17,000 AT&T workers across the Southeast strike over contract negotiations | Hacker News Reader

17,000 AT&T workers across the Southeast strike over contract negotiations

npr.org

93 pointsrntn20 comments

> " ... said AT&T did not bargain in good faith and sent negotiators who didn’t have any authority to make decisions."

[which is illegal, according to the Union]

Is what we can expect from our employers when we unionize, as technologists. Hardball tactics.

Good to see how it's played, to prep for that likely future, as our jobs will face restrictions with AI eventually replacing some of us, squeezing some humans out of the workplace.

I feel money is in its own reality.

To be fair they are a dying company and have been laying people off for years. They just were lucky they got monopoly big before getting split up. It is a shame though because they had some many huge innovations made especially at Bell labs. Saying half the internet exists because of the work done there wouldn't be an understatement. But I guess that would be true for any group that was first laying down fundamental technology

> what we can expect from our employers when we unionize, as technologists. Hardball tactics.

>Good to see how it's played, to prep for that likely future,

For those that monitor critical infrastructure where down time is not allowed...just imagine your manager having to do that while you are on a picket line. Imagine the power you will have

That's always been the power labor has, when it's chosen / been allowed to wield it.

That there aren't more strikes in the modern economy (until recently) was one sign of how unbalanced things were.

Be careful proclaiming how critical your jobs are, or you might be forbidden from striking, like air traffic controllers.

ATC were forbidden from striking (or rather not protected from retaliation for striking) because they were federal employees, not because of how critical they were.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7311

> An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia if he—

> (3)participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia; or

Interestingly, I think the "participates in a strike" portion of the statute might be the only part of Section 7311 that could survive and/or has survived [0, 1] a First Amendment challenge.

[0]: https://casetext.com/case/stewart-v-washington

[1]: https://casetext.com/case/national-association-of-letter-car...

Thanks for the correction, I never knew that was the real reason.

Governments regularly order key industries striking back to work at gunpoint. It's one thing that both parties can agree on.

See: Rail workers' strike.

Really only the rail and airline industries as they are covered by the older Railway Labor Act, rather than the National Labor Relations Act.

Though if a strike in another industry threatened the whole economy, no doubt that would quickly change.

Which is why our (ATC) pay is becoming not worth the job which is why good controllers are quiting or retiring early, and there are lower quality applicants who wash out of the academy, their facility, or skate by until they nearly kill hundreds of people (see the recent Austin airport incident where a plane nearly landed on a Southwest plane, or other incidents that don't make the news that I can't mention without doxing myself), all while pilots are getting 40% raises. I hope your TCAS is working.

Rasie our f***ing pay.

Opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect the Federal Aviation Administration.

(I'm close to retirement eligibility, so instead of working until I'm 56 - the mandatory returement age, I'm going to retire sooner. Because there has been a struggle to hire an adequate number of controllers over the past decade or so, no one is really going to replace my vacancy which causes shortstaffing and everyone else to be that much more overworked, but when the FAA does fill that spot, it will be by someone who is not as good because people who would be better will be attracted by better salaries and work-life balance in other jobs.)

How much does technology assist today's air traffic controller? I'm wondering how close we are to having the ATC function completely automated?

Another user made a good analogy in a recent thread, and they said something to the effect of: it's like self driving cars, the computers can do 99% of it when conditions are perfect, but it's the 1% that can't be programmed that has life and death impact.

Or like a coworker said: a monkey can do our job 99% of the time, it's the other 1% where we earn our pay.

If I had a M-F/9-5, I wouldn't have the same issue about the pay, however there are 15,000 controllers across the U.S., and none of them have a M-F/9-5. If the U.S. airspce was restricted to M-F/9-5, then our economy would grind to a halt, billions if not trillions would be lost in productivity, our military would be tied with its hands behind its back, etc.

---

I used to recommend ATC as a career for people, not anymore. I've heard of other controllers telling people that they convinced to become ATC that they're now sorry that they did. When talent leaves, and talent recomends to other talent to choose a different career, there's going to be problems down the road. The adoption of technological advancement over the past several decades in U.S. ATC has been abysmally-slow, I'm afraid it won't make up for the brain drain.

Pay a little more money now while there are still good controllers that can train future good controllers, or pay a lot more in other ways later when the talent is gone and can't come back.

Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the Federal Aviation Administration.

The move they'll make (I've seen this firsthand) is they'll exclude the most senior people (architects, distinguished engineers) from union eligibility. Leadership will do this by including them in meetings where they are privy to sensitive and confidential information and then will classify them as a 'confidential employee'.

This tactic is useful in ensuring that you always have a few people who can _probably_ keep the lights on, even if they are sub-optimally practiced at those systems.

I don't know a ton about unions so first I've heard of such a thing. How does this work? Isn't it illegal to prevent someone from joining a union? (Yellow dog contracts?)

Confidential employees are prohibited by the NLRA from joining a union, same as managers and supervisors.

Plenty of senior technologists acting as team leads would fall under one of those categories.

I don’t expect technologists to ever really unionize. In all the orgs I’ve worked senior engineers are effectively management. So unless that shifts so ICs are just labor, I don’t know if a union will make sense.

Maybe with lower level positions, but I think the trend in those is to automate them away.

There could be a future where base IT is like teamsters where no one can touch the WiFi unless they have a union card.

It's already happening. CWA has around 700k members, many of of them are technologists, programmers, etc. It isn't just low level or IT.

There are a lot of things that a union can do that would be nearly impossible for non-unionized employees to ask for.

I don’t think there’s a company out there that doesn’t fuck over its domestic and foreign work force.

In this highly capitalistic/materialistic society, these generic MBA types and B(usiness)-school flunkies are always min/maxing for profit. Stonk must go up, prioritize stock holders or whatever.

Nobody cares about establishing small/medium companies with sustainable growth. Treating workers with dignity and keeping pay disparity to a minimum

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