Should IT unionize?
infoworld.com
infoworld.com
Given that it's the conventional wisdom around here that some engineers are 10x as productive as others, why would any good techie want to join a union?
If one ever did form (and this is far from the first call for it, and they've never come anywhere close to success), you're going to get adverse selection - only the weakest techies (those who worry that they can't cut the mustard and will be fired without a union) will join.
In that way, a union - if membership was optional - would be a great thing: it would let us identify the bottom 50% of the labor pool in seconds.
The best doctor is 100s of times better than the worst (incalculably better since you may be avoiding catastrophic outcomes), and yet doctors have a professional cartel that regulates who can get in and what you have to know to be considered a doctor.
I see a union as a way of obtaining a balance of power between powerful corporations and individual employees.
The reason US unions are bad are - you can't generally choose between competing unions - unions monopolize industries and/or professions
In other first world countries you generally have a choice about which union you join and there aren't any jobs which require union membership.
Unions can be useful to - have qualified people on your side in case of a problem with your employer - influence political decisions to protect and improve employees rights
I'm pretty sure the lack of functioning unions is the reason the US is the only 1st world country that doesn't guarantee health care for it's workers, and that wages have stagnated over the last 35 years or so.
Of course the system is so entrenched it seems very unlikely anything will change in the foreseeable future.
So what about, say a car. Some cars are affordable, some extremely expensive. They are all still commodities. Why then is there such a price disparity? Some cars are more complex, and thus require a greater degree of skill during construction. Others may be composed of exotic or rare materials, which take more manpower and a larger amount of capital to produce than a cheaper material.
The same applies to IT. Some jobs in IT are relatively simple, such as a Help desk attendant, while others are more demanding in terms of knowledge and application. Each worker, though is paid in proportion to the degree of skill he/she exhibits.
Your skill and ability to work for a wage, although unique to living individuals, is still a commodity, regardless of whether you want to consider it as such.
None of them correspond with turkishrevenge's idea of what the word means.
- Anything movable (a good) that is bought and sold. - Something useful or valuable. Example: "It really makes me sad that football club chairmen and boards seem to have lost that most precious commodity - patience. "Sam's sacking at Newcastle had, I suppose, been on the cards for a while, but it is really ridiculous to fire a manager after such a short time. Somerset County Gazette on Jan. 14th, 2008.
(economics) Raw materials, agricultural products and other primary products as objects of large scale trading in specialized exchanges.
(marketing) Undifferentiated goods characterized by a low profit margin, as distinguished from branded products.
This is not necessarily the case, I have known plenty of very skilled people who were not paid as much as their coworkers who were less technically able but more politically adept.