Will a union protect IT jobs?

Before I get started let me tell you a few things up front; I am a student of history so I have seen the good things that unions have done for the workers of America as well as the bad. My grandfather was a union steward and my father drove a truck and therefore had to join the union to keep his job. I live in the Midwest where all of the car manufacturers and most of the companies that support them are all unionized.

What started this was an article entitled, Should IT form a Union, which began by describing life in IT as “Sixty hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time…” and ended the opening line with “all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow”. The author of the article proposes that to improve our collective conditions and to keep IT jobs in the states that we all should form a union; my response to this is…yeah right.

First off, how would IT jobs be classified to set the pay range? Most IT people I know are generally the jacks of all trades; they do and learn what is required to get the job done. Maybe we could set the IT pay scale on the number of certifications that you have. That would thrill the purveyors of braindumps to no end. That brings up another point, how would those of you that have worked so hard in the IT industry feel about getting paid the same as the newbie that just got hired because they purchased their certificate from TestKing (or whatever their name is now) or simply because they have seniority. I am sure the answer is, “not so much”.

Would creating an IT union help keep the jobs here in the states? Let’s look at the auto industry and check on how well that has helped them. When you combine union negotiated salaries and benefits with lower quality work that the union mentality sometimes creates, you have a great reason for those companies that haven’t shipped their jobs overseas to rethink their position.

So even though there are some interesting challenges to working in the IT field (wasn’t that a nice way to say that), unionizing would do more harm than good. I just think that it would accelerate the job migration out of the country and reduce the level of competency for any of the jobs that did remain.

So what do you think? Add a comment to argue your case for a unionized or non-unionized IT environment.

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