[Discuss] [OT]Discuss - Software Engineering union

[markw at mohawksoft.com (Mark Woodward)]

I think, in our society, business has been bashing unions for decades 
and their message has taken hold. Yes, I grant you there are many 
examples of absurdity where the unions aren't helping themselves. On the 
whole, however, the amount of good that unions do far outweigh the few 
Monty pythonesque moments.

The IT industry is fairly well paid slave labor. I mean, working on 
week-ends, no-notice late nights, vacations that have to be canceled 
because of sudden problems. All without any compensation. When was the 
last time you REALLY worked 40 hours. Right? Probably never. It is so 
ingrained in the industry no one even thinks these things are out of the 
ordinary. Just about EVERY other profession, professional or labor, 
would not stand for this. Ask a lawyer, doctor, plumber, or electrician 
to work an extra day and late nights for free, see what happens.

Then there is the "intellectual property" issue with copyright and 
patents. Not only do we put in the late hours and extra days, even 
working at home, without pay, we end up with no ownership of our work.

The treatment of IT people is pretty terrible as well.

I worked at "Business and Professional Software" on Binney Street, and 
the owner, David Solomont, had a whole team working extra hours to 
finish up a product for release. When it was done, he laid off the whole 
team, except for the architect.

I worked at "Sytron" corporation, they went on a hiring spree. I'm not 
sure of the reason, I think it was a business strategy thing, but they 
decided they hired in error. So, people on their starting day were told 
they had no job. People left jobs to come there, were now unemployed and 
technically never worked at the new company.

At "TPS" in Cambridge, it was a contract house  that had Microsoft as a 
client. Microsoft kept making changes and the work load kept building. 
No problem right? Microsoft paid for the hourly work just fine, but TPS 
didn't hire any more people or pay for the extra time put in. I got so 
burnt out from that gig, I think it helped end my first marriage.

I think we need a union. Looking back on all the crap that I've seen, I 
hate to think of new people going into this industry without protection.

On 04/18/2012 03:42 PM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> Let me add my $0.02.  (Yes it is a bit off topic, but still of interest
> to IT folks. )
> I have dealt with unions from the standpoint where I was in a shop where
> one could not even move a monitor from one side of a cube to another. I
> was also a union member when I worked for the IRS.
>
> Ideally unions should represent labor in a general sense. But... there
> are some issues:
> First, unions are organizations and the union's goals may not coincide
> with the goals of its membership.
> Secondly, unions get into some nasty interjurisdictional disputes.
> Thirdly, work rules are set up that tend to prevent real work from being
> done, although that is not the intent. One laughable thing was in
> mainframe days where the computer operator would not allow the
> programmer to type in the commands to debug his program.
>
> The bottom line, IMHO, that some companies deserve to be unionized
> because they do not treat their employees well, but software engineers
> and other computer programmers are creative and that does not work well
> with a union environment.
>
>
>
>
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