BBLISA: Re: Overqualified?!?!

Jerry Feldman gaf at blu.org
Fri Jul 19 08:29:30 EDT 2002 

Lawyers do have a union. I mentioned that the public defenders in New York 
are unionized. 
There are certain professions which do not lend themselves to unions. 
Additionally, our labor laws today provide significantly more protection. 

I think that unions in IT is a bad thing for many reasons. First, I 
mentioned work rules. Work rules exist in many environments for safety. But 
they also exist to define the demarcation zone. So, the job of system 
administrator must be defined in the contract. A person who is not a system 
admin (union employee or not) may not violate that boundary. Many system 
admins do programming of some sorts, such as scripts. Now assume that the 
entire IT department is unionized. Programmers do programming, system 
admins to admin. An admin needs to fix a shell script, he/she then calls a 
programmer to do it. Then, in the example in my department where the 
software engineers in our group provide our own system admin work. We 
install software, we may install hardware, etc. The admins generally 
provide us assistance, but mostly work on the systems in the labs. But, 
other than the production systems in the lab, we software people make major 
changes. On my project for the past two years, we had a private network, 
isolated from the company net. The admins were generally not involved with 
those systems. If we were a union shop, we would have considerable 
difficulty. 

In closing, in some industries in the US, IT people are unionized. I recall 
years ago that at a unionized company in the midwest, the existing office 
workers union petitioned to include the programmers (I think the admins 
were unionized, but I don't recall). The programmers voted nearly 
unanimously not to unionize, but the union won because, while the company 
classified the programmers as managers, the union contended that they do 
not perform managerial work. 

The bottom line may be that in some companies, IT people will become 
unionized, but probably not extensively. 
On 18 Jul 2002 at 17:24, Dean Anderson wrote:

> Why don't lawyers have a union?  They are frequently involved in creating
> unions. If unions are so good, why don't they unionize?
> 
> I think the answer is highly variable rates, and highly variable skills.  
> And crossover between specialists and generalists.
> 
> The certification issue is related. Certification is an attempt at
> standardizing the IT worker.  If the worker could be standardized, or even
> measured adequately, like a baseball player, then unionization could work.
> 
> There were attempts to unionize farmers, too. Farmers are (hugely)
> exploited workers, but there is too much variability. They are too
> independent to unionize.  IT people are similar.
> 
> IT will either end up like lawyers (most everyone is rich) or like
> farmers, in which most everyone is poor.  I'm not sure how to make sure we
> are more like lawyers, than like farmers.
> 
> Lawyers have the ability to withstand lulls, and do other things to keep
> busy. For example, one of my clients (an Insurance Company) was telling me
> that Insurance companies are losing money because people try to get
> injured (can't be laid off while on workmens comp leave) when the economy
> slows. The lawyers who do home closings when the economy is good, do
> things like insurance claims when home closings are slow.  So, when the
> economy slows, the lawyers (who wouldn't have time to take a workmens comp
> case because they are busy with other things when the economy is good) now
> have time to litigate these things.
> 
> Farmers don't have this capability. If you don't sell the cattle, you
> don't have room to raise more, and you have to keep feeding them. If you
> don't sell the grain, it rots.  You have to keep selling. If the price
> drops, you lose. There is nothing you can do, but hope it doesn't last too
> long.  The markup from Farm to Supermarket is about 1000 percent. The
> farmer is at the mercy of the food chain. pun intended.
> 
> IT people need work work on skills to get them through lulls. I do
> consulting, and programming work, for example.  Like lawyers,
> people-networking skills are important.  The BOFH won't get hired by the
> users who just started a new company.
> 
> When companies lay off IT staff, they generally need to hire back
> consultants shortly.  When regular employees are laid off, they tend to
> start companies. I've heard there are some 20,000 garage companies in
> Boston right now.  A lot of these won't succeed either. But the ones that
> do will need some amount of consulting service, too. They'll be hiring
> sometime soon.
> 
> My consulting clock indicates that the next few years are going to be good
> for IT consulting.  I'm looking forward to them :-)
> 
> 		--Dean
> 
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for posting this Arthur. I do agree that there are many unions for 
> > professionals where the members themselves act professionally, and the 
> > union establishes a good working relationship with management. 
> > However, there are a couple of problems with unions in IT (note that I am a 
> > software engineer, not a system administrator). 
> > The first is that every union is an organization and generally exhibits 
> > organizational behavior. (This usually translates into lower worker 
> > productivity, more workers).
> > The second is work rules. Work rules are necessary for a lot of very good 
> > reasons. For one, they define the scope of the bargaining unit. Another, 
> > they define safety practices. The problem is that they also tend to 
> > eliminate flexibility. For example, in my department we have a small system 
> > admin group who manages most of the lab computers, and they help us out 
> > with the desktop systems. But we engineers are expected to manage our own 
> > systems. There are also systems in the lab that some of the engineers 
> > either maintain or reconfigure. If the company unionized the IT people, it 
> > could make it difficult to do our jobs, because of the overlap of function. 
> > 
> > In the extreme example is a bus company:
> > To work on an engine, a sheet metal guy is needed to open the skins, and 
> > electricion to disconnect the electrical stuff, and the mechanic to work on 
> > the engine. Another is a jet aircraft where the union requires a flight 
> > engineer. In my experience (as a military pilot) the only aircraft that 
> > actually needed a flight engineer was the Lockheed Super Constellation. 
> > Back in the 60s and 70s this was a big fight with the newer, smaller jets 
> > coming out at the time.  
> > 
> > On 18 Jul 2002 at 15:18, Arthur Gaer wrote:
> > 
> > > I happen to strongly agree with rek2's comment.
> > > 
> > > Although many in the IT field seem resistant, there are many unions in the
> > > US (let alone other countries) where the members are professional,
> > > creative, and autonomous, while enjoying advantages such as job security,
> > > high pay, and lack of workplace exploitation they gain from well reasoned,
> > > well written, and collectively negotiated contracts.  See, for example,
> > > the newspaper guild, the directors guild, and the various university
> > > faculty unions.
> > > 
> > > This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, though I've
> > > seen little organizational or political movement in this direction.  Given
> > > the current state of employment in the IT industry, perhaps now would be a
> > > good time to start.
> > > 
> > > Arthur Gaer
> > > gaer at math.harvard.edu
> > > 
> > > Senior Systems Manager, Department of Mathematics
> > > Harvard University, 617-495-1610, FAX: 617-495-5132
> > > 
> > > On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, rek2 wrote:
> > > 
> > > > What IT needs is a Union ;-)
> > > > I'm serious.
> > > > rek2
> > > >
> > > > On Thursday 18 July 2002 13:13, johnmalloy at attbi.com wrote:
> > > > > This is an issue that is affecting many hunfreds of
> > > > > thousands IT folks.
> > > > >
> > > > > However, unless we work together on this (with a single
> > > > > voice), we will never get even close to what we had 2
> > > > > yeasr ago.
> > > > >
> > > > > The user group community can play a role.
> > > > >
> > > > > One part of this huge dillemma is the H1-B visa issue.
> > > > >
> > > > > Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ---
> > > > Send mail for the `bblisa' mailing list to `bblisa at bblisa.org'.
> > > > Mail administrative requests to `majordomo at bblisa.org'.
> > > >
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Discuss mailing list
> > > Discuss at blu.org
> > > http://www.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
> > Associate Director
> > Boston Linux and Unix user group
> > http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
> > PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
> > 
> > 
> > ---
> > Send mail for the `bblisa' mailing list to `bblisa at bblisa.org'.
> > Mail administrative requests to `majordomo at bblisa.org'.
> > 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at blu.org
> http://www.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss


--
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

More information about the Discuss mailing list