The solution is to unionize. I really don't understand why we don't have an IT union, especially for network ops and engineering - it's a very logical aspect of the industry to standardize and unionize.
- We all believe we're above average in our field, and unions would hold us back.
- We all know people who have skated by on incompetence, and wouldn't want a union to protect their jobs.
- Our field moves quickly, and we don't want a union that would hamper our ability to make quick moves.
- Union is a dirty word, especially when the mind disease of libertarianism is more prevalent among tech workers.
I think the easier way to solve this is for IT/computer workers to stop being paid salaries, and get paid hourly. If it weren't for a special exemption from congress that was passed in the 90s, we would be paid hourly as a matter of law. I know I've been treated MUCH better since I switched to consulting.
Employers value your time when they have to pay for those extra 2 hours of meetings each day, when they have you work a Saturday, or stay a couple hours late to push to the finish line. In addition, things like software efficiency upgrades where I can show 10 hour savings for 3 hours of cost are suddenly on the table, where on a salary you're not a "team player" if don't just put in the extra hours for free to save the company some bucks.
This has been my experience as well. My time was considered more valuable, people respected my input and expertise more, I was treated with more courtesy. The works.
Maybe I was just better at picking my work when I was a consultant. Hard to tell.
These customers seemed to be valuing my time by how much they paid for it.
Say what you will about unions, but they do exist for a reason.
On the other hand, I wouldn't recommend working for IBM at all; there are reasons my resume reads like a list of major software project disasters of the '90's and it has a suspicious dearth of shipping products.
Unions further complicate the relationship between employer and employee. It created "us vs. them" in every single implementation of unions. In the traditional 'Employee Relations' model, you could at least find a handful of good employers that value people. Not so the case in unionized environments. Employers' hands are forced to treat every employee as equal; the amazing, the good and the horrible all get the same treatment.
You don't like working conditions in the company - leave. You don't like conditions in your industry - switch specialty, go elsewhere. Too lazy to switch or too gifted to leave? Well, sure, OK, let's instead arm-twist and blackmail employer.
Given, there are circumstances when you can't leave or switch. Say, if you are a miner in a small mining town. One employer, one skill set, no possibility of re-training. But unions are essentially an artifact of the 19th century.
Edit: upon reflection my original comment left a lot on the floor so I'm circling back to pick some of it up.
Here's what a "typical" union experience looks like:
The union hall staffs individuals that find work for you. The bulk of back-office paperwork and other hassles (including wage negotiation) are handled on your behalf by the hall. When you first hire on it's typically as a pre-apprentice (no prior experience) or apprentice (some applicable experience to the trade). OJT and training/certification materials are provided for you.
Your coworkers are trained, experienced craftsmen. All applicable safety guidelines are rigidly enforced. From day 1 you are presented with the kind of benefits package that is no longer available to your average worker. In addition to credible health insurance this includes pension, annuity, on the job training and certification, and death benefits. In addition to your wage you are guaranteed additional compensation for overtime and hazardous work.
By way of comparison, working in the trades for a non-union shop is at best a crapshoot. There's no guarantee SS and other taxes are being taken out correctly or at all. I've known several subcontractors who've gotten royally screwed by the IRS come tax time when they found out that they (unexpectedly) owed thousands in taxes. Safety guidelines are routinely ignored, it's nothing to get shorted on your paycheck (or go weeks without pay), benefits are typically non-existent, no guarantees of overtime, and you're working sink or swim with whoever the boss could scrape together to form a crew, typically for less money than you'd make in a union shop and that's after dues. General contractors also tend to maintain a good-ol-boy network, so you go rocking the boat about substandard pay or unsafe working conditions and it's a very real possibility that you could find yourself blackballed in your area.
TL;DR: Union: guaranteed pay, safe working conditions, training provided for career advancement, benefits, retirement plan. Non-union: good luck, buddy.
Full disclosure: I worked in the trades (both union and non-union) for several years before changing career tracks to become a programmer. I do not regret my time with the Union and would go back in a heartbeat if for some reason coding was no longer a viable career option.
Union:
- Everyone is complacent with work, majority of time is spent faking work or finding ways out of work (pay raises are not tied to performance)
- Net pay below average for industry (Below 50th percentile)
- Under-skilled workers protected by the union from being let go.
- Successes & Failures of the company are shared amongst the entire employee base. As a result there is no motivating drive to work harder to push better products out faster because there is no direct feedback resulting from it
- Training is provided on a seniority basis
Non-Union:
- Identical benefits (or at the very least negotiable) but higher base wage
- Skilled workers who are hired based off of recommendation of trusted employees exclusively
- Strong motivating factor to produce more deliverable work as it is a direct correlation to the business's success and therefore yours (profit sharing)
- Pay raise is tied to performance
- Training provided on an as needed basis -> The new guy might get training before the 10 year vet because he/she is the one going to be working with that particular skill set in the short time frame
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Shared amongst those is equal work/life balance and safety. Labour laws have protected the workforce from shady practices you experienced (arguably an isolated incident). I'm thankful for what unions of the last few centuries have brought for us, but speaking in the majority of cases I've heard of, (anecdotal: take it as you will) they are now power hungry bodies that are corroding industry from the inside out.
One thing I can address is this:
" Labour laws have protected the workforce from shady practices you experienced (arguably an isolated incident)"
In manufacturing and trades (especially trades) this isn't even slightly accurate. Laws don't protect people, they provide a theoretical framework for compensation or punitive action after the fact. In practice a private citizen has almost no chance against a corporate lawyer in court, so it's almost impossible to prove workplace safety violations. On the rare ocassion that something does stick in court companies caught violating worker safety laws typically get a slap on the wrist, meanwhile whistleblowers better have a spare career up their sleeves or line up a settlement big enough to retire on because they won't be working for any outfits in their industry once they pull the trigger on a court case. Good luck proving the last company you interviewed you didn't hire you because you blew the whistle on your last employer. :/
The unions discussed in this conversation are collective bargaining units that negotiate employment agreements with a single employer, and such negotiations are often huge, nasty, and difficult. I went through such a dispute with a telecom, and everyone not unionized had to work as a scab (doing the job of those who were unionized and not working). The union people would picket outside our building and insult us when we went for lunch, and we pulled 80 hour days to do their work (with fortunately amazing OT pay, and I was part of a team in charge of trying to automate everything in sight). But it was a nasty dispute.
The current NHL lockout that's happening is another similar union dispute, though you obviously don't see NHL players picketing NHL headquarters. :)
Unions are a way to redress the imbalance. Think of union membership as a mutual defence agreement.
You shouldn't evaluate the worthiness of unions based on the average HN situation of a young professional with relatively little debts/commitments working in a specialised and in-demand field.
What I do find outrageous is the way certain unions start getting heavily involved in politics. They should stick to protecting employees from abusive action by specific companies.
Which union do you think has more power: The AMA or a union for miners? In one, the employees are scarce, limited, and irreplaceable. In the other, the employees are numerous, easy to train, and very replaceable. Why would you try to justify a union for one and not the other when it's clear that there's no value in dealing with a mining union - it's cheaper to just bring in new employees.
On the other hand, tech workers aren't in a commonly harmful, let-alone fatal, profession and we enjoy pretty good mobility. We don't need unions half as much as we need to take a principled stand and vote with our feet.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/05/148930/top-five...
Thank you.
The main role of a union is to provide for collective bargaining agreements.
The unions for teachers exist because teachers are (wrongly IMHO) considered by their employer to be in the parents poster's category. If teachers weren't considered a commodity I think they would have less need for unions.
And professional athletes unions are usually restrained to sports where the employers are a cartel (or even a single entity). The cartel phenomenon is similar in the case of actors.
Interesting point about the employer cartel, since the SV Tech Giants (Google, Apple, etc.) were outed as colluding to keep salaries down and not poach employees from one another earlier this year. Maybe that is a starting point for grounds to consider unionizing? Maybe?
"Having a union that endorses members" doesn't lead directly to the creation of "a professional body that is superior to non-unioned workers". IT/IS workers are usually considered "superior" (and thus more marketable) based on the degree of their knowledge and the effectiveness of their problem solving skills, to which membership in a collective bargaining society adds neither.
Perhaps rather than forcing people to join, you want to force employers to exclude non-members? So that rather than being "under management's thumb" I can be under the "union's protection"?
As I've asserted, information workers are valued for their knowledge and problem solving skills, so unless this hypothetical union were going to certify people as having certain knowledge and problem solving skills and include/exclude members based on that certification (or give them a grading level), it will be meaningless as a value indicator to any employer. If I think the level they give me is too low, I won't be likely to stay associated with them. If employers think they rate people too high, they'll avoid them also.
If the "professional" union is just a middleman, I'd prefer not to have it, and I'm fairly certain sure employers wouldn't either.
Of course, professional bodies (outside of trade organizations) exist like this, but they are called consulting companies.