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OK, then, am I the only unionized tech writer on this list? I work for part
of the State University of New York (SUNY) system of colleges and
universities. We're unionized -- it's the programmers, the sysadmins, the
professors, and whatever other university professionals aren't in
administration. This includes yours truly, the lone tech writer at my
institution. It's very different from a field organizing as a union (like
every tech writer in the nation suddenly banding together in a union), and
more akin to those nursing strikes which might involve nurses at a hospital
(or a hospital system), but not every nurse in the nation. It has its
advantages. It can also have its disadvantages. I have no opt-out. I pay
bi-weekly dues. I also get all the union-earned perks, and my boss has the
option of offering me tenure after 7 years. I'm pretty sure we're a
white-collar union -- the ranks include professors who each have a Ph.D and
even a Pulitzer Prize winner. I believe we've been unionized since the late
sixties or early seventies. I agree that unionizing the entire profession
is pretty farfetched. Unionizing a company, perhaps not so bizarre as
some have suggested.
--On Tuesday, December 03, 2002, 6:42 PM -0500 Jim Doria
<jimdoria -at- techie -dot- com> wrote:
>
> The idea of a Technical Writer's union does seem pretty far-fetched, given
> that white-collar workers have tended to be difficult to unionize. And I
> don't think the general perception of unions is that they ensure a "better
> quality worker". Actually, the opposite usually seems to be true in
> practice.
Valerie Priester
hammerl -at- buffalo -dot- edu
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