Cyberunions Forums

I think unions don't really get the tech sector. They also don't understand the politics of cyberspace, which is why they tend to outsource to the vendors that they have heard of. Also, I suspect they assume the tools the bosses are using are the best ones, so go for them as well.

Unite is potentially the best union for tech workers, but it would take a group of committed people to get a branch off the ground.

We talked about this a bit in the IRC room, but I want to expand the conversation as mv keeps telling me to :D

I see a few challenges to organizing tech workers (in the U.S. at least):

1.) Access to the workplace - in a highly skilled workforce, if it doesn't self-organize, it is hard to get into the shop to organize. Perhaps this is muted a bit because of social networking, free-software communities, bulletin boards like this. However, most organizers I know are not going to organize in public as it is very risky for the worker.

2.) Freelancing - With a large number of freelancers, it would seem that a cooperative or collective would be a better option (depending on the union model) for a lot of tech workers. Again, this would be a self-organized sort of thing.

3.) Small workplaces - many offices have a small IT staff where the line between management and worker is blurred. The smaller the workplace, the more difficult it is to organize as it's harder to keep it underground before majority support can be built.

I'm not sure how organizing a big tech company like Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Google, etc. would look like. I think access would still be difficult to get. However, building class concsiousness among tech workers is something we're working on, so maybe that becomes less of a problem in the future.

mjray - I'd be interested in hearing a bit about the history of how your tech coop was formed. I think the lessons of a group of workers that is already organized and practices workplace democracy could give some insights into what non-organized tech workers might need to do to gain that power themselves.

@Mjray in the US there are essentially two unions that have attempted to organize tech workers, the UE as mentioned in the article by David Bacon and the CWA both with limited success. I think we mentioned the WashTech, TechWorkers and EndicottAlliance@IBM before, but it seems they are all in troubling times as more cuts are being made and less organizing is succeeding. However I am not aware of the details in their organizing strategies.

CWA tends to be very democratic to a point but also faces larger tech challenges, e.g. Verizon is trying to eliminate all unionized jobs, AT&T though allows card-check is also demanding more from their workers, CWA has not succeeded at organizing T-Mobile. But those are the places the CWA focuses their energy on and it appears not on the programmers etc...even though MayFirst is a CWA shop as well as other progressive sites.

The other thing is the IWW of course but as Walton and I have mentioned their resources are limited.

What I would like to hear from people are the attempts and strategies used in either successful or likely unsuccessful campaigns and what has the followup been after these campaigns?

The building trades have apprenticeship programs. Does anyone know the history of how those got started and became respected hallmarks of their industries? Apprenticeships might be a way to wedge into tech organizing too.

I just noticed Unite's IT Charter in a PDF on a sidebar on http://www.unitetheunion.org/sectors/it__communications/unite_in_your_company.aspx (Why a PDF instead of a web page? Why not a main topic? See earlier rant on unions failing at tech...). Its main content asks:

"Do you recognise:
* People doing similar jobs getting very different pay & benefits without any clear justification?
* Inconsistency or unfairness in objectives and appraisals?
* Secrecy about how pay and benefits are allocated?
* Management "discretion" instead of clear targets and rewards?
* Lack of evidence that discrimination on factors such as gender or age has been successfully prevented?"

Errr, no. I don't recognise any of those (and @nathans, I think this lack of identification is why tech workers feel cold towards unions). I feel that the biggest problems for tech workers are finding work, keeping work and being rewarded fairly for work without being so exposed to late payment. Late payers sometimes hide behind an unjustifiable grievance, but more often bosses just flat-out ignore our work contracts for reasons like "we've always paid tech workers 60 days after the job started" or even worse "... 45 days after the job was completed" and by that point, you've done some work, so what do you do? It's not usually like physical manufacturing where we can take the products back (and nor should it be). After 10 years, I've learned to spot some bad payers before starting work and most of our current bosses are much better than that, but even we still get burned occasionally.

Anyway, while the above may be the leading problems in a few large tech service agencies, agency companies probably aren't ever going to be really good workplaces, so why focus on them instead of the concerns of workers in the wider tech sector? Does @Walton have any insight on why that tactic was chosen and how workers could change it?

@mjray Hopefully, the best place to find 45 other tech workers is through forums like this.

Yes, unions organise in national boundaries which is a fundamental organising problem when organising tech workers. Unite and the USW in North America have formally merged, but branch structures are separate. Bargaining unite are almost always national because different countries have different labour laws and other standards, so building international branches is tough.

However, it's no problem to organise a branch with people who live anywhere in the world as long as they work in the UK (i.e. remotely for a UK company).

I have no particular insight into the focus on agencies. Most things in unions happen because some one thinks they are important. Focus on agencies is probably because some one from that background pushed a campaign. Unions are technically democratic, so if you don't like something you can usually get it changed.

@JahniCowley I am not sure what you mean by service, can you elaborate on that a bit more? I ask as many within the labor movement that are frustrated with the way many unions function (specifically in the US at least) becase many work as a service instead to the members instead of a member run organization.

I agree there are many issues of individualism within the tech sector, but that is not uncommon in other industries and or a common theme or challenge within the labor movement. I've worked in hotels and universities where individualism is a strong strategy of management to keep people split. I beg the question to be what methods can we use to break that individualism into collectivism? I can't speak to facebook as it is something that I closed 6years ago and have no intention of reopening...I also think with the recent IPO of facebook that it is going to get less popular, but that's a hunch (thinks back to AOL and after their IPO up up and crash)

@JahniCowley - I don't think it's limited to emerging economies. 98% of UK businesses are SMEs (Source: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bus-register/uk-business/2011/sum-ukbusiness-2011.html ) so focusing on collective bargaining with large agencies does leave most of us out in the cold even here.

I'm glad someone's having success with individual services, but why absorb workers into organised industries, rather than encourage them to organise themselves and take control of the means of production?

Oh I see @JahniCowley - I've not been a union member for a decade and was never a particularly active member, so I'm not up on the jargon. Sounds like a good way to build a branch, but does the single employee survive becoming a target for union-busting bosses?

Has there been some exploration of the apathy and its causes?

Personally, I'm not apathetic - more confused, frustrated and uncertain. At the moment, I think I'd join Unite if I could find 45 others so we could withdraw its support of DEAct and start some pro-FOSS and pro-co-op policies; and I may join IWW once I understand more about it.