7 ms·

IBM has literally no disincentive to do this, either de jure or de facto. The threat of H1-B applications being denied is either laughable or [there aren't enou

IBM has literally no disincentive to do this, either de jure or de facto. The threat of H1-B applications being denied is either laughable or [there aren't enough of them anyway] depending on who you ask. And IBM employees, like most tech workers, don't think they need to act (read: bargain) collectively and thus have no recourse. Until the tech industry wakes up to the reality that they _are_ labor, companies will continue to treat their employees as fungible, on an increasingly global scale.

parfe 11y ago
>Until the tech industry wakes up to the reality that they _are_ labor Never going to happen. The great conceit of the tech world peons is believing they're above the simple garbage man or postal worker. After all they create such value. Admitting a union would help acknowledges they're not special.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  When you feel like you can sum up a few million opinions as the result of a stupidity that you personally do not suffer, the odds that you are correct in your assessment approach zero.
  - draw_down 11y ago
    On the other hand, anti-vaxxers exist. Many of them.
  - parfe 11y ago
    Programmers eagerly work in EA style sweatshops producing games and other software with massive unpaid overtime, or count themselves lucky that IBM kept them for just a few extra months to train their replacements. IT workers could demand protection from the same abuses that custodians and delivery drivers fought for and earned decades ago. But then the industry might need to admit their collars aren't as white as they pretend.
    - untog 11y ago
      Some programmers do that, most don't. But more to the point, if you desire a work/life balance you absolutely can find a programming job that will allow it. It'll pay less than the unpaid overtime job, but it exists, and will still pay more than most occupations.
    - Chlorus 11y ago
      > But then the industry might need to admit their collars aren't as white as they pretend. You're fucking insane if you think the plight of the average programmer is anywhere near what custodians go through. I used to work for one of these IBM-like offshoring firms before I knew better and the quality of their work is simply garbage(there's some good people in there of course). For example, I was called in to troubleshoot a faulty URL - I asked them for it; they linked me to a localhost page. Other joys included network engineers who didn't know what port SSH runs on and Java programmers who literally copy-pasted straight from the web.
    - pattisapu 11y ago
      In the US most such programmers are likely exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA [1]. [1] http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17e_computer.pdf http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17e_computer.pdf
- thenewwazoo 11y ago
  I disagree - I think that the right-wing opinion machine has been successfully busting unions and scapegoating labor for so long that the tech industry doesn't see the value-add of the union itself. I view it a bit like the anti-vax movement. Nobody today is dying of polio, so the necessity and urgency are lost. (And Americans are spectacularly bad at learning from history because exceptionalism)
  - Chlorus 11y ago
    > (And Americans are spectacularly bad at learning from history because exceptionalism) Because the union scandals of the 60s and 70s never happened, of course.
  - clarkmoody 11y ago
    > bad at learning from history I assume you're referring to the current fascination with socialism? You know, that great political innovation that lead to a hundred million murders in the 20th century. Sorry, couldn't resist. You should look into the history of unions. You might be surprised at their non-progressive / non-egalitarian origins. You don't need a "right-wing opinion machine" to besmirch the name of unions; you simply have to look at the long history of state-union corruption.
    - yardie 11y ago
      Socialism did what? Some despot puts Socialist in the state name and that makes it socialist? So North Korea is a shining example of democracy because it's right there Democratic People's Republic. Does your 100million lives include the many millions the USA has helped see to their deaths? I couldn't resist.
      - clarkmoody 11y ago
        Don't get the idea that I'm defending the US government's actions in any way, since I disagree with most of its actions, especially in foreign policy.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Has anyone ever tried an open source guild / jobs / recruiting / organized labor software system? Maybe a mix of Glass Door with Adhocracy or Liquid Feedback https://liqd.net/software.html https://liqd.net/software.html http://dev.liquidfeedback.org/trac/lf/ http://dev.liquidfeedback.org/trac/lf/
- obrero 11y ago
  I used to work in IT at an investment bank. We got no overtime, and had to work all hours - 9 hours a day, sometimes starting at 7 AM, weekend work, pages in the middle of the night. The electricians all left at 5 PM. They belonged to the IBEW and had pension plans, job security with seniority etc. IT used to bitch about how they'd leave at 5 PM when we had to start doing some work. They would have stayed past 5 PM, but the super wealthy bank would have had to pay them (not us) overtime, and they almost never did that. The other IT people would also moan about how stupid they were compared to us. How stupid are they? They leave at 5 PM, or get overtime if they do, they have job security, they don't have to work all hours or are paid well if they do any how, they had pensions and job security based on seniority. Who were the real fools?
  - draw_down 11y ago
    Yes, that sounds like tech workers for sure. (Everyone besides me is so stupid, which is why I work twice as hard as them and earn less.)
  - mason240 11y ago
    To be fair, I would much rather have a 401k than a pension.
- gaius 11y ago
  The funny thing is companies are quite honest and open about this; they call you "a resource" for a reason...
- levemi 11y ago
  I've never met anyone nor worked with anyone who thought they were better than someone else because of their job. Maybe that's something you want to believe, but it isn't true. A great deal of the engineers I work with in the bay area are socially conscious to the tech sector's impact on the community. And really they're harmed by it too, a software engineer can't afford to buy a house either. If what you really believed was true there's no way that someone like Barbara Lee could be in office with such huge wins every two years when so many of her constituents are the same people that work in the area you think is so terrible. Why are you even posting on HN? This is a technical news site.
  - gist 11y ago
    I am not a programmer (although I can program) but I do a fairly important job at the company (that I own) that takes a great deal of thought, training and experience. So yes I do feel that I am "better" than a postal worker or a garbage man a job that doesn't take a great deal of thought, training, intelligence or experience or quite frankly in most (but not all cases) motivation. Of course there are people who are garbage men or postal workers that are there because of luck not intelligence or effort, but there are also people who grew up middle class like I did that aren't doing anything significant in their career either. This idea that all of us are equal (we are not even factoring in luck) is really just a modern day PC version of the way the world is not.
    - matwood 11y ago
      You're better in what way? Thinking? Are you physically better than the garbage man that is outside in 100 degree heat all day picking up your trash? As an aside, I always leave the garbage man Gatorades because frankly the job looks like it sucks.
      - gist 11y ago
        Yes in a thinking way.
      - yardie 11y ago
        LOL. I'm friends with sons of a garbage man. They are highly unionised with a bulletproof health plan, pension plan, college savings plan, etc. And if the city tries to take away even one of those things... ever see trash spontaneously combust when its been left to sit in its own juices for weeks. The guys that haul trash have got it exactly right. It's a hard job that no one wants to do so they know their worth and when they demand they get it. If I lose Facebook for an hour its a bummer. If the trash isn't hauled away its a health hazard.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Doctors have the AMA bargain for rules in statehouses and Congress. Same with lawyers and the American Bar Association. The trial lawyers are particularly adept at lobbying and "campaign contributions". I'm pretty sure people in these professions consider themselves pretty special.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    Perhaps if there's so much resistance to the idea to an IT union, we should buff up the IEEE so it can be a "professional association" on the level of the AMA or the ABA, at least.
Johnny555 11y ago
But unlike with service jobs that need to be done locally like a garbageman or electrician, what good does a union do against outsourcing jobs that can literally be done anywhere in the world? Demanding to the employer: "Either keep our jobs in this country or we're going to stop working!", seems like it would just accelerate the offshoring.
- pigpaws 11y ago
  the companies can be taxed to the point that it would cost the same to have an American employee or one in a foreign country. Companies want "globalism" but they don't want to pay for it.
  - Johnny555 11y ago
    I don't see how that could work since companies would either contract out overseas work, or hire overseas workers through a subsidiary, so instead of IBM hiring 1,000 foreign call center workers, they'll pay "Joe's Call Center" a negotiated fee to run a call center, without IBM writing a single foreign paycheck.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      This sounds like a corner case in the hypothetical law, which is addressed by wording the law more carefully, not jettisoning the idea. If every company is taxed heavily for outshoring work, it would be impossible for Joe's Call Center to employ 1,000 people and make enough profit for them to be competitive vs just hiring the workers directly.
      - Johnny555 11y ago
        Joe's Call Center is incorporated in India and run by Indian management. IBM just hired them for Call Center services. Unless you forsee taxing all companies for all oversees work, I don't see how that can work. And I'm not sure how you can effectively tax a company for all overseas labor, for example, a computer is made up of thousands of components with thousands of suppliers, how can you tax IBM for the low-paid subcontracted labor that mines the minerals that are sold to a manufacturer that makes the plastic that's sold to another manufacturer to create the dielectric for capacitors that's sold to another subcontractor that makes the capacitors that are sold to another subcontrator that glues them on the big tape reels that are sold to another subcontractor that loads them into the pick and place machines that are used by another contractor to build a board that's used by another subcontractor to build a computer for IBM. How far down the chain do you plan on going with taxation? It's easy to look at the simple case and say "Tax overseas workers!" but it's actually quite complicated to come up with rules do actually do so since there's no clear line that divides employees and non-employees. And if you draw that line, the company will move its workers to the otherside of the line.
cortesoft 11y ago
The difference is that as skilled tech workers, when we are laid off we can find new work as fast as we want to. I have worked for a few companies that have gone out of business. Looking for work afterwards is mostly a screening job, picking the work I want to do out of the various offers. Every time, I have been hired for more money than I was making before (it is common knowledge that changing jobs is the best way to get raises) It isn't like I am some hotshot developer, either. I am not a networking type person, so all of my contacts are just people I have worked with at previous shops. The reason it is so easy to find work is because there are simply more jobs available than qualified workers. I know this because I have been on the other side, too (trying to hire people). It is really hard to find quality developers, because they always have multiple offers. Why would workers in this situation want or need to collectively bargain? Every place I have worked needs me more than I need them.
- zanny 11y ago
  > Every place I have worked needs me more than I need them. If this is actually true, in any situation where this happens, you are being underpaid, because it implies the employer is getting more out of your employment arrangement than you are. I know what you meant, it is just the semantics of economics are precarious and a lot of people would fight tooth and nail to be in a position to bargain for more because of a situation where an employer values the worker much more than the worker values the employer. You want equilibrium where the worker gets as much from the employer as they can, which is when employer and work both get as much out as one another.
  - cortesoft 11y ago
    Well, it usually starts out being more equal when the job first starts. Over time, however, your value goes up faster than you get raises (which is why you get the largest raise when you change jobs).
  - Johnny555 11y ago
    No employer could ever stay in business if they paid employees as much value as the employee brings in. A $100K engineer may work on features worth a million dollars a year, but that doesn't mean that an employer could pay that employee a million dollars because the employer has many overhead expenses -- office rent, paying for servers, marketing expenses, paying the sales guys that bring in the million dollars a year, paying other support employees, putting money in the bank to ride through lean times, investing in new products/features that may never make money, etc. The only way an employee can be paid as much money as he brings in for the company is if he is self employed.
at-fates-hands 11y ago
>> The threat of H1-B applications being denied is either laughable or [there aren't enough of them anyway] depending on who you ask. The ironic part is we have close to 10 million people out of work (not including those who have permanently fallen out of the workforce) - you think at least some of those people could fill those jobs?
- golergka 11y ago
  Have you tried hiring engineers? Most of the applicants would provide negative value if hired.
natrius 11y ago
Why shouldn't the global economy seek to make labor fungible? Why shouldn't Indians and Hungarians have the same opportunities to work that I do? I think putting other people who are trying to produce value at a disadvantage for personal gain is a bad thing. Yes, some people get to buy new yachts when they stop buying labor from American workers. We could prevent them from buying labor from other workers, or we could do something about the yachts.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Highest paid people in our society are doctors and lawyers. Are there special laws to subsidize importing them or new laws to deregulate these profession? Let's try these first, see how it works.
  - natrius 11y ago
    We should not emulate the legal protectionism that those industries have pursued. The legally imposed shortages in these industries raise prices and make everyone else poorer. I want no part in that. The aim of our industry should be to make everyone else wealthier by producing zero marginal cost goods that solve people's problems. We should celebrate when problems become cheaper to solve.
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      Interesting take on it you have. What can American middle class workers do about stagnant real wages? Productivity is up, but it's been a while since we've had a raise.
      - natrius 11y ago
        If you believe that too much of the gains from progress have accrued to capital, you can fight to redistribute those gains. Protectionism is redistribution too, it's just poorly directed. Personally, I'd rather see the wealthy fund more public goods. Few people are struggling, and we should support them. Other than that, let's pursue abundance together instead of trying to adjust relative wealth.
pavanky 11y ago
This kind of arguments make me a bit apprehensive. People work in the tech industry are mostly OK with globalization and free markets as long as it does not affect their jobs. I wonder how many people wanting collective bargaining for the tech industry would be OK with increased costs that come with collective bargaining in the manufacturing sector.
product50 11y ago
It is worth noting that the companies IBM is competing for IT Services type work is TCS and Infosys for whom most of the workers are in India. It is difficult to see how IBM will be successful in the IT services industry if they don't adopt a similar low employee cost model.

parfe 11y ago

>Until the tech industry wakes up to the reality that they _are_ labor Never going to happen. The great conceit of the tech world peons is believing they're above the simple garbage man or postal worker. After all they create such value. Admitting a union would help acknowledges they're not special.

oldmanjay 11y ago
When you feel like you can sum up a few million opinions as the result of a stupidity that you personally do not suffer, the odds that you are correct in your assessment approach zero.
- draw_down 11y ago
  On the other hand, anti-vaxxers exist. Many of them.
- parfe 11y ago
  Programmers eagerly work in EA style sweatshops producing games and other software with massive unpaid overtime, or count themselves lucky that IBM kept them for just a few extra months to train their replacements. IT workers could demand protection from the same abuses that custodians and delivery drivers fought for and earned decades ago. But then the industry might need to admit their collars aren't as white as they pretend.
  - untog 11y ago
    Some programmers do that, most don't. But more to the point, if you desire a work/life balance you absolutely can find a programming job that will allow it. It'll pay less than the unpaid overtime job, but it exists, and will still pay more than most occupations.
  - Chlorus 11y ago
    > But then the industry might need to admit their collars aren't as white as they pretend. You're fucking insane if you think the plight of the average programmer is anywhere near what custodians go through. I used to work for one of these IBM-like offshoring firms before I knew better and the quality of their work is simply garbage(there's some good people in there of course). For example, I was called in to troubleshoot a faulty URL - I asked them for it; they linked me to a localhost page. Other joys included network engineers who didn't know what port SSH runs on and Java programmers who literally copy-pasted straight from the web.
  - pattisapu 11y ago
    In the US most such programmers are likely exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA [1]. [1] http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17e_computer.pdf http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17e_computer.pdf
thenewwazoo 11y ago
I disagree - I think that the right-wing opinion machine has been successfully busting unions and scapegoating labor for so long that the tech industry doesn't see the value-add of the union itself. I view it a bit like the anti-vax movement. Nobody today is dying of polio, so the necessity and urgency are lost. (And Americans are spectacularly bad at learning from history because exceptionalism)
- Chlorus 11y ago
  > (And Americans are spectacularly bad at learning from history because exceptionalism) Because the union scandals of the 60s and 70s never happened, of course.
- clarkmoody 11y ago
  > bad at learning from history I assume you're referring to the current fascination with socialism? You know, that great political innovation that lead to a hundred million murders in the 20th century. Sorry, couldn't resist. You should look into the history of unions. You might be surprised at their non-progressive / non-egalitarian origins. You don't need a "right-wing opinion machine" to besmirch the name of unions; you simply have to look at the long history of state-union corruption.
  - yardie 11y ago
    Socialism did what? Some despot puts Socialist in the state name and that makes it socialist? So North Korea is a shining example of democracy because it's right there Democratic People's Republic. Does your 100million lives include the many millions the USA has helped see to their deaths? I couldn't resist.
    - clarkmoody 11y ago
      Don't get the idea that I'm defending the US government's actions in any way, since I disagree with most of its actions, especially in foreign policy.
nosuchthing 11y ago
Has anyone ever tried an open source guild / jobs / recruiting / organized labor software system? Maybe a mix of Glass Door with Adhocracy or Liquid Feedback https://liqd.net/software.html https://liqd.net/software.html http://dev.liquidfeedback.org/trac/lf/ http://dev.liquidfeedback.org/trac/lf/
obrero 11y ago
I used to work in IT at an investment bank. We got no overtime, and had to work all hours - 9 hours a day, sometimes starting at 7 AM, weekend work, pages in the middle of the night. The electricians all left at 5 PM. They belonged to the IBEW and had pension plans, job security with seniority etc. IT used to bitch about how they'd leave at 5 PM when we had to start doing some work. They would have stayed past 5 PM, but the super wealthy bank would have had to pay them (not us) overtime, and they almost never did that. The other IT people would also moan about how stupid they were compared to us. How stupid are they? They leave at 5 PM, or get overtime if they do, they have job security, they don't have to work all hours or are paid well if they do any how, they had pensions and job security based on seniority. Who were the real fools?
- draw_down 11y ago
  Yes, that sounds like tech workers for sure. (Everyone besides me is so stupid, which is why I work twice as hard as them and earn less.)
- mason240 11y ago
  To be fair, I would much rather have a 401k than a pension.
gaius 11y ago
The funny thing is companies are quite honest and open about this; they call you "a resource" for a reason...
levemi 11y ago
I've never met anyone nor worked with anyone who thought they were better than someone else because of their job. Maybe that's something you want to believe, but it isn't true. A great deal of the engineers I work with in the bay area are socially conscious to the tech sector's impact on the community. And really they're harmed by it too, a software engineer can't afford to buy a house either. If what you really believed was true there's no way that someone like Barbara Lee could be in office with such huge wins every two years when so many of her constituents are the same people that work in the area you think is so terrible. Why are you even posting on HN? This is a technical news site.
- gist 11y ago
  I am not a programmer (although I can program) but I do a fairly important job at the company (that I own) that takes a great deal of thought, training and experience. So yes I do feel that I am "better" than a postal worker or a garbage man a job that doesn't take a great deal of thought, training, intelligence or experience or quite frankly in most (but not all cases) motivation. Of course there are people who are garbage men or postal workers that are there because of luck not intelligence or effort, but there are also people who grew up middle class like I did that aren't doing anything significant in their career either. This idea that all of us are equal (we are not even factoring in luck) is really just a modern day PC version of the way the world is not.
  - matwood 11y ago
    You're better in what way? Thinking? Are you physically better than the garbage man that is outside in 100 degree heat all day picking up your trash? As an aside, I always leave the garbage man Gatorades because frankly the job looks like it sucks.
    - gist 11y ago
      Yes in a thinking way.
    - yardie 11y ago
      LOL. I'm friends with sons of a garbage man. They are highly unionised with a bulletproof health plan, pension plan, college savings plan, etc. And if the city tries to take away even one of those things... ever see trash spontaneously combust when its been left to sit in its own juices for weeks. The guys that haul trash have got it exactly right. It's a hard job that no one wants to do so they know their worth and when they demand they get it. If I lose Facebook for an hour its a bummer. If the trash isn't hauled away its a health hazard.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tosseraccount 11y ago
Doctors have the AMA bargain for rules in statehouses and Congress. Same with lawyers and the American Bar Association. The trial lawyers are particularly adept at lobbying and "campaign contributions". I'm pretty sure people in these professions consider themselves pretty special.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Perhaps if there's so much resistance to the idea to an IT union, we should buff up the IEEE so it can be a "professional association" on the level of the AMA or the ABA, at least.

Johnny555 11y ago

But unlike with service jobs that need to be done locally like a garbageman or electrician, what good does a union do against outsourcing jobs that can literally be done anywhere in the world? Demanding to the employer: "Either keep our jobs in this country or we're going to stop working!", seems like it would just accelerate the offshoring.

pigpaws 11y ago
the companies can be taxed to the point that it would cost the same to have an American employee or one in a foreign country. Companies want "globalism" but they don't want to pay for it.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  I don't see how that could work since companies would either contract out overseas work, or hire overseas workers through a subsidiary, so instead of IBM hiring 1,000 foreign call center workers, they'll pay "Joe's Call Center" a negotiated fee to run a call center, without IBM writing a single foreign paycheck.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    This sounds like a corner case in the hypothetical law, which is addressed by wording the law more carefully, not jettisoning the idea. If every company is taxed heavily for outshoring work, it would be impossible for Joe's Call Center to employ 1,000 people and make enough profit for them to be competitive vs just hiring the workers directly.
    - Johnny555 11y ago
      Joe's Call Center is incorporated in India and run by Indian management. IBM just hired them for Call Center services. Unless you forsee taxing all companies for all oversees work, I don't see how that can work. And I'm not sure how you can effectively tax a company for all overseas labor, for example, a computer is made up of thousands of components with thousands of suppliers, how can you tax IBM for the low-paid subcontracted labor that mines the minerals that are sold to a manufacturer that makes the plastic that's sold to another manufacturer to create the dielectric for capacitors that's sold to another subcontractor that makes the capacitors that are sold to another subcontrator that glues them on the big tape reels that are sold to another subcontractor that loads them into the pick and place machines that are used by another contractor to build a board that's used by another subcontractor to build a computer for IBM. How far down the chain do you plan on going with taxation? It's easy to look at the simple case and say "Tax overseas workers!" but it's actually quite complicated to come up with rules do actually do so since there's no clear line that divides employees and non-employees. And if you draw that line, the company will move its workers to the otherside of the line.

cortesoft 11y ago

The difference is that as skilled tech workers, when we are laid off we can find new work as fast as we want to. I have worked for a few companies that have gone out of business. Looking for work afterwards is mostly a screening job, picking the work I want to do out of the various offers. Every time, I have been hired for more money than I was making before (it is common knowledge that changing jobs is the best way to get raises) It isn't like I am some hotshot developer, either. I am not a networking type person, so all of my contacts are just people I have worked with at previous shops. The reason it is so easy to find work is because there are simply more jobs available than qualified workers. I know this because I have been on the other side, too (trying to hire people). It is really hard to find quality developers, because they always have multiple offers. Why would workers in this situation want or need to collectively bargain? Every place I have worked needs me more than I need them.

zanny 11y ago
> Every place I have worked needs me more than I need them. If this is actually true, in any situation where this happens, you are being underpaid, because it implies the employer is getting more out of your employment arrangement than you are. I know what you meant, it is just the semantics of economics are precarious and a lot of people would fight tooth and nail to be in a position to bargain for more because of a situation where an employer values the worker much more than the worker values the employer. You want equilibrium where the worker gets as much from the employer as they can, which is when employer and work both get as much out as one another.
- cortesoft 11y ago
  Well, it usually starts out being more equal when the job first starts. Over time, however, your value goes up faster than you get raises (which is why you get the largest raise when you change jobs).
- Johnny555 11y ago
  No employer could ever stay in business if they paid employees as much value as the employee brings in. A $100K engineer may work on features worth a million dollars a year, but that doesn't mean that an employer could pay that employee a million dollars because the employer has many overhead expenses -- office rent, paying for servers, marketing expenses, paying the sales guys that bring in the million dollars a year, paying other support employees, putting money in the bank to ride through lean times, investing in new products/features that may never make money, etc. The only way an employee can be paid as much money as he brings in for the company is if he is self employed.

at-fates-hands 11y ago

>> The threat of H1-B applications being denied is either laughable or [there aren't enough of them anyway] depending on who you ask. The ironic part is we have close to 10 million people out of work (not including those who have permanently fallen out of the workforce) - you think at least some of those people could fill those jobs?

golergka 11y ago
Have you tried hiring engineers? Most of the applicants would provide negative value if hired.

natrius 11y ago

Why shouldn't the global economy seek to make labor fungible? Why shouldn't Indians and Hungarians have the same opportunities to work that I do? I think putting other people who are trying to produce value at a disadvantage for personal gain is a bad thing. Yes, some people get to buy new yachts when they stop buying labor from American workers. We could prevent them from buying labor from other workers, or we could do something about the yachts.

tosseraccount 11y ago
Highest paid people in our society are doctors and lawyers. Are there special laws to subsidize importing them or new laws to deregulate these profession? Let's try these first, see how it works.
- natrius 11y ago
  We should not emulate the legal protectionism that those industries have pursued. The legally imposed shortages in these industries raise prices and make everyone else poorer. I want no part in that. The aim of our industry should be to make everyone else wealthier by producing zero marginal cost goods that solve people's problems. We should celebrate when problems become cheaper to solve.
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Interesting take on it you have. What can American middle class workers do about stagnant real wages? Productivity is up, but it's been a while since we've had a raise.
    - natrius 11y ago
      If you believe that too much of the gains from progress have accrued to capital, you can fight to redistribute those gains. Protectionism is redistribution too, it's just poorly directed. Personally, I'd rather see the wealthy fund more public goods. Few people are struggling, and we should support them. Other than that, let's pursue abundance together instead of trying to adjust relative wealth.

pavanky 11y ago

This kind of arguments make me a bit apprehensive. People work in the tech industry are mostly OK with globalization and free markets as long as it does not affect their jobs. I wonder how many people wanting collective bargaining for the tech industry would be OK with increased costs that come with collective bargaining in the manufacturing sector.

product50 11y ago

It is worth noting that the companies IBM is competing for IT Services type work is TCS and Infosys for whom most of the workers are in India. It is difficult to see how IBM will be successful in the IT services industry if they don't adopt a similar low employee cost model.