>Yes... lemme guess - you have to bargain individually? The lack of
>collective bargaining in IT is certainly one factor in the wage curve -
>wages in a particular job catagory seem to stay pretty constant. The
>'libertarian' argument that prevails in the industry is that if you want
>an increase, get another kind of job (of course there are the programmer,
>senior programmer, project manager distinctions, but there are also more
>subtle ones).
All of them likely to involve an outlay of money and time for courses that will allow you to add skills to your resume.
>Of course, lack of collective bargaining (i.e. unions, et al.) is not just
>a case of IT people fooling themselves. At the Science Park in Cambridge,
>UK, unions are banned - try and start one, and you'll get fired. Some big
>biotech firms have unions in them - I think Glaxo-Wellcome does, but
>SmithKline Beecham doesn't, which caused all sorts of speculation when
>they said they were going to merge.
The various societies for technical writers would be more appealing if they spent their time lobbying for better working conditions rather than producing fancy journals, holding conferences and sucking up to Micro$coff.
>For younger workers in particular, the price of collective action
>(possibly getting fired, or blacklisted - particularly harmful if you're a
>contractor) is often not worth the cost, since the jobs are generally
>available, and you can live comfortably off the wages.
Older workers wonder when those grey hairs'll start giving potential employers the signal that they're out of touch (that's the ostensible reason for rejecting experience - the real reason is much more likely to be that the younger ones'll kill themselves for less money to make their reputation, to get a good recommendation for the next job). Some job descriptions carry an upper limit on experience as well as a lower one: over ten years' experience and you're out of the running.
gloomily, Jo