On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:44 PM, betty <b1sun...@yahoo.es> wrote: > Unlike people who are captured and forced into slavery, the high tech > workers choose that for themselves because they're too "proud", > short-sighted, uninformed, disconnected, to organize. Hotel workers > organized and improved their lot, why not programmers? As long as they're > ordinary employees or contractors [as opposed to having a written, defined, > fixed contract] and not on par for negotiating with employers, the situation > won't change and could get worse.
I do not disagree with anything you have written. Personally, I think that a prime reason that high-tech computing "professionals," as they see themselves, shun the thought of organizing for their own betterment is because they tend to associate such organization of workers as being "blue collar" in nature. This relates to issues of pride as you have pointed out. Organizing of workforces, and unions in general, has been cast as something that the lower castes involve themselves in. It has become a class issue as a result of hype associated with efforts to undo such attempts on the part of workers to achieve more for themselves. As service and data oriented industries have increased, and more workers are now involved in jobs that require them to sit in front of computers all day wearing suits or dressy clothing as their uniforms, distinctions have been sharpened between them and those who work in manufacturing jobs. These distinctions create powerful images, in large part promoted through advertising and other forms of propaganda, that work to greatly effect the mindsets of all workers. Lines become drawn and hardened, and we even see this being reflected in our political landscape. I.e., Palin vs. Biden = blue collar vs. white collar = working class joe six-pack vs. rich aloof elitist. Of course, we all actually know that Pain and Co. are opposed to unions and such, so go figure. Okay, I got a bit political there for a moment, but felt I had to point that out as paralleling this discussion. Has the internet been instrumental in any of this, one way or the other? I do not know, but if internet oriented communications could be of use in organizing for those working in the various fields of data entry, programming and coding, those workers need to be very careful since corporations apparently have the right to intercept and read e-mails sent or received on company owned systems. Steve ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
