[Gllug] Trades unions

[itsbruce at uklinux.net]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 12:07:49PM +0100, John Hearns wrote:
> We've had quite an interesting thread this morning on sickness.
> 
> I'd like to ask about trades union membership for IT types.
> I guess that there's a whole spectrum of people on GLLUG -
> from students, part time, self employed, employed, unemployed.
> 
> Do unions thee days cater for people who have work patterns
> like 'us'.
> After all - we're always being told that we should have a flexible
> workforce.

There's no one answer to this.  Some of us are part of an IT department
servicing a larger workforce in a non-IT organisation.  Others work in
the Computing sector.  Some of us are contractors, some permanent.  For
those in the first group (IT dept in non-IT company) then in most cases
the practical choice (if you choose to join a union at all) is to join
the same union as the rest of the staff.

Our workforce is 72% unionised with 100% of the IT department being
union members (the head of IT was also the shop steward, for a while)
and we're in UNISON.

In the Computing sector, in contrast, there's often a strong anti-union
sentiment, though some of the larger companies do have trades union
representation.  Geeks are often not joiners (some taking individualism
to the point of misanthropy), while some see themselves as part of an
elite (and are aggressively anti-union) or just don't see union
membership as relevant to their job.

-- 
Bruce

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