10 Apr 2007
Several weeks ago IT Week published a letter from a Paul Sladen on the unpopularity of IT as a career. He argued that the main reason for the falling numbers of IT graduates is the lack of stability offered by employers, who are happy to axe staff and move work offshore before you can say “minimum wage”.
It is a valid and pretty common explanation for the looming skills crisis, but what jumped out at me about Sladen’s letter was not his plea for employers to nurture their IT staff but his final line, in which he argued that one of the other contributory factors to IT’s unpopularity was “a lack of union representation”.
Now, as you can probably imagine, this is hardly a popular line of reasoning in an age when business leaders are lauded and unions are regarded with a degree of suspicion usually reserved for South American revolutionaries.
The decline of the unions and IT professionals’ failure to unionise have long been bugbears of mine and, unfashionable as it may be, I can’t help but wonder if many of the UK IT industry’s well-documented problems could not be better addressed with the help of a strong and coherent IT union.
Of course, there are unions available to IT professionals – including the general workers unions Amicus and Prospect, the services union PCS and telecommunications union Connect – and I’m sure they all do a good job. However, only Connect could claim to be wholly focused on IT and with fewer than 20,000 members it represents a fraction of the million or so IT professionals estimated to be working in the UK.
Surely a strong IT trade union could help address the fear among potential entrants to the industry that they would be joining a sector where their job could be outsourced tomorrow. Equally, it could also help tackle the chronic lack of formal IT training offered by many employers and the poor work-life bal ance and average £5,000 a year unpaid overtime experienced by many IT professionals.
Given that IT jobs enjoy relatively good pay and conditions, and the sector’s mainstream emergence followed hot on the heels of the miners’ riots, it is easy to understand why IT has never been closely associated with the union movement.
However, it remains strange that one of the most important sectors of the UK economy has such limited union representation. While I am fully aware that IT needs a militant protectionist union as much as it needs another three-letter acronym, a modern and dynamic IT trade union could play a critical role in making technology an attractive career choice.
I could not agree more! Unions are exactly what IT needs.
I am a died-in-the-wool Conservative who has been in a Union for 15 years and never regretted it.
In the case of a dispute it is better for both parties to have well-qualified outsiders to negotiate for each party. This allows open communication on both sides as there is no axe to grind.
Posted by: John F 04 Jan 2008
IT companies will keep asking staff to work longer and harder for less, until staff in the sector get unionised.
It's not just about the pound notes, there's a culture where staff are treated as "human resources" rather than people. In a sector dominated by big companies, how can an individual have an effective voice on their own?
I think James is wrong to think a union has to be industry-specific to be effective. Most IT staff don't work for IT companies. Many are in finance, the public sector etc. With outsourcing, many of us move from company to company or even sector to sector.
Union membership and organisation in the IT industry is rising rapidly, albeit from a low base. Usually this doesn't hit the headlines, but makes a real difference on the ground.
Ultimately, a union is just a framework for working people to cooperate in pursuit of shared interests. Unionisation will grow where people get involved.
Posted by: Ian 13 Apr 2007
I was pleased to read James Murray's plea for the unionisation of IT; less pleased to see an old canard about the 1984 Miners' Strike perpetuated by referring to it as the "miners' riots". The event most closely associated in the public mind with the word "riot" is probably the picket of the Orgreave coke depot, where a large gathering of strikers was set upon by a well-equipped police presence in what is now widely regarded as a deliberate attack authorised by Margaret Thatcher personally. Negative perceptions of trade union membership are only reinforced by such journalistic slips of the pen.
I have worked in government IT for 32 years and have never had trouble reconciling a professional attitude to my work with membership of a trade union.
Posted by: Iain Mackay 12 Apr 2007
I couldn't agree more with James Murray's suggestion that good trade union organisation would make working in IT a better experience. But then I would think that, wouldn't I - I'm from Connect, the IT-focused union mentioned in his article!
Historically, strong trade unions have come about through adversity; and up to now, adversity for anyone working in IT in the UK has generally been mitigated by high demand for IT skills, ensuring good terms and conditions and easy job mobility. As James Murray points out, to some extent this is changing and the balance of power in IT is shifting to employers.
But IT workers still have a great deal in their favour - not least all that unpaid overtime (or 'discretionary effort', as employers like to call it). IT workers often think that trade unions are not for professionals like them - but increasingly unions do represent professional workers. Some of the most influential occupational bodies - like the BMA and the Law Society - are trade unions at least in part. And Connect has been organising and negotiating for professionals in the telecommunications sector for decades. It's time for IT workers to start thinking about how to promote their collective interests as professionals at work.
Posted by: Steph Marston 12 Apr 2007
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