scottsimpson.net

fiat discordiam

A 23-year SBC employee, Belous went through the last CWA strike against SBC -- a four-week walkout in 1983. "It almost killed me," she remembered. "I'm praying it won't be that again." (full story)

There's a simple way to avoid getting 'almost killed'... don't strike. Why don't these people ever learn? Strikes were effective in the heyday of labor unions, when organized labor was an effective tool to protect workers against management. But anymore, unions seem to do more harm than good. It seems rather strange to me that the same people that complain about wages not being high enough pay hundreds of dollars per year into organizations that supposedly get them more money. That's called a pyramid scheme.

There was a time when unions were useful. Very few are useful today (teachers unions, etc.) The entire concept is flawed (or does no one else see a little bit of a conflict in people whose entire job consists of labor organization... and are often paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for management jobs ... just like the ones they're trying to destroy... not to mention the corruption that runs rampant) unless the organization is addressing an issue that is truly major (huge cuts, like removing all medical care or huge salary slashes in times of fiscal prosperity)

Striking is useless and serves no purpose. It hurts the company (read: less income equals less profit equals less money to pay workers) and it hurts the consumers (during the insipid grocery strike I still went to VONS, despite being called various names by the monkeys picketing outside). One of the VONS picketers was drinking a Starbucks. There's nothing wrong with that, unless you're holding a sign that complains about low pay. But back to SBC.

SBC workers don't really have a public to strike in front of. Very few people that I know regularly visit the central offices. Very few people will respond to the call to boycott the SBC service if the negotiations fail. Drop my internet connection because some other people are whining? I think not. I've been experiencing latency issues lately, but I think that's due in large part to these inane spam viruses more than anything else. It's certainly not a labor issue. (modems and routers work just as hard when nobody's watching or paying them)

In sum, I have one thing to say to most union strikers: shut up. If you approach your conflicts with management in a sane, civil manner, rather than resorting to puerile threats of striking and boycott (it's technically blackmail... 'pay us more or we'll break our contract with you'), you might get more than you bargained for and, imagine, people might actually support you. Justify your demands for pay increases in a reasonable way. Rationalize your opposition to minute increases in insurance co-pays (you know, most likely it isn't that the company is out to get you ... have you considered the concept that maybe their costs have risen because of factors beyond their control? Imagine there's a strike in a medical supply warehouse... and hospitals can't get the tools they need at the same price... they're forced to raise their prices to cover their higher costs, and boom, the cost of health coverage goes up.) I once heard of a group striking because their insurance co-pay price went up a dollar. That's just juvenile.

There is concern that SBC tech jobs might be outsourced to India. God forbid a company maximize profitability. Supporting workers that aren't working can get expensive, and in Mill's Utilitarian theory, it would do more people more good if a US company paid two people in India to do the work of one person in the US.

I used to wonder why 1940s-era Germans went after labor organizers (in addition to Catholics and Gypsies, and others). Now I know.