December 17, 2008 | Developer, News

Technology Firms Against Union Organizing Bill

The Hill is reporting that tech firms are beginning to wake up to what they see as a threat in the form of an upcoming pro-union bill.

The bill is a so-called “card-check” bill , which means that instead of employees voting in an election for whether they want to be in a union or not, they can sign “yes” to a union representative when they come to their door.

The story is being discussed on Slashdot here:

Slashdot | Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing

I have to say I don’t really like the general theory of “card-checking.” For one thing, it means that there’s no secret ballot. Also, I think most people think of signing something when someone comes to your door as more akin to signing a petition than actually voting.

So I don’t necessarily support this bill.

On the other hand, it’s hard to figure out why software professionals, of all professionals, have no professional association that actually does something in their interest. For some reason, most programmers seem to associate unions with blue-collar factory workers and violent strikes and therefore don’t want to be part a union. What they forget is that a union doesn’t have to be like that.

For example, doctors have the American Medical Association (AMA). If it seems that that the AMA doesn’t engage in the kinds of “dirty” political activities that (blue-collar) unions do, it’s because they’ve already done all the lobbying they need to do. Doctors are licensed by the state in all 50 states. Who can become a new doctor is regulated by existing doctors. Same for lawyers and the American Bar Association (ABA). Try practicing law without a license.

Note: organizations like the ACM don’t really count, because they promote computer science, not software developers.

Not only would having an active professional association promote the financial interests of software engineers, it would elevate the the profession to a respected level among the other professions. The problem is that we programmers are just too in love with machines to notice what our own interest is.