Yup

Post #72,782 by broomberg 1/5/03 7:32:06 PM Reply	Yup A) You will never get a "union". The type of work we do is far more thinking than anything else. If not, it WILL be automated. What, is the second sentence somehow supposed to be causally connected to the first? Yes. The purpose of a union is to ensure that interchangable people are not interchanged based on management's whim. My premise is that most of the work that "IT" professionals do are either extremely repetitive pushbutton work, which is really following a series of directions or extremely complex work which requires a large amount of experience, education, and talent. In the case of the 1st category, the work is little different than textile factory workers around 1812. When those jobs got automated out of existence, there was a lot of screaming too. If a person with little or no experience can be trained to do your job, then no amount of unionizing can save you. First it will be given to the lowest bidder, and then it will be automated out of existence. It is easier to automate this type of work than to automate factory work because this is almost ALL software, as opposed to factory work that needs lots of robotic hardware. In the case of the 2nd category, there are far fewer people who can do the job, and far less need for a large number of those people, so the supply and demand balance out. I am still not sure what deSitter is focusing on here. Is he lumping in (hhmm) network install, server support, general infrastructure along with internal applications development vs external application development. Huge disparity of skills and responsibilities.
Post #72,784 by CRConrad 1/5/03 7:36:08 PM Reply	So you're assuming the second category doesn't need a union?
Post #72,787 by broomberg 1/5/03 7:42:39 PM Reply	Yup They are not interchangeable.
Post #72,794 by JayMehaffey 1/5/03 8:20:55 PM Reply	Only if The supply and demand sorta even out only if the managers are rational about how important the programmers are to the company. I've seen more then one project go down in flames because the company wouldn't give key techincal people raises. This causes the smart people to jump ship, and then the managers are amazed that the $10 dollar an our VB programmers they hired can't build a high performance web server. Jay
Post #72,803 by broomberg 1/5/03 8:41:30 PM Reply	But it's appropriate If management can't judge the value of the employees, then the business deserves to die.
Post #72,801 by deSitter 1/5/03 8:36:37 PM Reply	Yup Well, there are journeyman electricians, and there are 30 year masters. They belong to the same union. Some put in runway lights all over the country/world, others rig a dome light in the shitter. It's electrical work. I claim that IT work is identifiable enough to be treated the same way. -drl
Post #72,806 by broomberg 1/5/03 8:44:47 PM Reply	Try it Give a list of identifiable skills and and what you consider their value, and compare against electricians. Also, make sure you list what each is allowed to do so they don't step into another's territory.

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