Has the time come for IT to Unionize?

[OutHouse]

i am on my last week of pager duty and it has sucked. I have been paged by our call center every fricken night between 1am and today it was 4:30 am. Sure me and the other admin get 33 bucks a day for pager duty but its not enough in our opinion. When we bring this up that the 33 bucks is crap especially if we have to work a issue for several hours in the middle of the night. Management says that we should feel lucky becuse many companies dont comp you for being on pager duty and expect you to do it as part of the salary.

well fine, me and my co-workers feel that they are exploiting us, our engineers write software that can be buggy on the back end but works great from the customers perspective. so instead of fixing it we in Sys admin have to come up with back-end work arounds to resolve issues before 1, the customer sees it, or two we get paged. Most of the time we can come up with something to make our life a little easier but we shouldn't have to do that!!! :|

So this morning i get paged at 4:30 from a supervisor in our call center asking me to research a fricken question that a customer had. WTFBBQ!!!!!!! I asked moron supervisor if he knows that Colorado is in the mountain time zone so we are two hours behind. I then asked him if this was a system emergency?

Mumble mumble,

I asked him again is the product down?

ummm no i dont think so.

I told him ill look at it when i get into the office at 8AM Mountain time. I know i was kinda rude to him but holy f*cking sh*t dont fricken page me on bullsh*t.

I think its time to unionize!!! unions are the answer to everything and IT is well over due for it.


Edit:

humm check this out, Austraila has a IT union.

 

[waggy]

oh hell no. that would be worse.

 

[oddyager]

I'm on pager duty and I don't get paid any extra for it so yes you should feel lucky.

 

[TheSlamma]

NevAr!!!

Wages would bottom out, layoffs all over the place and the lazy good for nothings would NEVER get fired.

 

[SacrosanctFiend]

Unions are the bane of society. Especially the teacher's union, but I won't get into that.

 

[Platypus]

whine.

at least you get compensation for pager duty... your boss is right. I've worked 80+ hours a week on salary with NO compensation whatsoever (although the salary is nice)

 

[shiner]

Originally posted by: TheSlamma
NevAr!!!

Wages would bottom out, layoffs all over the place and the lazy good for nothings would NEVER get fired.

So everytihng would pretty much stay the same?

 

[Capt Caveman]

Screw unions.

 

[spidey07]

no way.

All that would do is standardize wages and keep the truly skilled from making money.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

NO. We don't need unions in the modern era. They are a relic of the past and should be banned.

 

[Platypus]

furthermore try supporting a massive financial corporation's entire infrastructure by yourself at 4AM dealing with offshore admins whom you cannot understand.. that sounds a damn sight worse than someone calling you about a non mission critical product and then going back to bed 5 minutes later... AND you get paid extra for it.

some people don't know how good they have it

 

[yllus]

I'll spring for an union, but that's because I know I'd work my way up into its administration and enjoy leeching off the rest of you with membership dues.

 

[Ktulu]

After seeing how unions have crippled the Auto industry I have no respect for them whatsoever. Heck, I used to be a Teamster working at UPS and the amount of crap union members got away with was appalling. I have no doubt that unionized IT jobs would surely bring our industry down in both quality of work and respect.

 

[Aharami]

no freaking way!

 

[piasabird]

So how much you get paid and if you add the total hours into this, how many hours you working.

Just take extra time off during the day.

$33.00 is around what? 2 hours pay? 1 hours pay?

This should encourage you to fix you problems so the system works better. If it a faulty program, then make the programmer be woke up to come in and fix it. If it is the network it is probably your fault for not setting it up correctly. If you make the big bucks then it is your problem. So fix it so you dont get called. If your system worked you would not get called at all.

 

[Deeko]

good lord no, this isn't the depression, we need LESS unions not MORE. Do you realize a union protested my company for having a blood drive?? Apparently the union had some beef with the red cross, so they picketed people for giving blood! I hate unions.

If you don't like your job, go get a new one.

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: piasabird
So how much you get paid and if you add the total hours into this, how many hours you working.

Just take extra time off during the day.

$33.00 is around what? 2 hours pay? 1 hours pay?

This should encourage you to fix you problems so the system works better. If it a faulty program, then make the programmer be woke up to come in and fix it. If it is the network it is probably your fault for not setting it up correctly. If you make the big bucks then it is your problem. So fix it so you dont get called. If your system worked you would not get called at all.

:laugh: Bwhahahahahah HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAh yea right.

1. been down that road many times and the answer is "there isnt developent time in the budget to address this, mabye next fiscal year"

2. i didnt even mention network, i specifically said apps.

3. See #1

4. i need coffee, strong black coffee.

 

[Beev]

Fuck. Unions.

 

[LLCOOLJ]

No way, they are paid more than they are worth as it is.

 

[yllus]

Originally posted by: piasabird
So how much you get paid and if you add the total hours into this, how many hours you working.

Just take extra time off during the day.

$33.00 is around what? 2 hours pay? 1 hours pay?

This should encourage you to fix you problems so the system works better. If it a faulty program, then make the programmer be woke up to come in and fix it. If it is the network it is probably your fault for not setting it up correctly. If you make the big bucks then it is your problem. So fix it so you dont get called. If your system worked you would not get called at all.

Certainly the best idea but far from the most realistic one.

Companies will 99% of the time pick a continuous scramble to fix a mostly-working program over a code overhaul which could potentially break new things, require a thorough retesting of all components, take up valuable developer time from other projects (we're not usually left just sitting idle).

The fact that in the long term a code fix is more cost effective matters little when it comes to a manager having to consider taking the potential heat for ordering a reprogramming of something that was already mostly working.

 

[NuclearNed]

Pfft. I would join an IT union only on threat of physical torture. Unions don't make anything better for anyone; they just give a group of people the false sense that they have some power.

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: NuclearNed
Pfft. I would join an IT union only on threat of physical torture. Unions don't make anything better for anyone; they just give a group of people the false sense that they have some power.

false sense of power?? the UAW has a lot of power and its very real.

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: yllus

Originally posted by: piasabird
So how much you get paid and if you add the total hours into this, how many hours you working.

Just take extra time off during the day.

$33.00 is around what? 2 hours pay? 1 hours pay?

This should encourage you to fix you problems so the system works better. If it a faulty program, then make the programmer be woke up to come in and fix it. If it is the network it is probably your fault for not setting it up correctly. If you make the big bucks then it is your problem. So fix it so you dont get called. If your system worked you would not get called at all.

Certainly the best idea but far from the most realistic one.

Companies will 99% of the time pick a continuous scramble to fix a mostly-working program over a code overhaul which could potentially break new things, require a thorough retesting of all components, take up valuable developer time from other projects (we're not usually left just sitting idle).

The fact that in the long term a code fix is more cost effective matters little when it comes to a manager having to consider taking the potential heat for ordering a reprogramming of something that was already mostly working.

exactly, im my sleep deprived fog i forgot about the testing dept doing a full round of testing.

 

[NuclearNed]

Originally posted by: Citrix

Originally posted by: NuclearNed
Pfft. I would join an IT union only on threat of physical torture. Unions don't make anything better for anyone; they just give a group of people the false sense that they have some power.

false sense of power?? the UAW has a lot of power and its very real.

I stand by my statement. What power the UAW has is slipping by the day. What power will UAW have when American automakers are forced out of business by UAW's greed?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: NuclearNed

Originally posted by: Citrix

Originally posted by: NuclearNed
Pfft. I would join an IT union only on threat of physical torture. Unions don't make anything better for anyone; they just give a group of people the false sense that they have some power.

false sense of power?? the UAW has a lot of power and its very real.

I stand by my statement. What power the UAW has is slipping by the day. What power will UAW have when American automakers are forced out of business by UAW's greed?

Same power they have on foreign automakers.