Michael Gurstein wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 15:52:41 -0700
> From: Michael Givel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: High Tech Temps Aren't Mourning, They are Organizing
>
> Labor Group Wants to Organize Tech Temp Workers
> It seeks benefits, security for Microsoft `permatemps'
>
> Ilana DeBare, Chronicle Staff Writer
> Friday, July 16, 1999
[snip]
> They clearly have got an uphill battle. High-tech employees not only
> are independent minded, but they also often are well paid. Traditional
> union elections and contracts can't be applied easily to temporary
> employees, who make up a growing share of the tech workforce. And the
> entrepreneurial culture of the tech industry means that many workers
> see stock options rather than union cards as the ticket to financial
> security.
>
> But there are some growing murmurs of discontent within the ranks of
> tech workers that could create opportunities for unions.
>
> Programmers and engineers in their 40s and 50s commonly voice
> complaints about age discrimination. And as companies rely increasingly
> on contractors and temporary workers, some high-tech temps are starting
> to rebel against what they see as second-class status.
[snip]
Recently, I observed the work situation of a friend who was
employed in an IT shop where there were about 15 employees (including
the IT Director) and more than 15 contract programmers / software
engineers (all working on developing one big application for the
company). The sociology of the contract workers (however well
*paid* they may have been...) seemed grim: Each Friday (Thursday nite,
if they were lucky...) most would go home for the weekend to
places possibly a thousand miles away, only to have to go in the
other direction the same thousand miles on Sunday nite or Monday
morning. Each had a perhaps 3-1/2 foot section of work-shelf, just
big enough to hold a computer monitor, a stack of computer books
and a can of soda -- oh, yes, and a telephone. Five or six of
them would thus be lined up along the wall of a narrow cul-de-sac
appendage of the IT department's
main work space (no windows, no ventilation -- some of the
people had little electric fans...) --
sort of like cattle in a factory-farm lined up in their
pens facing a common feeding trough....
They were working on a project which was to be the
hiring company's flagship activity, but about which
the company knew almost nothing and wasn't doing anything
to acquire the knowledge to take over the
project when it would be finished. The consulting company
manager said that
the company that was contracting them didn't know what it wanted, so
a very important thing was to document everything one did (to
account for time spent, i.e., paid for by the company)....
Despite conditions approaching Heraclitean flux (you
never had precisely the same group of people working
on the project twice), the
project was gradually approaching a successful
completion almost as if *it* "had a mind of its own" --
due, of course, to the logic of computer programming that
bugs have to get fixed.
--
We seem to be undergoing an a massive "computer revolution",
centered around the the growth of an acceleratingly prolific
flowering of diverse forms of techno-drudgery and
meaningless but pressured, highly mentally demanding activity
involving computers. Here, as so often, "crescit eundo": the
more of this stuff the people do, the greater the demand for
more of it they produce as one of the consequences of their
activity, and the harder it becomes to put a halt to the
manic yet depressive process....
Why shouldn't these people unionize? It's worth
a try, before we give up and say, like Heidegger: "Only a
god can save us."
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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