Thank goodness what's happening in Wisconsin could never happen here

[james_davis_nicoll]

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government introduced legislation Tuesday afternoon that will strip unionized TTC workers of the right to strike.

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I've worked in the software industry for almost two decades now. It seems to me that, for the most part, the hours worked by most of the software professionals I know were worked voluntarily. Now "voluntarily" is not a binary situation: in many cases, strong pressure was placed upon them to "go above and beyond" for "this particular release" or whatever. In some cases, these really were exceptional circumstances; in some cases, these were circumstances that became frequent because of managerial incompetence within the company.

However, I think if you balance this kind of "you're a professional, so come in and work on the weekend" against the kind of compensation that most software professionals are offered, it evens out.

Is this exploitation? I'm not sure the answer is a simple one. In some cases, certainly companies are taking advantage of employees who are too willing (through a variety of circumstances, including naivete, job protection, and other things) to be taken advantage of. In other cases, companies are justified in saying "we pay you well to compensate you for the times we require you to give greater than usual effort in order for the company to meet its commitments".

Generally speaking it seems to me that high-tech companies that treat its employees fairly and well tend to become successful havens where employees tend to migrate. Companies that exploit their employees in one fashion or another generally seem to end up with high-turnover, and this gets reflected on the bottom line with an eventual hampering on their ability to do business, and the death spiral plays out its dreaded effect.

That still doesn't stop the attitude: lately I heard (by hearsay) that a VP I once worked for said, in corporate-public (i.e. to a group of employees), "If you're expecting to work from 9 to 5, then you should go work in a bank." The implication being, I suppose, that your compensation (or range of potential compensation, and there lies part of the rub) is superior in the high-tech industry because you're an "industry professional" who must, from time to time, get set such extra tasks as the company determines are necessary. That doesn't stop this statement from being a morale-crushing gaffe on the VPs part (if it was in fact said the way it was, and in the company I heard it was), though, in my opinion.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I think I should further comment on what I mean by "there lies the rub" with respect to "potential compensation". It is not lost on me that the whole "we pay you better in this industry" is, to a certain extent, a rhetorical canard. What in fact ends up happening is that an increasingly smaller portion of the workforce is rewarded by being compensated in an out-sized fashion with respect to most of the workforce. And, in a largely unregulated environment, working one's way up the pyramid can be based on some extremely shaky metrics that might say they have something to do with corporate contributions, but in actual fact might have nothing much to do with "adding to the company's bottom line".

As a result, it becomes extremely questionable to use this "increased compensation" as a carrot to payoff the "you must work harder stick". In the end, it becomes a vicious lottery. To have some chance at getting better compensation, you might choose to give up more and more of your personal life to throw at the corporation in the hopes of greater reward and advancement as a "team player" and a "top performer".

To me, this kind of rhetorical game is indeed a form of exploitation and a pernicious one. But it's also not clear to me that unionizing would solve this problem: it might just replace one set of performance standards (largely arbitrary) with another set (tenure, for example?) So I'm not sure this form of exploitation is necessarily unique to the high-tech industry, or non-unionized white collar professions.

[nicosian.livejournal.com]

My husband works IT, and companies used to gobble his time as if they were freely entitled. anything less, and when it came to crunch time, you'd be out. having had lots of friends who also work in IT where its crushing hours then out on your ass when the crunch is over, I think maybe some kind of unionizing is a good thing.Exploitive? not overtly, but certainly could be considered so.

Interestingly, when my husband joined the IT team of a major bank, they have normal hours,OT pay, benefits, bonuses and treat staff with respect that almost 2 years in, we still pinch ourselves, "can this be real?"

And yeah, companies that treat staff like crap tend to see much higher turnover. His previous job led people on with the "no raises for you peons," long after he'd left.

But then I sort of suspect that some companies pay considerable lip service to "staff are an asset" and instead repeatedly think staff are merely expendable when the mood suits.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Saying "staff are an asset" is precariously close to saying "staff are a fungible good". Ironically, it seems that so many organizations mean precisely not to seem to say the latter when they say the former. But simply by saying the former they logically imply the latter. Marketing speak for the win. Again.

[nicosian.livejournal.com]

true. I'm just talking casually here, not in a strictly exact academic/business thinking sense.

Lets call it for lack of better word to come to mind, ok?

I have people work for me on occasion and I damn WELL know that without them I'm working even harder on my own, ( basically forgoing breaks of any kind) and it flummoxes me that places I've worked for think that perpetually squeezing more labor out of people is the key.I don't ask people to do work that i wouldn't do myself. Asset in the way that without them, I'm working an event for 10 hours with no food or bathroom breaks. Asset because they help my booth not get shoplifted senseless when its busy. Asset because they keep company. I don't think its a hassle or a "if I didn't have to have staff, I'd have bigger profits!" Sure it would, but it makes for a less pleasant event for me too.

Having worked myself for companies that walked the walk, its night and day from the companies that just acted like "if ONLY we didn't have to have people, the business would run better' crap.

the height of it for me was a boss begging for double shifts, (16 hrs, over night) on short notice, and then giving me the riot act for being short 2 bucks at the end of the night, or the ones asking me to stay till 11pm, and be back at work at 6 am. I did so believing this made me look like a team player, and a go getter. All it got me was more grief.

which is why I work for myself now.I'm not interested in working for companies who can't be bothered to treat people like human beings. fortunately i have the liberty now of choosing that. Lots of people don't.

In the case of TTC, perhaps people see the unions as sheltering less stellar employees, but the working conditions are crap, and they take more abuse than we'd like to think. I've been through long transit strikes, and this won't upset my life, but I support any worker's right to demand better conditions. I've done it myself, not in striking, but in making sure the damn labor code is enforced. ( and won, both times.)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's reminiscent of the Dilbert cartoon in which the PHB explains that employees are the company's primary asset, that like most assets they depreciate over time, and that they can now pick up their Certificates of Depreciation.

Human Resources

[niall-shapero.livejournal.com]

We wouldn't call them human resources if we didn't think we could strip mine them...

:-)

Software Engineering and Unions

[niall-shapero.livejournal.com]

Those who do not have power will be exploited. Those who have power will typically exploit those who do not. If there are no unions, then we will end up going back to the way things were in the 19th century. The existance of unions tends to protect all workers, although everyone can come up with individual incidents of union abusive behavior.

(As background, I've been an engineer, a manager, and a lead engineer - the latter two categories for 17 of the last 25 years, and I've been in software engineering for 34 years).