RE: Technical Writing Union

[Tom Murrell <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

--- Pete Sanborn <psanborn2 -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:
> Here's a thought about unions and such - if you don't like the work, the
> working conditions and/or the pay, go find another job. If enough tech
> writers vote with their feet, sooner or later, a lousy employer gets the
> hint and improves whatever is deficient or he never gets his documentation
> completed so he never gets to ship his product(s) to market. If he can't
> ship, he can't sell, if he can't sell, he can't stay in business.

I've already made it clear that I wouldn't join a union, so I won't do more
than reiterate that. And I used to subscribe to Pete's argument wholeheartedly.
Personally, I'm still in a situation where, if I don't like the work or the
working conditions I can go somewhere else and/or do something else.

However, not everyone is so fortunate. One of the big reasons unions gained
adherents and power in the first place is that most folks could NOT go
somewhere else or do something else. In many of the earliest unionized
situations, there was no free market for the movement of labor. The working
conditions were appalling, the hours were atrocious, the pay was starvation.
Unions came about and became forces that changed the way we work, in the U. S.
anyway, because employers wouldn't make needed changes on their own, and they
controlled the market for their workers.

High tech would do well to consider this model in their determination of how
they will pay and treat their workers, too. I can see situations developing in
which the expected free overtime required of both FTEs and contractors grows
and the working conditions continue to deteriorate until developers, writers,
even engineers seriously consider joining unions.

25 years ago, when I started in the high tech working world, I shared an office
and a telephone with another developer. Today I live in a cube farm with 150 of
my fellow employees. The working conditions have deteriorated, especially in a
field where I'm paid to think. (You know, sometimes I need it quiet to think;
it's hard to find quiet when there are conference calls going on all over the
floor and a general caucauphony of sound throughout the building, and I can't
close a door to escape it. I know, get headphones. I did.)

It's that and 80-100 hour weeks that will turn professionals to unions. It's
lack of benefits and random layoffs that will eventually crack even the best of
professional demeanors. I suspect I'll be ready to retire from the workaday
work force when that happens.

Unfortunately, unionization also seems to lead to hidebound bureaucratization
where you can't carry a piece of equipment from where it is to where it's
needed because, "That's a union job." You can't get a whiteboard hung in your
cube because, "That's a union job." You can't reorganize the furniture in an
area because, "That's a union job." You can't talk to the person you need to
resolve an issue without going through three levels of bureaucracy, lest you be
accused of meddling with union-management relations.

That won't be a fun place to work either.

> That's the simple law of supply and demand that unions don't want you to
> know. Granted, things are tough for all of us right now, but the basic rule
> still applies - if you don't like the work, the pay and/or the working
> conditions, go elsewhere. That isn't the only job in town and you don't have
> to work there.
> 
> Isn't freedom wonderful?

As I've been trying to point out, the "simple law of supply and demand" works
both ways. Employers don't want you to know it either.

Yes, freedom is wonderful, but it isn't free. I'll end where I started by
saying that I won't join a union, and I'm as familiar with both the benefits
and abuses of unions as anyone, I suppose. But I don't have to. Yet, if things
continue to deteriorate in the workplace and management continues to treat its
professionals as cattle or disposable assets, they shouldn't be surprised to
find that they've created the very conditions that will force unions unpon them.

=====
Tom Murrell
Lead Technical Writer
Alliance Data Systems
Columbus, Ohio
mailto:tmurrell -at- columbus -dot- rr -dot- com
Personal Web Page - http://home.columbus.rr.com/murrell/
Page Last Updated 07/15/01

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