Re: techwr-l digest: October 31, 2001
By the very nature of unions, there is a political aspect to them. I thinkI would say that work in itself has a political aspect, as does the economic philosophy du jour, etc. You might as well say that life has political overtones, and use that to either ban or encourage whatever discussion you want.
they are useless in the world of high-tech. They do more damage than good.
However, in other industries they are beneficial. Unskilled or trade
skills tend to fair better with unions then specialized technical skill.
One thing about the politics of unions is that they provide collective bargaining. This is necessary in a situation where the worker can be treated as a commodity. In high-tech, the likelyhood for that is low, although I suspect it's increasing with time. Still, I would guess we're pretty far from the threshold where unions make sense. As a technical writer, you typically negotiate your terms of employment, as well as your terms of work for each project. How many tech writers are thrust into projects where they have no input into the doc plan, the schedule, and the expectations for their own deliverables? It´s shown to be be counterproductive for a manager to foist expectations on a writer without consulting the writer first. And if you are in such a crappy situation, you can always find the door with reasonable expectation of finding other work. It's not like you're leaving the one and only coal mine in the region.
That said, there are plenty of nasty practices in the industry. How many of us have been told to either use our vacation time or lose it - yet couldn't use the vacation time because of deadlines? On the other hand, after meeting a nasty deadline, how many of us have been told to take a few days off to decompress? How many of us have been paid to go to school? I just think the tech industry is still too rarefied to make unions all that important. My opinion...
John Gilger says:
A couple of things to think about: How hard is it to move a high techWell, as tech writers some of us can actually turn that formula on its head. And I believe the trend will continue. Namely, a tech writer can telecommute from practically anywhere. I have been doing that from Spain for the last three years.
firm (software, especially) off-shore?
How many good, American, union jobs have been moved off-shore?
I'm not quite ready to move to Singapore or Mexico. Although they are
both great vacation spots and it might be an interesting experience to
live and work there, I'm not ready to bet the farm on it.
Because the stuff of our work is knowledge, it makes no sense for a company to move the plant offshore. I suggest you worry more about the *knowledge* moving offshore. What happens when India produces a surplus of native-English speaking tech writers who will work below your rate? Certainly, US programmers are facing something like that - I have worked for a few companies in the US whose senior programmers reside in India. Granted, companies can sponser visas for these programmers, but they don't have to. Why can't they just telecommute? In fact, that's happening right now. What has moved is the *knowledge* more so than the fixed means of production. And the knowledge implies the ability to pick up whatever project the "plant" has going. So there's no need for these workers to adhere to any specific company.
I have always argued that in California the software giants should pay an extra highway tax, or else be forced to pay for workable mass-transit. In the industrial revolution, companies had to invest in the movement of their material commodities - coal, ore, textiles, etc. In the info revolution, the only material that seems to move around is people. Companies offer relocation packages, but they don't contribute substantially to the infrastructure required to get people's bodies into the office. Well, that should change fairly soon - the emerging infrastructure (must I say it... the innnnterrrrrnet!) will ultimately make such physical movement unnecessary.
So my question is... How shall a union organize an international, totally mobile work force, the members of which negotiate their own terms of employment? Should it even bother?
cud
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