Re: Should Programmers Unionize?

Of course programmers should join a union. Any employee who doesn't is a fool. Why? Because employers *will* fuck their employees over, often using illegal methods (usually out of ignorance, rarely deliberately). When you're a member of a union, you can call on their free land-sharks, who are wise in the ways of employment law. In my experience, the mere threat of that - just calling my union rep in to have a chat with my manager when he starts on some bogus disciplinary bullshit - is enough to make the employer see sense.

Lots of people have the crazy notion that being a member of a union makes you surrender your rights to, for example, negotiate your own pay deal. And that being a member of a union means you have to obey union officials. That's all nonsense. I've been a union member for fifteen years, and in that time they've never interfered in my salary negotiations because I've never asked them to, nor have they ever told me what to do. They've advised me, sure, and sometimes I've taken their advice, but they've never told me. And if they did tell me, I'd tell 'em where to shove it.

And being a member of a union doesn't have to be expensive either. I think that in total, in all my fifteen years of membership, I've maybe paid one month of my current salary in membership fees.

Yeah yeah, I know, it differs from place to place and some places apparently have crappy unions. Fine. So start your own. You and a hundred mates, each paying 20 quid a month (or whatever the equivalent is in shiny local beads) should be enough to get at least legal advice for any of your members who need it.

For those in the UK, I recommend joining Unite, which has a section specifically for computery people.

Comment on Re: Should Programmers Unionize?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Should Programmers Unionize? by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Jan 16, 2008 at 16:35 UTC
As has already been mentioned, it depends heavily on which side of the Atlantic you're on. Here in the US, I've never been a member of a union, but I've known a lot of people who have. I've heard their stories. And those stories consistently fall into two categories: 1) The union screws over those who are any good. 2) Those who should be fired manipulate union rules so that it's impossible to get rid of them. "the crazy notion that being a member of a union makes you surrender your rights to, for example, negotiate your own pay deal"? I know teachers who work for a union which dictates that pay rates be determined solely by how many years you've been on the job. Skill, ability, and personal negotiation are completely irrelevant and disallowed. "being a member of a union means you have to obey union officials"? What scope of obedience are we talking about? A couple years back, my dad's union (which he's a member of only because they've convinced the company to take union dues out of his paycheck whether he's a member or not) was considering a strike. They put it to the members for a vote - with the stipulation that, if you vote against striking and a strike actually happens, the union won't pay your wages during the strike. Is it at all surprising that the strike was overwhelmingly approved, since nobody could afford the risk of going against the union bosses? (Another fun story from my dad's job: The union has reprimanded him for being too efficient. It seems he was doing his job so well that it made his "brothers" look bad by comparison.) So I'm obviously no fan of unions and tend to think of them as corrupt and even worse than the worst of the modern-day corporations operating in the US. But, on the flip side, my girlfriend, being from Sweden, has entirely the opposite viewpoint and sometimes seems to find it difficult to imagine that anyone might not want to be a member of a union. Apparently they operate very differently there than they do here.	[reply]
Re^3: Should Programmers Unionize? by DrHyde (Prior) on Jan 17, 2008 at 11:52 UTC
Your local unions being corrupt is why I suggested that people in your unfortunate position start their own.	[reply]
Re^4: Should Programmers Unionize? by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Jan 17, 2008 at 17:03 UTC
I am not in an unfortunate position, at least not with respect to unions. I've never been in one and I've never worked for any company which was associated with one. Which is a situation I'm quite happy with. Perhaps part of the reason I've never needed a union is that I've long held the belief that I have the right to tell employers "this is what I'll accept and that is what I won't put up with". In theory, I've always been fully prepared to stick to my guns on such statements, but, in practice, I've never been challenged on them, even to the point of one (salaried) job where I told the boss up front that I don't believe in unpaid overtime and, a year and a half later, while he was telling everyone else that their 60-hour weeks weren't enough, he never said one word to me about my 40-hour weeks. The people who provided the stories related in my previous post are indeed in unfortunate situations, however they are also in the even more unfortunate situation of working in "union shops", which is to say that the union has so thoroughly cowed the employer that you basically can't work there without being a member. While union shops are, AFAIK, technically illegal due to their incredible capacity to produce and preserve corruption, they seem to be impossible to get rid of in practice. e.g., At the local telco, where my dad works, you don't have to join the union... but you'll still pay the union dues even if you don't, you'll still be unable to work if the union decides to strike, and, as an extra bonus, all of your coworkers will go out of their way to treat you like shit for not being one of them, in some cases to the point of minor vandalism. How are you realistically supposed to start your own rival union in that situation?	[reply]


Come for the quick hacks, stay for the epiphanies.
	PerlMonks