absurd.
We also shouldn't ignore the negative impact that unionization of IT would have on the economy. You want to see the long-term effects of unionization? Take a look at the auto industry. Completely saddled with legacy labor costs imposed by union contracts, they're in many cases simply unable to compete on price. Unions are little more than mechanisms for imposing arbitrary minimums and caps on the costs of doing business, which decreases the flexibility of businesses when responding to changing market conditions. The only reason that Japanese automakers hire anyone over here is because we force them to by law.
There's nothing that a union can give you that you can't achieve for yourself by paying attention to your contract. Do you want a guarantee that you'll never be asked to work more than 40 hours in a week? Put it in your contract. Do you want cash instead of benefits? Put it in your contract. Do you want to get paid better? Don't work for less. You make the choices that you want to make, and don't impose them on the rest of us. We'll do likewise, and we'll all be happier.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignorant you may be, but you hit the nail on the head.
Unions don't make any industry more efficient, and that loss of efficiency can mean the difference between a successful company and an unsuccessful company. If the work can be done more efficiently by non-union employees, it will be, and IT work is very portable...You can't do the old Union trick of changing the laws in a geographic area when someone across the world could be doing your job remotely.
It comes down to market issues. If you're top notch at what you do, and there is demand for that skill, you'll have work. If your skills are dated, if you're not qualified, you could have problems. Lot of people jumped into the industry in the 90's with extremely limited skillsets. If you can't roll with the changes, you're going to get pushed out.
The industry is really volatile right now, and that makes people crave the sort of stability that Unions seem to provide, but there is a difference between stability and stagnation.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Um..... no it isn't the same at all. If our PhD is in fact, the one writing the codes, then fine. In your example, it would be a finance professor stepping into a teller role for the day. He happily accepts a deposit of $25,000 in cash, not realizing he needs to fill out the appropriate "suspicious activities" form required by the government.
the field is too fluid (Score:3, Insightful)
a teenager could be more knowledgable and do a better job at a certain technology than a guy in his 30s
meanwhile, if you are talking acting, or steelworking, fields that are unionized, your set of methods is pretty standard and unchanging
what this means is that barriers to entry can be established, means to control who gets in and out of the workforce, seniority can take hold, and unionization becomes effective
unionization is not effective when who you are hiring for what is still such a fluid skillset in IT work. today's buzzword technology is tomorrow's joke
comparisons to associations such as in law or medicine are not applicable either, because again, these fields are ossified into pretty rigid standardizations of education and certification
no one is going to lecture the guy on intellectual property law who works in the field, and certainly not a nonlawyer. but a teenager could very much lecture a thirty year old on the properties and methods of a new toolset library
therefore, without any rigid system of seniority, unionization is frutless
which is kind fo good i guess. IT, at least until (if ever) its technology skillset hardens, is a pure meritocracy. and that will be reflected in payscale as well, so there is no need to unionize, just get very good very quick at the next big thing
Yes, tech workers need unions (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. It is the corporate DNA to pay workers as little as the can get away with and produce as much work from workers as possible. That's just the nature of capitalism. By joining a union, workers can push back against being treated as nothing more than a disposable tool.
Are unions perfect? Of course not. But neither is anything institution run by mortals. But like anything, you have to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages.
There's no question unions have brought more balance to laissez faire capitalism. Unfortunately, they have become victims of their own success. Health care, vacation pay, pensions, 40 hour work weeks, overttime, health and safet regs, etc. All of these were the result of workers pooling their money and getting themselves political muscle. Believe me, it wasn't given to them. Ask you grandfather or great grandfather who got his head cracked open with a club for participating in a strike.
Unfortunately, it's in most people's nature to be sheep and be complacent to try to protect what they have. Why risk your job by going against the company's wishes to remain union free. It won't be until workers really feel the sting of boots on their necks grinding them into the pavement will workers actually get pissed off enough to fight back.
So, look for your hours to get even longer, your paychecks to shrink even more, and lose more benefits before unions can become a reality.
But ff they were smart, and could learn to stick together (get over that rugged individualism bullshit they like to believe), techs could do a lot for themselves here and now.
I should know. I'm a union guy working in the tech industry.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's possible for an electrical engineer to have very little experience with electrical power systems.
I have taken several electrical engineering courses (have a degree in Engineering Physics) and have also done extensive home renovations (permitted and inspected).
While the actual electrical parts of the NEC are generally fairly simple for most household circuits, there are many aspects to the code that are not simple electrical issues: conduit fill, thermal derating (which varies depending on the specific insulation type, wire gauge, and number of bundled wires), pigtailing requirements, box fill calculations, GFCI/AFCI requirements, mandated switch/receptacle locations, exceptions for heaters/furnaces/air conditioners, and all sorts of other things.
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Union = Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that the whole point of a union is to create a monopoly on one form of labour, I'd have to say the idea is laughable.
I think most slashdotters agree that monopolies=bad, and in a field as fluid and as locationally independent as IT, I'd add that monopoly of labour = impossible, as well. This isn't coal mining or manufacturing, where it might be feasible to completely control the labour supply in a city.
As a provider of IT services, I'm quite content to sell my services to the highest bidder, and I've had no problems funding a comfortable lifestyle doing so.
As a consumer of IT services, I glad when I have the freedom to choose the best individual or company for the services I want. It's bad enough when there's only a single provider of, say, operating systems or cable internet available. Restricting the supply of labour further would not improve things.
Unions over my dead body... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a white, Republican American and I'm in favor of H1-B immigration as it raises the overall American experience.
My experience with unions is that they culturally favor the least capable workers at the expense of the most... unions are about, people who "put in the most time" are the ones that should get the most pay... even when they are honestly run, and I think they aren't. I just unions as a stupid and useless voice for collective action in IT and we are being babies.
You know, those of us who complain about working conditions need to take a look at those around us who don't sit in an air conditioned office and type stuff into a box. Go walk into a car plant or a coal mine, and you'll see what jobs do suck.
We're spoiled, and we're lazy, and that's why people are finding people that can do our jobs cheaper than we can, and our jobs are -easy-, which is why everyone in the world with half a brain wants one.
Re:Hell yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
"What did we do to our industry? How bad have we fucked it up? Can we change it by unionizing? I'll do anything at this point."
Interesting post and it's best answered by looking at other professions that likewise have the distinction between work and personal blurred. Did unionizing work for them?
No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Unions are good for industries where workers are easily interchangeable -- assembly-line stuff, for example. In order to protect employees from being treated like interchangeable parts, you need some level of collective ability.
Not so great for jobs that require a high degree of independent, creative thought, tend to have projects that go into crunch time, and have advanced skill sets. I'm not against unions in principle; in the employer-employee relationship, employers invariably have significantly more power, and there's no reason why employees shouldn't be able to come up with ways to tip the balance in their favor (or at least, less in the employer's favor). But American-style unionization isn't always the way to go, and I believe especially not for IT workers.
In fact, especially at my company I'd be against tech unionization. I make really good money and rarely have to deal with significant overtime or crunch time. My company (a giant media conglomerate) is very good to its employees. None of the issues I have with the company would be even remotely addressed by unionization.
Re:Hell yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
We were also the ones that designed the 'off' button on the blackberries.
Re:Hell yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hell no. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's about achieving a balance of power and who sets the rules. I just happen to believe that the people who perform the work should have more say in their working conditions. Otherwise you will see a return to the 80 hour work week and more child labor in sweatshops. I acquired this attitude through the experience of watching the company make arbitrary rule changes. Because before that, I was very anti union with a very pleasant job. I wanted to make sure it stayed that way. And no, I didn't complain when my job was replaced by a machine. I just learned fix the machine. Now if you guys are going to be on 24 hour call with your beepers and cell phones, you should damn well be paid for it. And no piss tests. Just don't show up all drunk, or whatever.
Re:no (Score:1, Insightful)
Thus, unions are bad for everyone, by your good logic. (Especially since no one is a member of every union...)
Unions! YEAH! JUST WHAT I WANT! (Score:3, Insightful)
All this kind of stuff has been observed by me with my father who was a loyal union man his entire career.
What happened to him? He was forced to retire early because the people above him either just didn't like him for some reason or were indifferent to the fact that others didn't care for him and were consistently fucking him out of decent positions, and couldn't get another position in a reasonable amount of time before various major bills came due. Now he gets to sit and anticipate how much his benefits get slashed every year. It's almost to the point that he may as well have worked at a job with NO retirement benefits now. And I get my grandfather, who was also a union man trying to rationalize my father's treatment because "he" was treated OK.
So you know what I have to say to "should IT unionize"?
FUCK THAT NOISE!
Re:Hell yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Setting unrealistic expectations to the management/managers by trying to be lone superheroes all the time.
Poor, unclear, late or non-existant communication.
Hell, I'm guilty of it myself from time to time. But I know the problem and I'm trying to fix it.
Re:Hell yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
What did we do to our industry? How bad have we fucked it up? Can we change it by unionizing? I'll do anything at this point.
Anything except find another job, apparently. Sheesh, quit whining. NO! Not every job is like that, and if you think every job requires 24/7, then you're simply myopic. Come out of your cave and do some research.
Or to put it another way, employers will stop taking advantage of you when they don't have the opportunity to take advantage of you. Why should they turn down someone who is willing to work 24/7? Apparently you're happy, since you're willing to do it.
Re:You Have 2 Choices... (Score:4, Insightful)
But our parents and grandparents had jobs back then. Now that all factory workers are unionized, they're kids and grandkids out of a jobs because the factory moved to places less expensive and less complainy.
If you're abused at your job, go and find another one. This can be done in any field. If you see that your field is always being abused, go to another field. There is no shortage of jobs in the US. I drive around times and it seems like everybody is hiring from small stores that anyone can do, forklift operators at big box stores, drivers for all types of vehicles, cashiers, desk and management jobs and even medical and IT. People are afraid of change and seem to want to hang around in an "abusive" environment too long and then they complain. I'm a young IT guy without any type of meaningful degree and I haven't been out of a job for more than 30 days. Sure, sometimes I have to move to a better place but I'm open to do that.
If our grandparents and parents would've walked out of their factory where they were "abused", management would've changed it after the first 10 left because without workers, there is no product. Those 10 would be either out of a job for a while but eventually they would get into another job. I know my grandfather did it, he refused to get unionized instead he stood up to management, took his experience elsewhere and earned a good penny being a foreman in a chemical factory until he retired.
I see the problem where I currently work too much. The facility people are unionized which makes it that they can't get fired. But our offices are never clean and nobody can help it, everything is leaking and we're out of heat or airconditioning at least twice a month. And they're definitely not short-staffed, they consist of about 10-15% of the workforce. On the other hand, they have recently reduced part of that workforce because it's apparently cheaper to get a contractor to renovate an office for $120,000 than let the paid-for facilities people screw it up (they renovated that same office 3 times and every time something was wrong).
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind that at the time I had my PE for the State of Nevada and was certified by the State to sign off on the wiring for the entire Convention center! No, I had to wait for some union stiff - at $50 per outlet - to come by and PLUG EQUIPMENT I DESIGNED AND PASSED THROUGH UL INTO AN ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT I COULD CERTIFY AS SAFE.
I didn't really care for unions before that, but afterwards earned a healthy hatred for them...
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming the EE KNEW the code, I might more faith in him to FOLLOW it as opposed to say, cutting corners and doing a shoddy job in general.
Re:You Have 2 Choices... (Score:3, Insightful)
What if, per chance, you're not being abused? I have far fewer complaints about my workplace than my father (UAW) had about his.
If we were talking an 'ideal' labor union I would not for a second oppose it but Unions today are nothing but political PAC's that coerce money from their members.
Absolutely NOT (Score:1, Insightful)
I worked for a university where IT was unionized.
Firstly, the IT folk made the same amount of money as the dishwashers in the student kitchen. All part of the same union, so they had the same payscales.
Secondly, *nothing* ever got done. Projects that would have taken 2-3 months at other companies I've worked for have stretched on for *years* at this university. People take monthly sick days because they have better things to do than their jobs. Incompetence runs rampant, and there is nothing management can do about it because of the union.
I once heard an older female coworker say that she was glad unions existed, otherwise her two daughters would never get jobs. Her daughters were 6 and 9 years old. Nice to have confidence in their future abilities.
Unions had a place in history, but today they are outmoded and outdated and have no place in IT. If you're being asked to do unreasonable amounts of work, push back yourself. Worked for me.
Re:Hell no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is to say Joe Bob with his Master Electrician badge is more fit to wire your house than a guy with a PhD in electrical engineering who has 20 years experience in the field. Not only is he more fit, but you can't even hire the other guy because he can't get licensed without jumping through the union hoops.
I believe you are saying above that a EE w/ a PhD should be able to be an electrician.
If so, I disagree with your analogy, but not necessarily what you say in your post overall.
As a EE who worked odd jobs for an electrician I can say that theory and practice are very different things. I would not hire a PhD EE with 20 years experience unless those 20 years were spent wiring houses (or whatever I wanted the electrician for). They are not equal. No more equal then a veterinarian is equal to a human cardiac surgeon--yeah they both work on living beings overall, but if my dog is sick (with no injury) I want the vet with years of experience to help it, not the human cardiac surgeon.
But I do agree that "unionizing" will do nothing but harm in the long run for IT workers. It will increase costs and complexity, which is not a good thing long term.
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, Joe Bob with his Master Electrician license IS going to be better qualified to wire your house than a PhD in Electrical Engineering with 20 years experience. It's a different skillset, requiring different knowledge, and uses different tools. You also need to quit thinking like a classist prick and realize that electricians do spend a lot of time in school, and that the combined schooling and training of a Master Electrician is probably at least equal to that of a Master's Degree.
Re:learn from history (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's note that American Honda builds all their cars using non-union labor, and we know how Honda is doing. Honda is also one of the best companies to work for.
Re:unionization = siren song (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nonono (Score:3, Insightful)
Now the rights unions fought for are enshrined in law.
Oh really? And what law gives you the right to vacations, pensions, sick pay, etc.
And who do you think is gunning right now to gut any laws that do happen to exist?
Re:Hell no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Learn to say "no" (Score:2, Insightful)
For all you nice folks who claim working 60+ hours a week is expected. I claim that you are PW'd. Get a backbone.
Say "no."
Now, you can't do this overnight. You have to talk with your boss and let him know that you aren't happy with the work expectations for time.
Make suggestions for how to improve the time issue that doesn't include hiring 20 more people next week.
Could it be that he doesn't know how much time you are actually spending doing work?
I've been in situations where 80+ hours appeared to be expected. First thing my team did was start tracking our hours and time spent on tasks. After a month, I provided that report to my manager. It was overwhelming proof that
a) we needed more people
b) we were working WAY too long over weekends
c) we were spending too much time on stupid things like password resets.
A few months later, we had an automated password reset web page up and running that made Security happy.
If you were working weekends, you didn't work the following 2 days (Mon-Tues).
My team of 20 people grew to over 70 in the next 16 months. Somehow the total work didn't get less because we were adding value to the projects we were on. The work was just spread over more bodies.
We still track hours and time spent on tasks so management knows where we are spending our time (as close as is reasonable). One of our key SAN disk guys left and the time to work on disk stuff sky rocketed for a few months! We hired an expert to take over and it went back down, overall.
Don't just whine, bring facts and data that help decision makers actually make good decisions.
Certainly, with a union, 50% of our jobs would have been outsourced offshore. Fortunately, they haven't figured out how to have someone in India change a bad disk or SAN cable in Atlanta, .... yet.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to agree with you. As someone w/ an B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, let me just say that I would never trust myself to wire my own house :) and I wouldn't trust most of my fellow students back in uni either.
I have one classmate I would trust to do this right now, and that's only because he is big into car stereos and also has done contractor work before. Actually, when someone else asked him for some help with home wiring, he recommended that they seek out an electrician.
Also, I wouldn't trust the people writing the codes, setting the standards, to do the wiring either. Just because they can set some engineering standards (some general knowledge + margin for error, and add some industry knowledge), doesn't mean they're qualified to wire up your home. That's kind of like asking an aerospace engineer to machine a part he/she spec'd.
Re:Professional organization? (Score:2, Insightful)
How's that? My doctor knows what her job is better than I do (at least, I hope!); that's professional.
I know tech better than my boss. He's an antiques dealer [trocadero.com], for crying out loud. Of course I know better than him what my job is. That's professional.
When an architect is hired, he very often has to tell his client things like "no, we can't build you a building that high out of sticks and mud, because of local codes and because of the laws of physics." I often have to tell my boss "no, I can't create code to do that in a week, because we don't even fully understand the requirements yet, and the package you've required me to use doesn't have the functionality to do what you want."
Telling bosses and clients "no, you can't have that" is professional. Indeed, I'd have to say it's one of the hallmarks of professionalism: displaying greater loyalty to the art and to the impact on society as a whole, than to the desires of your current client or employer.
Re:Of Buggy Whips and Webmasters (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of what you said is spot on, but something about your comment is bugging me.
You're one of those managers that looks for a CS degree when you're hiring admin and support staff, aren't you? I don't know why, but many managers can't seem to figure out what the differences between an IT worker, a programmer, and a Computer Scientist are. And they are three *very* distinct things.
When all those people were getting CS degrees, they didn't learn how to fix your computer. They didn't learn how to set up your servers. They didn't learn how to manage your datacenter. They may have picked up a little of that along the way, because they need to use servers, computers, and datacenters as tools. But what they learned was math, and probably a little programming. If you need to scope a project, or design an application, a Computer Scientist is for you. If you want to build a website, you probably want IT workers and programmers. Not Computer Scientists.
If you refuse to hire people for IT type positions unless they have a CS degree (which is a ridiculously common practice these days), you're limiting yourself to a very small pool of people who learned the math, but also have IT skills, and are willing to use them professionally. You also bumped your costs way up, because you're hiring overqualified people in to a commodity position. Meanwhile there are plenty of people out there in the labor pool who are as good or better at the tasks you need done, have been trained speciffically for those tasks, and they won't cost you as much because you're not paying for their degree.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well the point is as a EE I can learn real fast. I know how it works in principle, I know how to read well and understand the intent behind the rules. I could pick it up fast if it were profitable to do so. An organization that requires X years of apprenticeship in order to practice the trade would piss me off.
On the other hand, as an EE I have no job security. My job is offshorable, and goes that way often. The reason we don't unionize is the same: it won't help. Go ahead, build "BS EE" into the law, see how many companies stop being "R&D" companies and turn to "Manufacturing" or "IP" companies. The same logic applies to IT, all that will be left are on-site help desk techs, and networking contractors (unglorified electricians: you won't even have safety on your side). All the fun server room stuff will go far, far away. That's what the ABA and AMA have that IT, and EE/CS types will never have.
If IT wants to unionize, forget traditional labor unions. Lobby. Make the economy and tech labor issues move to the top of the campaigns. Spread your propaganda to all your union employees and astroturf the hell out of it. MADD and AARP are far more effective "unions" than the teamsters. Bend the laws to make it unprofitable to offshore. Spread beyond IT, many of us EE/CS/ME types feel the same pain you do. I'd pay dues for an organization that had real power in Washington for issues I care about.
Re:learn from history (Score:4, Insightful)
IT unions would turn Silicon Valley into the next Detroit.
Actually, it's Silicon Valley that needs to learn from Detroit as well. Unions came into existence because corporations were taking advantage of the labor force. Individually, labor has no power. If they join together, in a Union, they have power.
60+ hour work weeks with no over-time or comp-time, because management decided to make all the IT staff "exempt, salaried proffessionals" saves the business tons of money. But it works their labor pool into the ground. Do you think they care? If they cared they wouldn't be doing it.
My prediction: IT Unions will happen. It's not that IT workers want them, it's that they want to stop working like slaves.
Keep in mind that there are companies that treat their employees right. Not every shop will be a Union shop, but it's more likely to happen than not. IT workers at IBM already had a union vote. It failed to pass, but I find it telling that there was enough interest that it came to a vote. If the treatment of the workforce continues to degrade their lives, eventually the workforce will rebel.
Did you know that IBM recently lost a lawsuit regarding over-time pay for IT professionals? Do you know what IBM's response was? They cut all their IT salaries by 15%. You know what this means? They hired you, you expected a 40 hour work week for your salary and they expected a 46 hour work week, but they didn't tell you that.
Unions are monsters. Ironically created and unleashed by corporate greed.
Re:Hell no. (Score:1, Insightful)
Ha, you actually think inspectors catch everything? I'm building a house now, they barely look at it. Do you think the city is going to take responsibility when your house burns down? Hell no.
Re:Yes, tech workers need unions (Score:3, Insightful)
By joining a union, workers can push back against being treated as nothing more than a disposable tool.
If you can be treated as a disposable tool, then guess what: you are. The solution is to pick up harder-to-replace job skills, not to make your easily-replaceable skills more expensive.
Re:Hell yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
I was thinking about this the other day. I'm almost 30. The internet came about in my generation.
Uh, no. The Internet came about before you were born. Do the math.
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
While your points are valid, there are a number of problems that would be solved by a more structured professional organisation.
Firstly, that of standards. It seems to me that everyone I know is a Senior Engineer or whatever. Some deservedly so, others definitely not - the ink isn't even dry on their final exams. Job ads are full of specifications that are just plain stupid based on the combination of salary and desired skills. As to seniority versus ability, as things stand, I find that seniority, right or wrong, is on top more often than not.
Secondly, standards again. But standards of work: there are those that are on paper brilliant at development, producing 100,000 lines in 5 days - but their quality is down the toilet. This leads to headaches when they walk away and some poor sod has to patch the dam. Most clueless PHB's I know were originally technical (not good, just technical) - that's how they got in the door.
That said, I had the house recently wired by a fully certified electrician, and it would have been better if I had let the dog do it.
Thirdly, as to outsourcing - the professional bodies ensure that, at least for the domestic market, that there is a bias against outsourcing and that there are barriers to entry.
I'm no fan of Unions that insist on the plainly useless being rewarded on par with the exceptional on the basis of equality for the lazy. But there are more options than the two you are suggesting. There is a middle ground that can be more effective.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
the inertia and sloppy work that comes with systems where "seniority" is more important than "ability"
I have never experienced that. Experience is important yes, but it is not the union that decides who gets promoted. It is the boss that does that whether he is stupid or smart, because he has the money.
Almost all professional associations do this, whether it's lawyers, accountants, or plumbers, you can't practice your trade unless they say you can...In Union strong states
There are at least half a dozen professional associations for engineers in the US. Please provide one (1) example of when an engineering association has prevented someone from practicing their trade.
Do you really want a bunch of senior people telling you what qualifications you need to have?
My union has never told me what qualifications I need to have.
Make American IT more expensive and less efficient than everywhere else in the world
And American IT can't be more expensive and less efficient than everywhere else in the world because:
1. American workers are less educated than others.
2. American companies are very hierarchial, making adaptations to new circumstances slow.
3. Patents and gigantic auxilliary legal costs.
4. Poor IT infrastructure.
5. The fact that driving people to work 60h/week with no sick leave and minimal vacations is worse for efficiency than having your staff working regular 40h/week schedules.
???
Re:no (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, let's not forget that Unions helped bring about the 40 hour workweek, overtime, and other such. They help even non-members when they have enough push to get labor-friendly legislation passed.
And yes, unions exert pressure (or harm, if you prefer) on businesses WHEN THEY'RE ON STRIKE. That's the effing point. Striking is a response to management harming the workers through failing to provide a decent work environment. If a business is "hurt" by a demand for a living wage, well, it deserves the pain.
Certainly it's possible to go overboard the other way, and destroy the ability of businesses to function... in theory. In PRACTICE, right now, businesses have more rights and power than the citizenry, and it's catastrophically not good.
Speak for yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
No. I like working longer hours some days and spending the odd afternoon at the pool. I like having a non-adversarial relationship with management and playing foosball with my boss. I like being free to negotiate my OWN salary. I like participating in an industry where free thought reigns, not a mob mentality.
It's the union members who are sheep and do whatever the union tells them to do.
Re:Hell yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
My father gave me some advice many years ago that has worked well for me:
"Either be in the core business for the company you work for, or somehow involved in bringing additional revenue/sales to the company". His advise was to become a salesperson, but that was because he found sales really easy (big$$$).
If you are in IT and do not work for a company making technology solutions, e.g. CISCO, Microsoft, Google etc., then you are considered an accessory, an expense. You do not contribute to the bottom line in most cases. This means that your career will most likely be limited if you stick to IT topics. As the parent poster recommends, definitely consider learning everything you can about information technology and how it supports your company. If you don't, you will eventually learn what a hole you have dug for yourself and either find yourself outsourced or otherwise unable to get ahead.
What about the AMA and ABA? (Score:1, Insightful)
They've done wonders for lawyers and doctors. Don't say they're not unions. 99% of economists would disagree with you.
Unions will really backfire on the IT indrustry. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions don't care about the people they care about keeping the Union strong.
1. They will agree to Layoff 100 High Paid and skilled programmers to hire 500 low paid and low skilled programmers. (as more people and more union dues and strong union)
2. They work on averages. On average Union employees do get paid more then non-union. However the trimming of pay cuts both ends of the bell curve. That includes getting paid more for a better job.
3. Less American Jobs. What Unions are suppose to try to keep American jobs? Yes but companies are smarter then that. Oh gee it looks like we are going forced to unionize... That is going to be a big overhead. Lets outsource now before the Union formalizes. Even if it does and a company can have enough infrastructure outsourced they can survive and thrive on the outsourced employees, or foreign devisions of their company as they strike for as long as they wont until they starve, give up, or get a new job.
4. Loss political power. You are Unioned and you are aligned with the Democrats. That means the Democrats don't need to worry about pleasing you as you will help them anyways as they focus on swing voters. And Republicans will see you as a hopeless cause and ignore you. Besides your voice will have to go threw extra layers of beurocrasy just to get your personal voice heard.
5. All Management hands are tied. Even the good ones. So they cant fire the bad employees and promote the good ones.
6. An other layer to please. You are no longer allowed to take the torch and get it done. As if you do too good of a job you make the poor employees feel bad and then you need to explain yourself to the union.
7. Unable to get outside help. Gasp hiring a consultant or someone else to help brings up the question what can this scab do that a Unioned employee can't. Heck for some jobs you need temporary people to do some work and then let them go when they are done. Hiring for Max productivity is stupid.
I will give them credit for many things they have done. But for many jobs they have outdone their usefulness. IT is too of a diverse area to Unionize.
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've done helpwork for a friend, wiring up a garage-to-room conversion. We did the gruntwork, his father-in-law (who is a certified master electrician but has physical issues with getting into some of the cramped attic spacing any more due to age) taught us and inspected the work so that it could be signed off in case the house is sold later.
I also have an EE degree. The theoreticals of the circuitry, I knew. The details of code and the reasons for how certain things are done (spacing of outlets, location and recommended height of boxes, and the biggie, NEVER try to put an electrical line through a corner, for instance) I didn't know.
In the house I currently live in, were there to be a lot of work done, there's a certain amount of wiring that would have to be ripped out of the house because it met 1980s code but doesn't meet today's updated code. This has been confirmed by two inspectors (one when the house was purchased, one after a rebuild when my bitch of a neighbor burned her house down to scam a free remodeling out of her insurance company and damaged mine in the process).
You may claim you can do it on your own design "perfectly safe", and building codes do differ from region to region. Maybe one area is more cautious than another. Maybe one area has different risks in terms of weather patterns (wind, humidity, etc) or has seen historical common construction flaws (soil notorious for shifting, local building materials that weren't as sturdy as another region's) that mandate some extra safety precautions.
The point is, you can bitch all you want about "unnecessary" building and electrical codes, but you don't know everything that goes into their existence, and you should still follow them for legal reasons (and if you want to eventually sell your house, or your kids/wife might after they inherit it, etc...) even if you think they're garbage.
Re:Protected from Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo.
One reason we moan about lawyers is the artificially protected fees. For simple filings the level of knowledge "should cost" some $50 an hour tops, and small cases could escape under a grand.
Then Orgs. like the RIAA reverse-leverage this fact to pull their copyright stunts.
Re:unionization = siren song (Score:5, Insightful)
I consider myself an IT professional, and I got my degree in Japanese Literature.
Awesome. I too consider myself an IT professional, and have a degree in Philosophy. I thought this was rare until last week... had interviews for 2 seperate positions where I met 2 Philosophy grads working in IT. I, for one, think Computer Science grads should stick to the Science (or development or the CIO, CTO, or Chief Archetecture slots) and leave the 'practice' of computers to the experts. They are devaluing their expensive education and helping to drive our salaries down. Do lawyers work as paralegals? Do sugeons take jobs as nurses? Get out of my field, you stupid geniuses!
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
As technology advances, positions become easier. Look at the fact that in a big company you can centralize numerous servers to a single datacenter. Would you complain that this advancement caused a decrease in the number of system administrators or would you look at this as progression in the field? Should we look at the fact that system administrators no longer have to use "useradd" at a shell prompt but can use GUIs on UNIX systems and can now be administered with less skill as a reason to unionize to keep the administrators making the same pay? As a position becomes easier to fill, pay rates go down since the pool of available skilled candidates grows. Unless the position is so undesirable (septic tank cleaner probably isn't a "hot" position people are looking to work in), progression will cause it to be easier to fill.
"Why should skilled IT pull the same pay a non-skilled day laborer makes?"
Are non-skilled positions artificially kept to a level because of minimum wage laws? While I enjoy my salary, I certainly don't expect it to be artificially high. I'll continue to work hard and develop new skills to make sure I stand out compared to the majority of the field.
Oh, do you consider the work of a farm laborer to be any less work than that of an IT employee? Is physical labor any less than IT labor or does IT just pay better because it generally requires a skill that many people don't learn?
I am reminded of a comic that a co-worker had hanging in their office years ago..."Innovate or Die", with a dinosaur in the picture.
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a very insightful response. I was about to say Hell yes, until I read your post. Now, I am thinking that unionization may be bad, but something should be done. I am actually in a company where we rotate the on-call, so I am oncall about one week every two months, I get paid for my overtime, and the position is one that it is cheaper to hire someone on instead of outsource. The only time we outsource is if we have a project that needs to be done, and we bring someone in for a few weeks.
However, this is just in our group. I look at the other groups in our IT department, see people having to work 12-18 hour days, no overtime, no comptime. One of our poor people finally went to the head of HR after her boss told her that not only was she not allowed comp time, but she was not allowed vacation. HR told her that they were going to go ahead and give her two weeks of comp time and then she still had her vacation which she could take at any time, and they had a talk with her manager. I applied for several jobs that I lost, because I said I want the On-call to be the exception, not the norm. I have worked at companies where they expect me to work weekends and work until 2 and 3 in the morning, not pay overtime, and still expect you to be at your desk at 8 the next morning. The conditions for IT workers are similar to those of factory workers at the turn of the 19th century. Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but there are times I had to crawl through ceilings and floors in cramped, filthy areas to run cables, then be expected to run into the board meeting a few mintues later to fix a projector, and get stared down upon because I look like I just crawled out of the dumpster. Then they decide they want to outsource the think to some other company who hires the crazy war-vets and the high-school kids, want you to come in once every few months as a consultant, and wonder why most workers hate their IT department.
No, something needs to be done, but I agree, unionization is probably not the answer. Shoot, when I was in college, my COBOL professor was in his 80s, and had never used a PC. We had to put Linux on it and have it boot up in terminal mode before he was halfway comfortable in front of it. If we were unionized and he was still in the IT field, he would have seniority, despite the fact that he has never seen a mac or windows in his life, and does not know the difference between a USB thumbdrive and a printer driver.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Unions don't make any industry more efficient, and that loss of efficiency can mean the difference between a successful company and an unsuccessful company.
Gonna burn some karma here...
In fairness, efficiency is not the goal of unions. The theory is that the collective bargaining means the workers can get a better deal for themselves, because they're in a stronger negotiating position as a group than any of them is individually. Of course the company will be less efficient.
Protecting people is always inefficient. The leading example in this topic was about electrical codes, and I think it was interesting that the virtue of electrical codes was assumed in that discussion right alongside the demonization of unions.
But if we really value efficiency, shouldn't we dispense with electrical codes? Real electrical experts will use their knowledge to wire things safely, and people who do dangerous work will be weeded out by their bad reputation, and everything will work better and cost less, right?
Enforcing electrical codes compromises efficiency in the name of safety, so people's lives are protected.
Collective bargaining asks for a similar trade-off, compromising efficiency in order to better protect worker's livelihoods and worker investments in their careers.
That isn't to say that an IT union is necessarily a good idea or a bad idea. I'm just trying to get across the radical idea that "it reduces efficiency", concentrating on the cost and ignoring the benefit, isn't a compelling, or even sufficient, argument.
Re:Of course not (Score:3, Insightful)
so... Will you say the same a few years from now when you are making only 60% of what you make today for the same job? Open your eyes... IT salaries do NOT follow inflation anymore, but have steadily been decreasing since 2001. In 2001, the job you now have paid almost twice as much. I can't believe this makes you happy. When an entire industry loses its market value, switching jobs only makes things worse for you (each jump will start you again at the new, even lower bottom with an ever decending glass ceiling).
Re:Well, you are wrong in so many ways. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to make real change and not remain insignificant, you need to be HEAD of a group that has influence. Otherwise, you're just working your tail off making someone else's changes.
so corporations = fascism then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Given that the whole point of a union is to create a monopoly on one form of labour
No, the point of unions is to give workers a modicum of power in negotiations, as opposed to having to take asinine demands from management, and liking it.
Re:Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are working 60 hour weeks for 40 hours pay because you are spineless.
I had a programming job that was paid hourly wages. Then I was "promoted" to a salaried position. It was explained that this meant no over-time. If I worked a 40 hour week it was a raise in pay. So I stopped working over-time. I came in at 9, left at 5. My manager asked me to stay late once, and I said what would my compensation be? He kind of looked puzzled and I went home. I worked a free hour of OT here and there when milestones where behind, but not every day. I was the only guy there not working for free everyday.
It is not my problem if management doesn't know how to run a project. And I don't work for free.
Re:Well, you are wrong in so many ways. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's exactly the situation that unions balance out.
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
The only things in a code which the electrical engineer wouldn't be able to work out are things put there arbitrarily by state officials.
Well, sounds like it all comes down to whether or not there was a permit involved. While there are a lot of BS rules out there, Underwriters Laboratories does a lot to ensure that peoples homes are safely protected against scams that can put you or your family at risk? If you had some massive server in your house, you may buy the cheaper UPS, but there is no way in hell you would buy a non-UL approved UPS. Further, recent article talking about California copyrighting its laws, it is because many times they come from standards boards whose jobs are to know what is safe and what is not. That has nothing to do with unions.
More to the point, say the engineer does a decent job, but doesn't get the permit, and decides to do it a "better way" than what the code says is right. They sell the house, and you buy it. Well, it turns out that there was a reason you weren't supposed to do it the "better way". Some accident causes unlikely circumstances that causes the electrical to burn the house down. While there may always be a risk of that in some way when it is to code, doesn't fix things when Fire Department writes it off as "Illegal Electrical Wiring" to which your insurance company responds "Illegal = not covered by policy". Oops.
However, the codes are not difficult to follow, and it keeps insurance rates down when they don't have to be liable for damage caused by illegal / dangerous work. Now, if your friend the 20 year electrical engineer is willing to do it right with the paper work and everything, not to mention allow some shit-brain building inspector criticize off his work, go for it.
Do we really need a new lot of self-important busybodies to protect us from another?
Unfortunately, we do, to an extent. The problems we face today is the influence of money within that process. Let me just say that Snake Oil products have gotten a lot more attention since Electricity was introduced. Underwriter Laboratories aren't a bad bunch. They do good, solid scientific work, then sell it to the government to make it the law. Sounds like a pretty decent process to me, even if it can seem to move slow at times when you want to do everything "your way".
Re:Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I deal with this shit every day. "Oh that's not my job. Get the pipe fitter." I deal with test cells running engines. Mechanics can't touch pipe fitters stuff and vice versa. Test cell operators can't touch anything. As an engineer I can't touch a single thing either.
This is how a Unionized IT would go:
You start your first day at your new job. You call to get a computer.
"Sorry, I can't actually deliver your computer. We need the IT movers to move it to your desk."
It's moved to your desk. But you, nor the movers can't plug it in (see parent). So you wait 30 more minutes for the Plugger Inner Union. (It was lunch, by the clock 11:30-12:00, no exceptions.)
So you have your fancy new computer. You turn it on. You need Office. Sorry, but the Office Installer Union is actually backed up. The Matlab Installer Union could do it, but they're not "officially trained" nor do they have the certification.
You wait another day to get Office... you're up and running. Then your NIC craps out. You call the help desk union and they send the NIC repair union. NIC repair union says that it's a software problem. Windows XP Software union rep says it's hardware.
Cycle repeats for 2 days. You say "fuck it". So you fix it yourself. A NIC rep sees you do this and writes a grievance against you. He now gets paid to do the install even though he did nothing. Your boss bitches at you not to touch anything because too many grievances and you're in trouble.
Re:Of course not (Score:2, Insightful)
Regardless of how you feel about unions, you cannot get away from the fact that there is a huge disparity in power when employees and employers negotiate. Collective bargaining should be the only way to do it. I also understand (from various USanian friends) that the average american IT worker actually takes pride in being slave-like, mistaking their stupidity (in working more for less) as ambition ("getting ahead"). Collective bargaining makes things better for everyone, not just a select few.
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
You misunderstood me.
The labour market behaves like employers have monopsony power. You don't need a specific monopsony employer.
You make a good point with your last paragraph, unions can become monopsonies. That's an excellent argument for regulating unions just like we do companies. It isn't a good argument for an individual not to join a union in the short term.
Re:Hell no. (Score:4, Insightful)
My father was in aerospace for the better part of 20 years, working for McDonnell-Douglas and then Boeing, and he complained about these same things. People that had others clock in for them so they wouldn't be found to be late (not that those that were ever got punished to any great extent), the same raises for people who had to redo their work two and three times on a regular basis, and a huge level of nepotism were but a few of the problems that he had. Things got better when he was transferred to the KC-10 and C-17 lines, as union credentials meant far less there than the ability to get it done right the first time, but he still had to deal with the other union issues.
Some unions do good things. Others just are full of themselves. Considering the egos present in IT, I fully expect that an IT union would be very much the latter.
WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Anti-union Union (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hell no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think he's joking?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3205166
Basically, the plumbers union has to "approve" flushless urinals for them to become legal, but they're against them due to them requiring less work to install (nevermind the tremendous water savings).
Re:Hell no. (Score:1, Insightful)
Haha!
You don't have a clue how H1-B's are abused to drive down the cost of labor by employers. Having run the scam in the past I can tell you it is _very_ popular.
Re:Of course not (Score:2, Insightful)
But don't you find it odd when a company, be it publicly traded or privately owned, has the work force tell it how much profit they can make
Don't you find it odd that the productivity of American workers keeps rising, yet their wages have stagnated? Don't you find it odd that virtually all the economic gains of recent years has gone straight to the top? Don't you find it odd that you have to compete with workers in India or Bangladesh making a fraction of your salary, but you never hear about top executives being replaced with cheap MBA's from Delhi?
and are willing to kill said company thus eliminating their job in the process?
You mean like the airline unions that accepted massive cuts to save jobs only to have the company use some of the savings to give their top executives big bonuses or golden parachutes in the case of bankruptcy?
On paper Unions would be a great way to ensure that workers are treated fairly for the amount of work they do. However, being run by humans, the nature of greed comes into play.
It's about balance - having worker self-interest to counteract executive self-interest. Remove the former and all you have is the latter.
Re:Hell no. (Score:2, Insightful)
Having experienced the *exact* same thing, how would you feel about the power going out at your booth during the show? How about a fire during the show? The show producer certainly won't give you any money back because it wasn't their fault.
You will also note the conspicuous absence of a thriving local industry for really large convention halls.
And then they get sued by some show participant because they crushed their own foot with the convention hall's pallet jack. It's easy to call out unions with that anecdote, but there are many reasons for the stupidity, little of it having to do with the union.
Re:Of course (Score:3, Insightful)
And if we don't like outsourcing we can stop it with strikes. It'll work because they can't stop the company from functioning this year just to save money for next year.
Please do strike! That means a nice bonus for me when I VPN in to fix your union-addled messes. All the scab benefits, but without having to cross a picket line. Let's get started!
Re:Hell no. (Score:2, Insightful)
A company is (generally) free to fire union members who strike and replace them with others.
I'm not aware of any U.S. state where this is broadly the case. Generally, companies have to negotiate with unions, and there's a whole process (time-consuming, expensive) that needs to be gone through before a company can effectively tell the union to get lost.
I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with unions if they weren't entrenched by legislation; if they existed purely as part of the labor market, they'd be fine. Workers ought to be able to band together and bargain collectively, if they want to and believe that it'll get them a better deal as individuals. But companies also ought to be able to fire them all and re-hire people off of the street. Unfortunately that's not how it works in most cases.
The reason I'd like to see union-protecting legislation eliminated isn't because I hate unions on principle, it's because I hate what unions become when they're protected artificially like that: rather than existing for the good of all workers, or all workers in a particular industry or with a particular skillset, they become nothing more than an extortion scheme for a small number of members, at the direct expense of other workers with similar skills who are kept out of jobs.
If unions weren't protected by legislation, in order to bargain effectively (and not just be told to get lost by employers), they would need to recruit a large percentage of available works in a market segment. It wouldn't be enough to just let people currently holding a job into the union, you'd need to also let all the people who are potential employees into the union. You wouldn't be able to use the union as a way of disempowering otherwise employable people, at least not in large numbers, which is exactly what they do now.
Sorry that's not unions. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's greedy employers and a congress who refuses to protect the domestic job market.
Re:Hell yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
$12hr PT IT job where a CS degree is required for consideration
When there are CS grads willing to work for $12/hr PT, that's what their skills are going to be worth. I mean, do you seriously think that someone with a CS degree shouldn't be allowed to work for $12/hr, if that's what they want to do, or need to do in order to get a job?
Replace "CS grad" for a minute with "English major". We've all heard the stories about kids graduating with English (or Anthropology, or Sociology, or any number of other 'useless' majors) degrees and having to work at Pizza Hut, or working as filing assistants in some dank basement somewhere. It's understood that they're going to end up working for peanuts, because there are too damn many of them competing for too few really good jobs. So a few rockstars get the cool jobs in their fields, while the rest do scut work and dream of grad school. That's kind of what you get for majoring in a field that there's very little demand for.
There's nothing any different about CS: sure, it's a technical field rather than a liberal arts one, but it's not immune to saturation, either. There's nothing about CS, or Engineering, or Physics (or anything else) that's supposed to automatically mean that you get a job after graduation. Universities have been turning out low-quality CS grads for years, and that's taken its toll on the market.
That said, there's still a huge demand for really good CS people (and really good engineers, etc.); if you're working one of the $12/hr jobs, either you're selling yourself short, or you're really not that good.
There is no magic solution to this. A lot of CS people got the idea in their heads back during the 90s that having IT skills should and would automatically guarantee anyone a decent job for the rest of their life, even if they don't work hard to stay on top of their game. That's just not true and there's no reason why it ought to be true. The late 90s tech boom was a fluke; it was the exception, not the rule. Now the supply -- colleges and people going into college and picking majors -- has caught up with demand, and IT is like anything else: you can make a lot of money if you're very good, you can probably scrape along if you're only better-than-average, and you can starve or find something else to do if you're untalented.
There's nothing to 'fix' there, because that's not a problem. IT is not gnosticism; it's not some secret priesthood. If lots of people want to try their hand at it, they shouldn't be prevented from doing that. Just because someone got to the party earlier, or happened to be born earlier, doesn't mean they should be able to keep someone more talented than they out of the field -- and that's exactly the effect that protectionist laws or union rules would have.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hell no. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd disagree a little about your comment on engineers being horrified at the amount of imprecision going on in software.
True software engineers, on truly critical systems (think avionics, medical etc) put a lot of precision and calculation into the designs and testing, and are every bit as rigorous as a chemical, civil, mechanical or electronic engineering project.
Many more of the people with CS degrees out there in the big wide world or work are also fully capable of putting that kind of rigor into a project.
What just isn't happening though is management seeing that this needs to happen. All the other branches of engineering have some big edifice, or contraption that stands in front of someone, looking shiny, and people think "I can see where that money went!"..
With software (in general), all people see is a set of forms, a word processor.. Some pretty graphics.. And to most, it's simple.. Magic.. You wave a wand, and there it is. After all, how difficult can it be to make a button appear on a screen and do the right thing (they had VB to play with, and it's so hard to explain that VB is to Software Engineering what Lego is to Civil Engineering to a management type)?
At the moment, there's far too much acceptance at the consumer level of bad software.. After all, it can be spun by the company as 'features' and denied (as usual). People tend to be far more accepting of dodgy software than they are of poorly made bridges.
The "pro" to this is that there is a plethora of software, weird, wacky and wonderful. When IT "grows up", there will probably be far less of this idiosyncratic stuff, and most things will be shiny virtual edifices that people look at and go "ooo.. Now we see where the money went!".
Re:Well, you are wrong in so many ways. (Score:3, Insightful)
What I do want is a bunch of senior people telling the company management exactly how long my shift should be, exactly when it starts and ends, exactly how much overtime I get for which extra days and hours.
I don't why this can't be individually negotiated between you and your management. If you don't like the working conditions, find a new job. I *don't* want senior people who think they know everything feeling like they can bully whomever into fitting into whatever ideal they believe in.
You know what the Teamsters still have that IT workers at Enron didn't? Guess. I'll make it easy for you. The answer is a secure retirement.
I've already stated my opinion on businesses having to support retirees. Pensions or retirement accounts can be nice, but they are hardly rights. You should trust only one person in this life, and I think you know who that is. Forcing a company to financially support an evergrowing population of retirees is a losers bet at best. Look at GM.
How do you explain all the IT offshoring that already happened? The overwhelming presence of the union? What drove all those call centers offshore? It wasn't the union.
The free market has placed work offshore, and having Unions or anything else artificially keep those jobs "local" would just mess things up more. I've actually been directly impacted by jobs moving across the globe, but I believe that the market will even things out - I truly believe that the foreign development going on now is lesser quality than an in-house IT staff, and in 5-10 years businesses here will realize there is nobody within 1000 miles that has any idea how their stuff works. And the people that did have some sort of idea are long gone (turnover, anyone?). We can offer incentives to keep work locally, but if you're good at what you do, you'll find work.
Here's a list of people doing well in unions... Cops Teachers Truck Drivers Carpenters Plumbers Actors Screenwriters
Every one of those professions keeps people around who are not good at their jobs, and the only "benefit" they have is they have managed to stay around long enough to be part of the system. There are tons of bad teachers and profs with tenure, bad cops who can't be fired, and don't even get me started on actors and screenwriters unions. Oooooo you have it so tough, providing entertainment for money!
Here's one more thing an IT union would be able to do. It could help define best practices. As in "Nope, that software is not union-spec. If you want our guys to use it you're going to have to pay for their training." Then the union membership (IT workers) would have some say over whether or not non-standard or poorly written software gets union support. As union members we would be protected from having the blame on us for every piece-o-shit software.
What company blames it's employees and crappy software that those employees didn't create? Any good company will listen to its employees, get feedback, and implement as such. Communication, ever heard of it?
I think unions did have their place - they can be used for workers to join together and have some leverage to take to management. Better pay and non-hazardous work conditions are indeed noble points. But I think the bulk of that work has been done and they have lost their relevance for the most part.
Working long hours and overtime at a tech job is hardly harsh working conditions, and the beauty of it is that you are free to find ANOTHER job elsewhere where you are more appreciated (and usually better pay!). Too often these days it seems unions aren't doing good, but instead are guaranteeing that unqualified employees continue to work, taking money from both employees and the company.
Re:Protected from Competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Easily fixed by going to a "loser pays" court system.