This $10/hr, although sub-market for my skills, is more than I have ever made before. Also, there is a very informal work atmosphere - no punching clocks, etc.
If this company were to provide market-level or decent pay and benefits, it could not afford to exist, some would suggest.
In addition, the Ny Times article touches on the subject, but not very explicity: how does a union form that is not based confinement of space.
--- Lisa & Ian Murray <seamus at accessone.com> wrote:
> Self exploitation of Gen-X continues. The situation
> is nowhere near as rosy
> as Greenhouse portrays it.
>
> $50,000 a year at 70 hour weeks come to a little
> over $14 an hour....
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/07/biztech/articles/26labo.html
>
>
> July 26, 1999
>
>
> High-Technology Sector Unmoved by Labor's Song
> By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
>
> SEATTLE -- As the labor movement sets its sights on
> the booming
> high-technology world, employees like Matt Shea, a
> 24-year-old software
> developer, seem ripe for the picking. He often
> clocks 70-hour weeks, his
> managers sometimes push him to work past midnight,
> and he never receives
> overtime pay.
>
> But ask Shea whether he wants a union at his
> workplace, a thriving Internet
> start-up called Go2Net, and his response is a
> puzzled expression that says
> "Does Not Compute."
>
>
>
>
> Dan Lamont for The New York Times
> Matthew Shea, a software designer for Go2Net in
> Seattle, says he likes his
> job, is well compensated and sees no need for a
> union.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
>
> "As far as me personally, and for everyone else
> here, unions have never come
> up," said Shea, who said he loved his job,
> notwithstanding the sweatshop
> hours. "Everything I want is offered to me here."
>
> The American labor movement has belatedly recognized
> that if it is to
> reverse the decades-long slide in the percentage of
> workers belonging to
> unions, it must make some headway in high
> technology, the economy's
> fastest-growing sector. To increase their numbers
> and their influence in
> politics and at the bargaining table, unions cannot
> afford to be shut out of
> the glamorous, powerful high-tech industry, which
> accounts for an
> ever-larger share of the work force.
>
> Persuading technology workers to join unions will
> not be easy, though,
> because of all that is lavished upon people like
> Shea. His job gives him
> valuable stock options, flexible hours, an excellent
> medical plan, a sense
> of family and, perhaps most important, the thrill of
> building something.
>
> Labor leaders acknowledge that they face an uphill
> battle -- only a small
> fraction of the nation's 2 million computer and
> software developers,
> programmers and engineers belongs to labor unions.
> But organizers are far
> from packing their bags in Seattle or Silicon
> Valley. In fact, they are
> convinced that many high-technology employees will
> ultimately warm to
> labor's message that workers need a collective voice
> to stand up to
> management.
>
> In a public relations coup this spring, union
> organizers trumpeted one of
> their first successes in high technology when 16
> temporary workers at
> Microsoft became the first group of software workers
> in a single workplace
> to call for union representation. Their action
> reflects a little-understood
> aspect of high-tech America: While most
> high-technology workers are
> contented haves, there are also many discontented
> have-nots.
>
> Most have-nots come from the sea of long-term temps
> who work at Microsoft
> and other high-tech companies, and they often
> complain of being second-class
> citizens who receive bare-bones benefits and have no
> job security or stock
> options. Microsoft employs 20,500 regular workers
> domestically and 6,000
> temps, who often call themselves permatemps because
> they work anywhere from
> six months to three years at the company, testing
> software, writing manuals,
> designing Web pages and developing CD-ROMs.
>
> Industry experts estimate that at many companies --
> including Compaq
> Computer, Hewlett-Packard and Intel -- more than 10
> percent of the workers
> are temps.
>
> "The conditions are not the same as where unions
> have had a lot of success,"
> said Jonathan Rosenblum, organizing director for the
> King County Labor
> Council in Seattle, "but that doesn't mean there
> aren't a lot of substantive
> issues that concern high-tech workers and make them
> feel they want to have a
> voice in their job."
>
> Just as high technology has had vast ripple effects
> on the way Americans
> live, it is forcing changes in the American labor
> movement. Labor's
> traditional focus has been getting a majority of
> employees at a work site --
> usually full-time workers tied for years to a single
> employer -- to vote for
> a union then negotiating a contract for them.
>
> But unions are finding that this model may be as
> obsolete in high-tech
> America as a 286 Intel chip, because workers jump
> among companies like
> honeybees from flower to flower.
>
> Some labor organizers acknowledge that they may
> never get a majority of
> workers at start-ups or at giants like Intel to vote
> in a union. So they are
> trying to devise new ways to represent
> high-technology workers.
>
> An innovative example came in February when, seeking
> to improve benefits for
> high-tech temps, the AFL-CIO office in Silicon
> Valley set up an employment
> agency offering far better benefits than other
> agencies.
>
> "The way we go to work has changed," said Amy Dean,
> director of the
> AFL-CIO's Silicon Valley office. "So we, the labor
> movement, have to create
> a response that recognizes that the world has
> changed, while still embracing
> the values, like equity and giving workers a voice,
> that labor has always
> stood for."
>
>
> The Haves: Big Salaries and Benefits
>
> or Shea, the 24-year-old software engineer, unions
> are not so much
> undesirable as irrelevant.
>
> At Go2Net, he has no out-of-pocket costs for his
> health or dental plan. He
> is happy with his flexible hours and two weeks of
> vacation a year. And he
> loves working at a start-up where he has a strong
> sense of making a
> contribution.
>
> "My goal has always been to develop software that
> lots of people use," he
> said. "Here you can see 10,000 people using your
> software every day."
>
> Nor do his 70-hour weeks make him resent management.
>
> "As far as what gets me up in the morning or what
> makes me stay up so late,
> that's a pride issue," said Shea, who received a
> bachelor's degree in
> computer science from the University of California
> at San Diego. "Last
> night, I was up till 4 a.m. testing a new home
> page."
>
>
=== message truncated ===
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