Has the time come for IT to Unionize?

[GoatMonkey]

Originally posted by: Apathetic

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.

Bingo. If the application is giving errors, call the programmer. The developer is then highly motivated to make sure things work correctly.

Dave

Congratulations, you are no longer needed.

 

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: Journer
unions are BAD! very, very BAD. in fact...they should be illegal. nothing good has ever come from unions. it just makes stupid people feel like they have control when they are just the puppets of the union leader -_-

And you know this how?

 

[arch113]

I'm in IT and I belong to a union.
I get paid hourly, and clock in/out.
I am not required to carry a pager, or even take calls after hours.

If I do get a call, and solve the problem over the phone, I get minimum of 2 hours. If I have to go on location, I get a minimum of 4 hours (even if its a simple as hitting a reset button).

I will admit, we are a little different than most work areas

 

[boomerang]

You're looking for reinforcement on union representation here?

This place is a bastion for the Young Republicans. Most everyone here is a future corporate fat-cat. (Shhh, don't let them know they'd better hurry, because capitalism's days are numbered in the US)

You should know better. Shame on you!

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: spidey07
no way.

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

Not to mention that a US IT union would just motivate corporations to outsource their work to India and China even faster than before.

Seriously... Why would companies put up with mandatory wage hikes and labor negotiations when you get get people for 1/5 the price overseas?

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: Journer
unions are BAD! very, very BAD. in fact...they should be illegal. nothing good has ever come from unions. it just makes stupid people feel like they have control when they are just the puppets of the union leader -_-

dumbass, you owe your entire work structure to unions. 40 hour weeks, paid vacation, 401K, health insurance....

 

[bctbct]

Originally posted by: Journer
unions are BAD! very, very BAD. in fact...they should be illegal. nothing good has ever come from unions. it just makes stupid people feel like they have control when they are just the puppets of the union leader -_-

You may be right, I will ponder this issue when I retire with a full pension at the age of 53. If I work 15 min I get 2 hrs. of pay. If that makes me a puppet, at least it pays well.

edit

I doubt you could Unionize the IT industry. Unions start with a group of people who band together for the greater good and most people in your industry would have a hard time selling that to the corps.

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: GoatMonkey
There are a few answers here.

1. Become a developer and fix the problems yourself. no thanks im no code monkey.

2. Be more involved in the final testing and acceptance process of the software development cycle so you don't have to maintain crappy software. Im sys admin, i have 300 servers to support along with our 6 in house apps, along with all the corporate software that is used in finance, HR, Marketing, manufacturing, shipping.... along with daily task that needs to be done that does help on after hours calls. Im sorry but i do not have time to do the testers job nor can the test bed totally replicate production because of just sheer volume of transactions.

3. Learn to troubleshoot better and fix the problems before they happen. ummm db locks are pretty hard to troublshoot before the begin.

4. Get a new job. Na i do like it here i just need to bitch every now and again.

 

[athithi]

Wow..and here I was thinking IT possibly couldn't get any worse. The way some folks in IT work, it already seems like they are unionized. The reason good folks are over-worked and exploited in IT (not just tech support), is precisely because most folks in this field are incompetent and not held accountable for their mistakes and you want to make it official?

 

[foghorn67]

No, and I'll slap you twice if you bring this up again.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob

A US IT union would just motivate corporations to outsource their work to India and China even faster than before.

It's been shown that jobs are not needed in the U.S. other than service jobs like food and Courts so might as well get it over with and ship any remaining jobs out.

 

[tfinch2]

Cry more OP.

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: Citrix
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.

Unions FTW! i'm tired of being paid low 6 figures when the client is paying 4x more for my position. i'm not greedy. i just want 1/2! and i bet the union can do this for me! (50% for me, 50% for the company seems reasonable, no?)

 

[Zee]

no fuckin way. forget the view from management, or consumer. ever worked with a total freakin tard or bum that you just wish would die in a car accident? how would these people get fired?

 

[PokerGuy]

Basically, unions served a purpose once upon a time, back when you had large industries and a single company was the only employer in town. They owned you, and since mobility (moving somewhere else for a job) was pretty difficult and communication was difficult, the employer could abuse their workers. Modern society simply does not have a need for unions. The only people that need unions are people who are lazy or bad at their job, they need union 'protection' and union help to force employers to overpay for their limited work skills.

Ever worked in a union shop? Most union shops (though not all) are extremely inefficient, nobody has an incentive to work hard since they can't advance fast anyway (seniority and all that bs), they often even get mad at those who do work harder since it makes the others look bad. Idiot workers who screw up day after day can't be fired etc etc etc. Unions are a nightmare.

Don't get me wrong, we have a lot to be thankful to the unions for, they fought to get us a lot of the things we take for granted now, but they are simply dinosaurs, relics of another fading era.

 

[Triumph]

There are plenty of IT companies out there. If you don't like your company, go get a job with another one. If no other IT company will pay you what you want, then you're asking too much. If everyone in IT thought they weren't getting paid enough, then the field is oversaturated. Find a new field or accept lower pay.

If there were only 1 company that you could work for then there would be a reason to unionize. But there isn't, every company out there needs IT support.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Triumph
There are plenty of IT companies out there. If you don't like your company, go get a job with another one. If no other IT company will pay you what you want, then you're asking too much. If everyone in IT thought they weren't getting paid enough, then the field is oversaturated. Find a new field or accept lower pay.

If there were only 1 company that you could work for then there would be a reason to unionize. But there isn't, every company out there needs IT support.

True. But job hopping is always a concern with a potential candidate. You can't just hop and hop without consequences.

This is a career, not a body to fill a spot similar to other unionized jobs. Without a union the cream is able to rise.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Triumph
There are plenty of IT companies out there. If you don't like your company, go get a job with another one. If no other IT company will pay you what you want, then you're asking too much. If everyone in IT thought they weren't getting paid enough, then the field is oversaturated. Find a new field or accept lower pay.

If there were only 1 company that you could work for then there would be a reason to unionize. But there isn't, every company out there needs IT support.

True. But job hopping is always a concern with a potential candidate. You can't just hop and hop without consequences.

This is a career, not a body to fill a spot similar to other unionized jobs. Without a union the cream is able to rise.

Interesting to hear someone in management say that, because some managers I've worked for thing we're all interchangeable (I work in software development, not IT per se, so we're even less interchangeable)

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Triumph
There are plenty of IT companies out there. If you don't like your company, go get a job with another one. If no other IT company will pay you what you want, then you're asking too much. If everyone in IT thought they weren't getting paid enough, then the field is oversaturated. Find a new field or accept lower pay.

If there were only 1 company that you could work for then there would be a reason to unionize. But there isn't, every company out there needs IT support.

True. But job hopping is always a concern with a potential candidate. You can't just hop and hop without consequences.

This is a career, not a body to fill a spot similar to other unionized jobs. Without a union the cream is able to rise.

Interesting to hear someone in management say that, because some managers I've worked for thing we're all interchangeable (I work in software development, not IT per se, so we're even less interchangeable)

Post another thread about job hopping and I'll give my input. Don't want to derail too much.

People are viewed as a resource, human capital. From a management perspective this is true and in all honesty how it is viewed. Just a resource.

But finding a good resource is the same as finding a good tomato, you have to look at it's background. If it keeps blooming without producing fruit, then it ain't a good mater.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Triumph
There are plenty of IT companies out there. If you don't like your company, go get a job with another one. If no other IT company will pay you what you want, then you're asking too much. If everyone in IT thought they weren't getting paid enough, then the field is oversaturated. Find a new field or accept lower pay.

If there were only 1 company that you could work for then there would be a reason to unionize. But there isn't, every company out there needs IT support.

True. But job hopping is always a concern with a potential candidate. You can't just hop and hop without consequences.

This is a career, not a body to fill a spot similar to other unionized jobs. Without a union the cream is able to rise.

Interesting to hear someone in management say that, because some managers I've worked for thing we're all interchangeable (I work in software development, not IT per se, so we're even less interchangeable)

Post another thread about job hopping and I'll give my input. Don't want to derail too much.

People are viewed as a resource, human capital. From a management perspective this is true and in all honesty how it is viewed. Just a resource.

But finding a good resource is the same as finding a good tomato, you have to look at it's background. If it keeps blooming without producing fruit, then it ain't a good mater.

When you're starting a new job it is expected that there will be some acclimation time, so in that sense we are interchangeable. But I have had managers who think they can assign someone to a project for 2 months while they are not needed on some other project, and actually have that person make worthwhile contributions. That's not realistic.

 

[daveshel]

Originally posted by: Citrix
Im sys admin, i have 300 servers to support along with our 6 in house apps, along with all the corporate software that is used in finance, HR, Marketing, manufacturing, shipping.... along with daily task that needs to be done that does help on after hours calls. Im sorry but i do not have time to do the testers job nor can the test bed totally replicate production because of just sheer volume of transactions.

I don't think most of the folks here have a real great understanding of what life is a busy data center is like. We have about 200 servers and support about 4400 users, all with a staff of 11. I have to handle the Exchange servers plus the spam filter appliance and the email archive system. I have the sole responsibility for a single department's 12 servers, which means being on call 27/7/365 for those. Then I have to take an on-call shift for the whole data center for a week every 2 months or so. It's a real scramble to keep up with everything, and so much has to be done in off-hours. It isn't a cushy job by any means.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: mugs
When you're starting a new job it is expected that there will be some acclimation time, so in that sense we are interchangeable. But I have had managers who think they can assign someone to a project for 2 months while they are not needed on some other project, and actually have that person make worthwhile contributions. That's not realistic.

Just trying to give you insight. A resource is a resource.

Take for example my experience, and this has happened MANY times. It was posted on the results/tracking/metrics board....the PM left. And I quote, on the boards as reviewed by the board...

"Resource has left company, re-evaluating if project is feasible due to resource shortage."

Play the game or die by it.

 

[Greenman]

Yeah, unions really suck. Far better to be a salaried employee working 70 hours a week and getting paid for 40 than to suffer through the hell that is a union. And no, I'm not in the union, and I never have been. Though I was an employee for a year and a half once.
It was really strange getting paid every week no matter what I did, and I in fact did almost nothing, while receiving regular praise for getting things done. The corporate world is bazaar.

 

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: arch113
I'm in IT and I belong to a union.
I get paid hourly, and clock in/out.
I am not required to carry a pager, or even take calls after hours.

If I do get a call, and solve the problem over the phone, I get minimum of 2 hours. If I have to go on location, I get a minimum of 4 hours (even if its a simple as hitting a reset button).

I will admit, we are a little different than most work areas

Well according to most of the pudgy little nerds here you must be worthless and lazy.

 

[PokerGuy]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Originally posted by: arch113
I'm in IT and I belong to a union.
I get paid hourly, and clock in/out.
I am not required to carry a pager, or even take calls after hours.

If I do get a call, and solve the problem over the phone, I get minimum of 2 hours. If I have to go on location, I get a minimum of 4 hours (even if its a simple as hitting a reset button).

I will admit, we are a little different than most work areas

Well according to most of the pudgy little nerds here you must be worthless and lazy.

Well, based on arch113's post, you could easily see how whatever company he works for is at a competitive disadvantage with other non-union companies. So someone needs to ask him a quick question after work hours - bam, company has to pay him for 2 hours worth of work. In non-union shop, that would not cost the company anything. It's not that everyone who is in a union is worthless and lazy, it's just that a union environment is the perfect environment for the worthless and lazy, so it tends to attract them and fosters them .... just like any government office. Not all government office employees are worthless and lazy, but the percentage is definitely higher than in the private sector, doubly so if it's a unionized government office! Oh, and while not 'worthless', most union workers are also overpaid for what they do or the skills they have.

Guy working factory line with no skills in competitive environment = $12 per hour. Unionized = $20 per hour. To me, that means the guy is overpaid by $8 an hour if he's part of a union. In a competitive marketplace, you are paid what you are worth, unions mess up that balance.