Just to be abundantly clear, I'm not proposing unions or any form of organizing for CIOs, CTOs and IT professionals at that level. I'm proposing some form of organizing--whether a union, a guild or a professional association--for low- and mid-level IT professionals.

Yes, CIOs and CTOs are management. They are typically the ones hired to do the outsourcing and the insourcing of H-1B and contractors.

I have been an IT professional for over 20 years, and arguably at the highest level without being management. Still, I can certainly see the benefits of being unionized. For the last few years I have been forced into contracting. Ever since being laid-off from Oracle, when Oracle decided to send a lot of jobs over to India, landing a "direct hire"/"full-time employment" job has been nearly impossible. However, getting contract work is much easier. The companies want my skills, they just do not want to make any kind of a commitment to someone who might want to have a vacation, spend time with their family, or may get an expensive medical condition.

On another point, companies typically call raises "merit increases", giving the idea that if you do a good job, you will get a good raise, and if you do a bad job, you won't get a raise. However, this "merit" is measured through a mechanism called the "performance review". Everyone will have their hero moments and their "oops, I made a mistake" moments through out their tenure. It is too easy for a manager to accentuate your hero moments if they are willing to give you more money, or accentuate your mistakes if the manager wants to put you near the back end of the Bell Curve.

In a recent interview with Microsoft, the recruiter was trying to tell me that they separate the performance review from the raise. She said the raise can come at anytime, and should not be expected to come after the performance review. She argued that if you "hit the ball out of the park" during your tenure, you can get the raise right then and not have to wait for the performance review. You don't have to be a computer scientist to realize that they are setting you up for very infrequent raises.

This is why I joined WashTech. This is why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important. It just may give tech workers the tools they need to unionize. This is also why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is very afraid of the Employee Free Choice Act and is spending millions to try to stop it.

Rennie Sawade
Communications Chair
WashTech (http://washtech.org)

Let's be real. Nothing will protect one's position at work better than own professional skills and values. Being in IT for nearly 30 years, I trust my job security can be created and maintained only by me and not by others, and most certainly not by my employers.

The world is now different, there are no jobs for life - and not only in IT.

There are top skills for sale at any price, a lot of good skills where the negotiation process is always challenging, and plenty of very average skills at a very average price. At this is a very good and healthy situation.

Changing the market using politics will not bring any good to the industry. Certainly, this may be somehow beneficial for those who's market value is the lowest. But with a bit more energy, skills improvements and pro activity - they can achieve much better results for them.

Companies do not want to pay for skills, even for top skills. And why should they? Many of those in power in the U.S. government bought into this idea of Laissez-faire economics along with allowing the unrestricted global arbitrage of labor. You are right in noting that things are "different". These backward trade policies are gutting our middle class for the benefit of international corporations and for the nations that are taking advantage of America's free-for-all policies.
It has certainly lowered not only job security, but job quality and compensation/benefits. Average salaries for software engineers have been dropping over the last several years (references at WashTech.org). Mis-classification of workers into "contractors" is another big issue.
All of this has affected my career and I have some of the most top skills around. I developed software for PDAs and system level software for Microsoft included security features for XP SP2. I have worked on enterprise level software for large corporations in the U.S. and Canada. I have written software for a cutting-edge medical device used to dynamically track tumors during radiation therapy. On the side, I do website development, do my own email and website hosting, and do volunteer network administration work for WashTech.
On top of this, as someone who earned a Masters degree in Information Systems Management in 2004, I can whole heartedly say that "improving skills" or getting "more education" is NOT the solution and it just doesn't work.
Unionization won't fix all of the problems right away, but it is a good step in returning the governing of this country back to where it belongs, with the great hard working people of this nation.