David, Welcome to the Lake.

Mick and Robin, Thank you for Hosting the Book Salon today.

Thank you for having me. I look forward to “talking” with everyone.

David, how long have you been writing about Labor Unions and labor issues?

I worked for the public employee union, AFSCME, from 1975 through 1984. Mostly, I worked in organizing campaigns, writing organizing literature, dealing with the news media, and working with the organizers and the organizing committee members. Since AFSCME had already organized the blue-collar workers in most of the places where I was working, most of the campaigns that I worked in were for service workers, professional workers and technical workers. That’s where I first heard workers say that they liked what they were doing but not the conditions under which they were doiing it — which is the theme of my book.

Over the past 25 years or so, I have written a lot about workplace issues. I wrote a report about workers at Boeing and Microsoft in the year 2000 — which led to this book.

The Microsoft story is fascinating. Just look at the work the drones turned out: Vista, a sorry operating system; and what else? Stagnant stock prices, and what else? Not a single noteworthy product. And the drones just leave with their good ideas and start their own companies.

Thanks for being here, David. And thanks for writing the book. The issue of satisfaction at work – not just paycheck satisfaction but the chance to do a good job in a decent environment for a decent wage – is something you’d think employers would applaud. But as the stories in your book explain, it doesn’t always work that way. What’s wrong?

David,
Have not had a chance to read your book. I have personally seen this two-tier system with many employers. Academia is a classic example: tenured faculty and an army of low-paid, highly educated adjunct instructors. I worked for a non-unionized health care system in MA. They hired many contract employees to work in IT, plus many “per diem” health care professionals in home care and outpatient mental health (paid by the visit, no benefits). I was a union employee at a large HMO in Minnesota. The union got it into the contract that if per diem employees worked a certain number of hours over a period time then they would have to be hired as regular employees with benefits.

Do you see employers using a two-tiered employment system to pit workers against one another?

Management practice built over the years has been trashed, When workers know the company is concerned and listens, they respond accordingly. There is no incentive today to do anything but your job, nothing more, nothing less.

Business is shooting itself in the foot and it will cost in the long term.

One lesson from Microsoft’s problems is that turning out good products depends on more than a few superstars; a company needs to recruit, retain, and invest in a team of good performers and offer them some security, dignity and respect. Back in 2000, when I first started interviewing workers at Microsoft, out of about 20,000 employees in the Seattle area, about 6000 were temp workers. They worked at Microsoft but, under a system that could have been devised by Franz Kafka as told to Woody Allen — they officially worked for staffing agencies that paid them less than the permanent workers, provided far fewer benefits, kept secret personnel files on them, and laid them off after stints of several months. Then they were rehired all over again — which led them to call themselves “perma-temps.” Many of the perma-temps had the responsibility for testing the software products. But they were laid off just after the project was compeleted, and, in the final few weeks of their stints, they were under terrible pressure to get the products out the door. So the quality control depended on workers who were stressed out about getting their jobs done, discontented with being treated like second-class citizens, and worried about whether they would get another gig at Microsoft and what it would be.

I think empoyers are using the two-tier system both to save money and to divide the workforce — which also saves money by making it more difficult for the workers to organize unions. In some of the units at Microsoft in the year 2000, there might be 20 workers, each of whom was nominally employed by let’s say one of three staffing agencies. So under the current labor law, it was almost impossible for the workers to organize a union, win collective bargaining rights, and negotiate a contract with Microsoft.

You make the point in the book that treating workers this way has a downward effect on the economy, that it hurts it. Yet employers seem to think it’s necessary.

I agree. At a lot of companies, teh penny-pinching, micro-managing and second-guessing is discouraging dedicated employees from doing their best work. At some point, a lot of people get the message — whether or not management intends to send this message — that the easiest way to get by is to do what they’re told, not to do their best. That ends up being a terrible loss for the company.

Ah David, you just struck a nerve. I have not had the opportunity to read your book but the scenario you just described hits home.

My chosen career field is Software Quality Assurance and Testing. I have talked with folks who applied for jobs at MS, folks like me who had built a career in SQA and Test. They were told, “well, you’ll have to work in QA for a year or so but if you’re good, we’ll allow you to escape.”

Sounds like:
A) They don’t allow folks to escape.
B) They truly have no clue about quality efforts and what it entails
C) Gratuitously insulting potential workers is not how to build a dedicated staff.

What most surprised me about the MS story was how MS seemed to go out of its way to demean the perma-temps. Letting them go at the end of a project is one thing – barring them from the party that the full-timers get to go to seems just cruel. And, of course, forcing employees to wear badges designating their class. Did you ever find out what MS management thought those sorts of policies would lead to in the workplace?

I should be more clear for people who haven’t read the book yet – MS perma-temps are forbidden to attend the product release parties that are thrown for the full-timers. I’m still blown away by that.

Undeniably, American companies are under terrible comeptitive pressures in the national and global marketplaces. There is a need to cut costs. But history shows that the most successful companies — including good companies that I write about in my book, liike Boeing and Microsoft — succeeded by making major investments in new and high-quality products and services and giving employees the leeway to do their best work. Very few companies made their reputations just by cutting costs and cutting corners.

”There is a need to cut costs.”

Microsoft didn’t need to cut costs. There’s an element of corporate faddism here, isn’t there?

That is a great mystery. You can understand — if not condone — Microsoft’s reliance on temp workers who were nominally working for the staffing agencies. Microsoft is a relatively new company. Bill Gates wanted to keep it lean and nimble — and not become what he considered a corporate dinosaur like IBM. But there was no need to demean the temp workers by making them wear special badges, putting a scarlet letter “a” for agency on their email addresses, not inviting them to parties, and not letting them use some company facilities. You don’t save money by demaning people — human dignity doesn’t cost anything in dollars and cents. If anything, alienating these workers — many of whom did quality control — probably cost the company money. It’s almost as if there was an intellectual elitism about Microsoft’s top management in the late 1990’s, and they didn’t want to treat people who they didn’t consider their intellectual equals as their equals as human beings.

Most companies do need to control costs, if not cut drastically. The question is — how do they do it? Ultimately, cutting corners on quality is a false economy. If the public doesn’t think it’s getting quality products or services, they’ll go elsewhere.

As for Microsoft, it does seem that during the 1990’s, Bill Gates was very concerned with keeping Microsoft lean and nimble. He was afraid that the next new thing would come along, another company would jump on it first, and Microsoft would go the way of other IT companies — mostly companies that made hardware — that feel behind or went belly up.

i temped at microsoft for a week, and experienced a 3-tier system. the permanent hires, then contractors, then general office temps. i wore the scarlet “office temp” badge of shame, which to my astonishment meant i was literally invisible. no eye contact in the halls, no conversation in the cafeteria.

nameless, faceless drone doesn’t even begin…

I’m working as a community organizer now and so I was struck by your observations about the ups and downs of that work – the importance of personality and how the work simply never ends … I was moved by the MS worker who said that she wanted to “be part of something” but that union (WashTech) didn’t move past the virtual level. When it got down to brass tacks, people preferred to be on a list-serve than to actually be part of something in real time. Has it ever been thus or is there something about the new technologies of the internet and email that poses a threat to on the ground organizing?

That’s sort of what I meant by “faddism”. It’s become fashionable again to think of workers as unimportant or – worse and more common – a drain on the business. On its resources, its assets, and its future prospects. I’ve heard bosses and owners talk again and again – in front of their employees – saying,m in effect, “If only I could get rid of employees, this would be a great business.” There’s no sense any more that if it wasn’t for us, there wouldn’t be a business.

I agree, especially with your last point. As one of the founders of WashTech, the employee organization at Microsoft, told me, the company had the idea that their were “true techies” and everyone else. They tended to see the software testers — most of whom were temps — as halfway between techies and the public — regular people who would play around with the software, make the kind of mistakes that unsophisticated users might make, and, by breaking things, show where they needed to be fixed. They weren’t offered the same dignity and security — much less high salaries and stock options — that the “true techies” or “Bill clones” received.

Rosalind: after reading this book, I’m not at all surprised. How long did you stay there – just the week?

I’m not sure why we think cost-cutting is the problem. Suppose instead of mistreating US workers to create the failed Vista operating system, the work was outsourced to Indian or Chinese coders. It still would have been a disaster. People without ownership of the project just don’t do as well.

Do you know if Apple uses the Microsoft management techniques?

I have a CS degree but realized real quick that I would not be a good programmer but I am a damn good tester. And it helps to be able to be the “dumb user” who will get the “id10t” errors.

It also helps to be able to translate between the tech side and the non-tech. Obviously Bill and Company haven’t quite figured that out as yet. There’s a valid and strong role for all of the above.

That’s a very important point. The workers organization at Microsoft — WashTech — was founded in the late 1990’s and, in many ways, was something of a forerunner of the Howard Dean and Barack Obama campaigns. Wash Tech was founded as (and still is) a muckraking website, but it also functions as a regular labor union (and it’s affiliated with the Communications Workers of America — CWA). It now has more than a thousand members; it has bargaining rights with several employers in telecommunications and local government — but not at Microsoft; and it has more than 20,000 subscribers to its website and email updates. So it is both a virtual and an actual union. Especially among the IT workers, there are many who are satisfied with participating in an online union, but there are also many who want old-fashioned human communbity and solidarity. The challenge for Wash Tech and for other efforts at online organizing is to satisfy both sets of needs.

Rosalind’s comment is reminding me of something else that Love the Work, Hate the Job comes back to consistently and that’s the effect that volatility has on the workplace. In its pursuit of flexibility, MS wanted to be able to sack employees quickly and painlessly (for Microsoft) but that had to lead to insecurity within the perma-temps and office temps. Who could feel comfortable getting to know anyone in that climate. I was amazed to read that development teams were able to bond so well. I would guess that there would be nothing left over for the office temps.

I agree. If people are going to do quality work, they need to have a sense of ownership of what they are doing.

Well, I certainly do. But it seems to me there are as many tiers as it takes. MS has apparently gone from 2 to 3 tiers (see rosalind) and companies I’ve worked in have had as many as 6. In those days it was a matter of setting them against each other, and they would create divisions so they could keep everybody competing against each other.

That is a very important point. It is hard to do quality work in a workplace where people are here today and gone tomorrow. In addition to physical capital and intellectual capital, a workplace needs social capital — a sense of trust and common purpose among the employees. That is a large part of what has made Boeing so successful — for all the problems that I write about, there is a sense of teamwork and tradition among the machinists, engineers and technicians.

It’s amazing, the inclination human beings have to sort ourselves into castes and classes. Sounds like MS took it to a ridiculous degree, although I must say the “different badges” aspect is a little chilling, in a historical sense….

The challenge for Wash Tech and for other efforts at online organizing is to satisfy both sets of needs.

There’s your next book ;) I’ll buy it for sure b/c it sounds like WashTech has been finding ways to meet that challenge.

Your experience is a common one. One of the founders of WashTech, Marcus Courtney, told me that he was walking down a hall at Microsoft, two permanent employees were talking about a new project, they looked behind, saw he was wearing a temp worker’s badge, and they stopped talking.

There needs to be some way to recognize and reward superstars without demeaning everyone else.

The two-tier system makes some sense in the academic world. Most of the grunts there are only going to be there long enough to get their degrees. In the world of companies like Microsoft and Boeing, it’s never made much sense to me. They depend on having people who, while not the “stars”, have some institutional knowledge of why things are done a certain way, and how that hasn’t worked in the past. Even in software, that’s still true.

Those are the people who ask the “stars” all those annoying questions about why they think their ingenious ideas will work this time when they didn’t work the last five times someone tried. When there are stars, and they have too much power, there’s no sanity check available.

It’s hard to imagine that Microsoft has many of those people, given both their employment policies and the (lack of) quality of their products.

Is this – MS – where it’s going? Is this the model of the future? Or hasm it worn out its welcome already?

That is a large part of what has made Boeing so successful — for all the problems that I write about, there is a sense of teamwork and tradition among the machinists, engineers and technicians.

David – can you explain that a little bit more for people who haven’t read the book yet. There is a real divide b/t Boeing and MS styles – you describe it more in the Afterward. It’s fascinating.

That’s the holy grail of any social system. I feel like we’ve made huge losses in meeting that challenge in the US in the last 8 years – probably more like the last 28 years.

nah, i didn’t make it the full week. i handed in my badge early and waited for a gig where my abilities were actually appreciated. i’ve worked in many many offices, and have never experienced such a weirdly dehumanizing atmosphere.

alas, apple computer also abused the permanent vs. contractor situation. had many friends who worked their butts off but were never able to reach “permanent hire” nirvana.

I agree with your point that the caste system doesn’t work well for IT companies. But I wonder if it makes sense in academia. While I don’t write about this in this book, my imppression is that, at many colleges and universities, about half the teaching staff consists of adjuncts and graduate employees. Some of them may be practitioners in the field they are teaching who are moonlighting as adjunct professors. But aren’t others trying to cobble together a living — sometimes teaching part-time at several campuses. Does this make sense for the colleges and universities? For the students? Or for the professoriate?

Microsoft does seem to be practicing a corporate model similar to what (retired GE CEO) Jack Welch and others are preaching — the “core/periphary” model. There’s a core of fulltime employees with relatively secure jobs who are considered experts at the company’s “core proficiency” — in Microosoft’s case, designing software. And then there is a periphary of everyone else — temp workers, individual independent contracors, US companies that contract for services (such as the cleaning company or the company that runs the cafeteria), and individuals or contractors at the other end of the Earth (such as workers in India).

As someone who worked for Boeing many years ago, I’ll take a stab at that. Boeing was never a two-tiered system. It’s really a many-tiered system. There are many layers of management and different divisions. While there were certainly people who ran or did the most important work in a section or a division, there was always a sense that someone else could step in and carry on should those people go.

The other difference, I think, is that at Boeing there’s always been a natural focus for the company, which is the product they produce. It takes a lot of people to design and put an airplane together. It really was much more focused than at any place I’ve worked in software.

‘Way back when, I think about 2000 or 2001, the Tax Court ruled that Microsoft’s overuse of temps was a sham; for tax purposes, the temps were to be considered full-time employees of Microsoft. (I forget the specific tax issue; probably Microsoft was calling the temps “independent contractors,” thereby dodging its half of the FICA tax.) This opened the door to the temps filing suit, citing the Tax Court ruling that they were de facto employees, claiming benefits and particularly stock options as if they’d actually been on the payroll.

Whatever happened to all that litigation?

For people who haven’t read the book: MS is just one part of it. David also looks at the organization of health care workers and the 1999 “Strike for Boeing.” Every case looks at a different management style but the same problem: disaffected workers doing skilled, likable (lovable even) work.

Good point. There may be some point at which it’s a problem. Science, though, seems to be centered around relatively few people who are the most visible. (No, I’m not a scientist. I just read the magazines.) They get the attention, the grants, etc. Academia might do better to have a more evenly distributed system of rewards, but there certainly are forces working against that. It’s a bit like basketball – without the star players, you’re probably going to be doomed to the second tier.

The Kaiser model is the one I grew up with – Gillette, Western Electric – you were in it together, a family, and while a family fights, it doesn’t destroy each other or the family as a whole. It’s a more community-friendly, worker-friendly, hell, future-friendly model but it cuts into the high degree of profits investors demand. 10-15% used to be a successful business when I started out. Today, a mere 15% profit means you’re a failure. I think it was GM that analysts were claiming (in the 90’s) must have been close to bankruptcy because they only showed a 15% profit. The Street was demanding cuts.

Boeing is very technologically advanced. But (or should I say “and”?) it practices a much older corporate model than Microsoft. At Boeing, the great majority of the employees are fulltime workers with permanent jobs. If they are laid off in bad times, they are rehired in good times. Boeing is also one of the few large companies that are almost wall-to-wall unionized. The production workers belong to the Machinists. The engineers and technicians are represented by SPEEA, a professional association, that affiliated with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), a relatively small but fast-growing AFL-CIO union. So Beoing continues to rely on a well-paid workforce, with permanent jobs, stable benefits, regular raises, and union representation.

Yes, the company has all kinds of disputes with its employees and their unions. But it also meets with its employees, resolves the disputes, and goes forward. It also has many joint labor-management programs, such as the Ed Wells Initiative, that conducts professional development and quality improvement.

Boeing does have a relatively egalitarian tradition. I tell the story in my book about a Boeing CEO going to Washington, D.C., to testify before a Congressional committee and being met at the airport by another executive’s son who drove him to his hotel in his jalopy. A lot of the CEO’s started out as CEO’s and were members of SPEEA themselves.

The class action lawsuit in behalf of the temps eventually prevailed, and the temp workers got back pay awards representing the fringe benefits they had lost out on. While Wash Tech was not involved in filing the lawsuit, it was indispensable in locating all the current and former temps so that they could get their checks.

Does any of that focus have to do with producing a machine that flies? I know that if I had part in that, I’d be very proud of the work I had done. Is part of this problem that David describes in the book that we’ve lost so much manufacturing work in this country? (Note: I’m not running down software development or the value of products that don’t leave the ground.)

But that did not stop the practice, did it?

I’m a New Yorker, and I’m in my 50’s, so I remember the 1970 (?) Knicks. They had lots of stars — Cazzie Russell, Willis Reed, Dave DeBuscher, Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier (I’m sure I missed some and misspelled others)– but they played like a team, and that’s why they were champions.

A lot of the CEO’s started out as CEO’s and were members of SPEEA themselves.

That’s changed then. Back in the olden days (the 80s), most CEOs and upper management came from the ranks of engineering. They were members of SPEEA, though. That’s one of the reasons we thought of Boeing as an “engineering company”.

There must be much less margin for error is designing and building airplanes than in developing software. Usually, you can survive a computer crashing but not an airplane crashing. That is why Boeing developed what they called “bvelt and suspenders” technology — enough redundancy so that the plane would flky almost no matter what happened. That means you can’t cut corners on quality; you can’t demean the quality control people; you need to have a team that works with each other well; and you have to value every member of the team. It’s probably no accident (no pun intended) that a relatively egalitarian and very quality-conscious company like Boeing became the world leader in aircraft and aerospace — and that the realities of the industry have kept Boeing the way it is and not the way other companies are becoming.

My impression is there are fewer temp workers than before. Some of the temps became regular employees, some are still temps, and some were just let go.

The book tells about events from 1997 through 2000, with an update through 2005 and 2006. Does anyone have more recent information?

For me, it was. But I can also tell you that in the time I was actually working at Boeing, I only actually worked on an airplane once. The rest of the time, I was working on making wires go to the right place, or making sure the various bits of electronics worked like they were supposed to. I think the process of making an airplane to rigid standards helped provide some focus and discipline. I never forgot that what I was doing would be going into a plane, and it would be reviewed by a whole lot of people who had the authority to say “get that crap out of my plane” along the way.

David: Globalization is often presented to people as a done deal with our only option to join a race to the bottom. I don’t know of any way to beat that argument other than raising the global floor for wages, working conditions and benefits. That’s probably a long way from happening. But depending on a lot of things that happen in November, America may be ready to join some of the rest of the world in investing in a new energy economy. It will require a lot of highly skilled tech workers as well as highly skilled manufacturing workers. Given that the people in Washington do what they have to do to get that sort of economy going, do you think that we’re on the verge of some exciting developments for workers and do you think that unions are hopeful about that – planning for it? Or am I just being starry-eyed about the possibilities?

it seems a coarseness and lack of empathy has been codified into today’s management principals, completely removing the notion that workers are actual human beings. i always come back to “do unto others…”

if i had a magic wand i’d make every member of congress accompany one of their constituents to work on public transportation, to the emergency room to get health care, to fill out the paperwork for medicare part d with no help, to sit on the front porch in a gang infested neighborhood…

we are governed, and managed, by people who are removed from everday reality.

I’m glad you mentioned Kaiser. My book begins with the story of Henry J. Kaiser and his corporate empire, including Kaiser Aluminum. Henry Kaiser believed that, if he treated workers right, they would do right by him — and his success in construction, shipbuilding, aluminum and other industries proved him right. In his time (the middle of the last century) he was as famous as Jack Welch, Bill Gates and Donald Trump are now. Henry Kaiser was a great social innovator — he invented prepaid healthcare, the HMO and the onsite child care center.

One unanswered question is: Will the Information Age eventually produce a new Henry Kaiser who views workers as assets, not just costs?

I think that’s a great encapsulation of what’s not happening everywhere else. Boeing responded to the life-and-death nature of its business but most corp’s have the luxury of ignoring quality. It makes a shitty product but nobody’s going to die from a faulty radio knob. They have an incentive to make things cheap – profit – but no incentive to make them good..

I want to work at Boeing.

It’s the sharp pencil guys, the one’s with MBA’s who are the source of the problem (unless you think it’s just Kapitalism plain and simple, which is certainly possible). What they teach in MBA-land is that if you can save a buck a year on anything and capitalize it at 5 percent, you just added $20 to the value of the company, and if you get 5 percent of that value as stock options, a buck right now in your pocket. Think of that: you do something that saves a dollar this year and you con people into thinking it is saved every year well past the foreseeabgle future, and you get that dollar right in your pocket.

This is how it works. It is killing our corporate sector.

What’s changed, then? The examples of Henry Kaiser and Henry Ford should argue toward a more enlightened view of worker-management relations. Yes, I know that Ford wasn’t a progressive and his work practices were almost dehumanizing by modern standards, but they were way ahead of their day and he reaped big rewards from them.

In short, the “star system” came about for a reason. What was it?

Amen. Governing at the federal level should be a harder job than it seems to be. They should be freed from all the time they spend raising campaign cash and forced to spend time with a cross-section of constituents.

For some, it’s a great place. Maybe I’d even work there again some day. The downside of Boeing is that it does engineering much the way Henry Ford made cars – everyone has one very focused job, which they (hopefully) do well. I’m too much of a generalist.

That’s a great point, and it scares the hell out of me. We are teaching our economic leaders that if destruction of the planet makes a profit, that’s all that counts.

“But…the planet won’t be livable.”

“Not for you.”

Which brings us to rosalind’s point in 58: we are governed, and managed, by people who are removed from everyday reality. It’s that very removal that allows them to concentrate only on cold numbers.

I’ve read that some companies literally balance the cost of resulting costs of lawsuits against the cost of making necessary or desirable changes. While that’s good for the short-term bottom line, it’s not what I’d call good long-term product strategy.

But then, I’m into quality.

As I write at the beginning of the book, the New Deal of the 1930’s and 40’s produced the industrial union movement (the CIO and unions like the UAW, Steelworkers, and garment and textile workers) and also progressive industrialists like the great Henry J. Kaiser, who believed that, if he treated his workers right, they would do right by him. Kaiser was a great success in construction, shipbuilding, aluminum and other industries. He also invented prepaid health care, the HMO (Kaiser Permanente) and onsite childcare and preschoool. (Doris Kearns Goodwin writes that Kaiser’s preschools inspired Eleanor Roosevelt to spread the model and eventually were the model for Head Start).

It takes government, business and labor working together to transform the workplace. Franklin (and Eleanor) Roosevelt, the CIO, and industrialists like Henry Kaiser achieved great but, unfortunately, not entirely lasting progress in the 1930’s and 40’s. Will a President Obama encourage an environment that will produce an Information Age CIO — Wash Tech and SPEEA writ large — and an Information Age Henry Kaiser. We need to make it happen. We can’tr just wait for the pendulum of history to turn on its own. It never does.

It’s interesting that you mention energy policy. In large measure, the New Deal energy policy made the Seattle area the center of high-skill, high-wage work that it still is. FDR encouraged the development of hydroelectric power, which made possible the manufacture of aluminum, which encouraged the growth of high-skill, high-wage employers like Boeing and Kaiser. The critical mass of technologically skilled workers — and their kids – in turn encouraged the growth of companies like Microsoft, as well as companies like Amazon and Starbucks that benefit from well-educated employees and customers.

FDR planned and built well. Now we need to do it again.

I blame Reagan (I do that a lot) or at least the 80’s. I feel like that’s when we started off the New Deal path and have been moving away from worker dignity and human dignity ever since. We’ve reached the point when someone running for president can say that Social Security is a disgrace with impunity. And, of course, the state of health care in the country also says a lot about how we value each other and what the government’s role in that value system should be. It’s okay (even noble and inspiring) for a family to be forced to hold a series of fund raisers at the local Elks lodge to pay for their child’s kidney treatments but it’s not okay (even lazy and grasping) to want to have a federal system of care that would treat the kid and make the begging for funds to treat her unnecessary.

You might want to shop at Wal-Mart. But you wouldn’t want to fly Wal-Mart. Remember Value Jet?

(slightly ot: do you know if they still give the public tour of the assembly plant at boeing? wasn’t sure if that got shut down post-911. best – tour – ever.)

Another scam in the high tech industry is to post job openings and interview Americans who are very qualified to fill those positions and then tell Immigration they cannot find qualified people to fill the position so they need more HB1 Visa’s to bring over workers from India who work for minimum wage.

I know Oracle DBA’s, programmers and other tech workers who are now working in other fields because they cannot get work here in America. They know who gets hired for that position they interviewed for…… someone who is brought in on a visa and is getting paid peanuts……

I had no idea about that history in the northwest. Fascinating.

By the way, with his electic background can trace his roots to the social gains of the 1930’s, as well as the 1960’s. His mother went to high school in Seattle — where the high levels of education and skill and the tradition of social justice — owe much to the investments that FDR and Henry Kaiser made and to the strong union tradition there. Obama’s grandmother was a Rosie the Riveter at Boeing in Wichita, Kansas.

So it would be a tribute to the cycles of history if a President Obama leads the nation to make the investments and innovations that create more high-skill, high-wage companies and communities.

I don’t. Last I heard, which was so long ago I don’t even want to venture a guess how long it was, they had stopped giving the tours to anyone who wasn’t affiliated with Boeing. Check their website, there might be some info there.

Sorry for OT conversation. I’ll stop now.

That’s right. The misuse and over-use of the H1-B guest worker program may actually discourage the growth of a high-skill, high-wage workforce in the USA.

LOL. Fly WalMart! That’s a funny image for sure.

There is another solution besides driving wages and salaries down. But tech people are so sure of their libertarian principles, so sure of their ability to make it alone, that they won’t work together to protect themselves as a group.

Don’t you think though that with the proper investment in a new economy, demand for those sort of workers would be high enough to overcome the H1-B problem?

To be clear, I meant to say “With his eclectic background, Barack Obama can trace his roots to Seattle and Boeing, as well as elsewhere.” I write about the Obama movement — and its relationship to the discontents of skilled workers — at the end of the book.

Why America’s Best Workers Are Unhappier Than Ever

the corporate marketing program has been successful in their attempt;

villify the union

it’s because of the union we’ve had a strong prosperous middle class but corporate marketing has managed to get laborers to now vote against themselves and their kids

we have to change that dynamic and that process is actually pretty simple;

all we have to do is point out, a company does not set the price for the goods it purchases, the industry sets that price, if they buy steel, they don’t tell the mill what they will pay, the mill tells industry what they will charge

there is always wiggle room and there are negotiations but the provider sets the price not the buyer

a union provides the venue for a collective bargaining force so laborers can bargain and broker the a price for their service that is accurate

it is a sorry state of affairs that most people don’t understand this principle, that without the union the industry does not have to bargain for the product they must purchase in order to survive

and there should NEVER be an American competing against labor from countries that allow slave labor, child labor or don’t force industry to clean the crap they leave in their production process

when we are competing against a country that does not allow for collective bargaining and allows slave and child labor, and allows industry to dump their cancer in my kids air, that product MUST face a tariff that equalizes the playing field

that’s the solution, bring back tariffs when they are necessitated and INSIST industry pays their own bills

I do think that, if the nation invests in a New Economy — including green jobs in new energy sources, as well as rebuilding and rewiring the infrastructure — we will create millions of high-wage, high skill jobs. As in the 1930’s and 40’s, we need to make sure that these workers have the right to organize unions to raise their wages, secure their jobs and benefits, and provide for skills development and a voice in improving the quality of their products and services.

I wish I could post as a sound file a bit done by Bob & Ray years ago that always reminds me of modern corporate employee policies. Briefly (tho it’s a great routine), Bob interviews Ray who owns a factory where the workers make paper clips by hand on a piecework basis.

Bob: How much do your workers earn?

Ray: Oh, with bonuses, benefits, and the soup kitchen, about $1.23 a week.

Bob: $i.23 a week?! How can they live on that?

Ray: Oh, we don’t inquire into our employees’ personal lives.

David – please correct me if I’m wrong – but didn’t you mention that tech workers are organizing more? I’m getting the stories in the book mixed up right now – or did you make the opposite point? At any rate, you do write that “professional and technical workers are becoming more liberal in their views and voting patterns and that they have shifted entire regions, such as the Pac NW, into the Dem camp.” I’m not sure how liberal the Dem camp is, but that is an interesting development and good for the future of labor and so for the prospects of a re-energized middle class.

OT: Sorry. Sorry. Rosalind click here. Really, I’ll stop now.

Right – of course ensuring that right to unionize is a big challenge now as perris’s comment at 81 gets at.

LOL, Cujo.

I mostly agree. It doesn’t have to be tariffs, unless they’re “social tariffs” to make up for the economic and environmental costs of competition from countries with low labor and environmental standards. But we do need protections of worker rights and environmental standards in trade agreements. And efforts like those in the European Community to lift up low-wage economies.

Thanks for mentioning rebuilding the infrastructure – that is as important and as good a source of jobs as any new energy program will be. And it really goes hand in hand for most projects. That’s why I’m such a big fan of making energy policy the centerpiece of any renewal of American greatness.

Kaiser, who believed that, if he treated his workers right, they would do right by him

“treating their workers right” is not the right dynamic

it is absolutely necessary for industry to provide enough wage where;

1) a laborer can put healthy food on the table for his wife and kids

2) that laborer can get his kids broken arm fixed, his wifes cancer treated, his own teeth fixed…the corporation MUST provide health insurance for the work force, if it does not, then I have to pay for this workers health and THAT’S rediculous

and this costs the manufacturer nothing since they can EASILY get more quality labor at reduced rate, I will GLADLY work for less money when health care is provided, and since the industry will use their buying power, they will get it for less then I have to pay and they will actually MAKE money on providing the insurance since I will work for that much less

3) vacation so the labor force stays productive

4) retirement so nobody has to work till the day they die

there are other COSTS of industry but these are big ones and when industry refuses to pay these obvious costs then I have to pay for that industries labor expenses

and THAT’S how the discussion needs to be framed

I agree it doesn’t “have” to be tariffs but there MUST be some compensation so there are equal playing fields

That’s something they have in common with lots of factory workers, frankly. I told the story once about when I was trying to unionize a plant in the 90’s but the workers had bought into the conservative idea that everyone can get rich on their own if they just try hard enough. They were divided by management and saw each other as the enemy. The guy next to you might steal your idea or prevent you from getting rich. The union was an enemy, too, because joining it meant giving up the “rich” dream and settling for something “less” than wealth.

There is more organzizing among professional and technical workers, but there is a very long way to go. Unions like CWA and IFPTE are building organizations that get the word out without formal collective bargaining rights and that could be the nucleus of larger scale organizing campaigns if a new President and Congress strengthen the right to organize. Just as before the New Deal there were unions and other organizations that were forerunners of the CIO.

Professional and technical workers are becoming more progressive politically. As recently as 1960 and 1968, workers in such jobs supported conservative Republicans like Richard Nixon. Now, they generally vote Democratic and have been the base of support for candidates like Dean and Obama. Just think of the major high-tech areas in this country, like the Seattle area, Silicon Valley in California, much of Massachusetts and even the Research Triangle in North Carolina.

During the Tech bubble….. Tech workers were sought out, heavily recruited… the signing bonus and incentives to work for company X vs. Y were huge…. what needs to happen is that someone needs to review these job posting and verify that there really are not qualified people here in America to do the job.

These companies are ONLY looking for cheap labor…… NO matter what growth in a industry that might hire our current crop of technical worker, the issue is just like other engineering fields, there ARE NO JOBS so why would kids major in those professions in college. It is like teaching & nursing. You treat the profession like crap, destroy their reputation, make working a living nightmare, blame any bad outcome on the employee and then wonder why no one is going into that profession.

The average age of nurses and teachers are around 50-55, think of that….. how many are out of the workforce or near retirement? We have a critical shortage and it will get worse. AND the solution, bring in new nurses from overseas using H1-B visas….. (my dyslexia was showing)

Everyone here knows I am not against immigration but these positions are well paid, highly sought after AND are jobs that Americans WILL DO!

oh, I forgot number 5;

industry must provide enough wage where a capable child can educate themselves through college, if they don’t then I have to pay that college tuition and that’s industry deferring their costs to you and me

Your argument, which is great, assumes that workers are valued by industry, society and themselves. That seems to be the sticking point. There’s a running discussion of that in Love the Work, Hate the Job.

I agree, and so, I think, would Henry Kaiser.

I can’t recall ever meeting a libertarian who was really poor at any time in his adult life. Something about that philosophy just ignores how suddenly and unjustifiably life can go sideways for someone. Sure, you can plan for the future, but that doesn’t mean your plans will work out. Banks and economies fail, insurance companies decide not to pay out, and where does that leave people?

I’m all for government that governs least, as long as it governs enough, and well.

Everyone here knows I am not against immigration but these positions are well paid, highly sought after AND are jobs that Americans WILL DO!

I am not against immigration either, nor am I for prosecuting undocumented laborers

I AM for prosecuting industry that hires undocumented labor, they either sponser that laborer or they hire someone who HAS gone through the process

no, my argument insists WE value that labor, I don’t give a flying crap if industry values it, WE INSIST and force them into it

this is a country that was created “for the people” and by g-d, that’s the purpose of it

One issue I write about in the book is “silent strikes.” The shortages in many professions, such as nursing and teaching, reflects the fact that these occupations are not well-paid and well-treated. In the book, I also write about SEIU 1199NW, a union that was founded by nurses and is successfully organizing health care workers in professional, technical and service jobs. Quality care as well as quality jobs is an important issue for these workers.

OK folks, David’s time is just about up and we’re going to have to let him go. Thanks, David for a great salon and for giving up the time. I think a lot of people are going to read this book (I had people pulling it out of my hand as I walked around with it the last few days – “What’s that? That’s how I feel.”) because, as we’ve seen here today, you’ve struck a nerve.

Thanks David and everyone.

David, Thank you for stopping by the Lake today and spending the afternoon with us.

Mick and Robin, Thank you for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone – if you haven’t bought a copy yet, there is a link above.

Thanks all.

An interesting book about libertarianism among some high-tech workers and many more employers is “Cyberselfish.” Published about 10 years ago. I forget the author’s name.

Thanks for stopping by, David. This was an interesting discussion, to say the least.

I’d like to read more about teachers with the teachers unions under such sharp and largely successful attack right now. It would be sort of a reverse of this book since they are unionized and being forced to fight to keep it – but, as you point out the theme of wanting to do quality work is the same.

Thank you all for inviting me. This was great.

Thank you very much, everyone for being here and for the wonderful discussion. The time flew by. Thanks, David for your time and for the book.

oh, here’s a goody;

I “hate” the term “taxes” and even “tariff”

the reason I hate those terms is that they do not represent the purpose they fulfill

a “tax” and “tariff” should be called “cost assesment”, then when an industry seeks a “tax break” they would have to demonstrate the “cost assesment” was not configured correctly

there, it would be pretty hard to market that they are “over taxed” when the “fee” was actually a “cost assesment”

me likey!

david, this was a GREAT discussion and I will look forward to reading your work!

Something I’m curious about is the fact that the “treat your workers like subhumans” agenda seemed to come about shortly after women entered the workplace. Talking with someone who lived through the transition, he said that salary used to be fairly public information with an all-white, all-male workplace. It became necessary to make it secret when diversity in hiring meant diversity in salaries as well.

Have some friends from 80s Microsoft – apparently the start of the temp hires was when they fired all the receptionists and secretaries and offered them their old jobs back, but through an agency, without benefits.

H1B reform would be a great way for the Dems to show they want to help the working (well higher-end working) class. It wouldn’t take a whole lot, just demand that any positions to be filled need to be posted with the state employment bureau and reports on all American resumes received, before approval for a visa can be given.

(thx!!)

I’m with you. It’s true, as least from my perspective of 40 years, that a LOT of things changed when women began to enter the workplace as mgrs instead of just pliable secs.

Just beginning the thread… but seems like you are talking about the patriarchal paradigm vs. the partnership one. I feel ghettoized being the support staff section of my large international company. Conditions are superior by far than my last job. I was outsourced, and our department was collected together and told we would be outsourced and then a 45 minute lecture with graphs on how this was going to help the future of the company. They were so narcissistic, no one even said, “Sorry.” Oy vey.

A coworker and I were talking about how Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers and how much respect and fear he got from that. How horrifying was that move, and union busting.

I thought there was supposed to be a level of proof required before H1B visas were approved now. Is that not the case, or are you really saying we need to enforce that requirement better?

Clearly, more justification is required than is actually required now.

That firing is a touchstone event. We need one for the other side.

I know. They don’t even realize there’s anything to be sorry about. They’re so focused on the numbers, they assume you are, too. They also assume that you would die for “the good of the company” if that’s what it took. We’re back to the 19th century.

I have to go get dinner for my future (hopefully happy and valued) workers. Thanks again, everyone. I really enjoyed this conversation and learned a lot.

It’s like the appeal of Wal-Mart. The prices are great, but you pay for what you buy in other ways. At least, somebody pays. I suppose part of the appeal is that people can fool themselves into thinking that it won’t be them.

Thanks. And I am sure the laiason guy who did the firing got some extra zeros in his paycheck for “handling” such a role. Unbelievable … as they say… corporation have psychopathic/sociopathic behavior patterns…. trickling down to human management too often

Everyone was like in a trance. Only a few of us started firing back with questions and indignation. The old shock and awe … shock doctrine on a lower level.

Sorry to be coming so late to the conversation.

The very idea of Microsoft “superstars” is a little amusing. The Microsoft-nurtured mythology concerning its own capacity for innovation and excellence is instead a source of ridicule in much of the the software world.

Perhaps the only way to sustain the internal mythology of superstardom is by having a mass of drones to despise…

My understanding is that the 2004 updates to the law made things worse, not better. The tech job situation is so bad that no one really cares any more.

Part of the problem is that the cycles for IT projects are so long.

My best theory on this is that corporate America was furious with the IT industry over the Y2K compliance spending – most of the rest of the world spent nothing and had no problems. Broadband to Bangalore came on line at about the same time. US business proceeded to gut the IT workforce. (Sadly, a lot of them went into real estate.) Now, the Bangalore cohort if projects are failing on an epic scale, and with no real cost savings on all but the most trivial of applications. And no one wants to be a programmer anymore. Anyone smart enough to be a “core” programmer is also smart enough to be a Wall Street analyst, high end lawyer, or some other such position which affords a much more pleasant lifestyle.

Loved Bob and Ray. Favorite one….

Bob: “So what organization do you represent?” Ray begins: “Slow…” (long pause) (Bob fills in “talkers of America”) …. Ray: “talkers” (Bob: “of America”) …. Ray: “of” (Bob, exploding, “America”) Ray: “America.” Bob: “aggggghhhhhh. Stop the interview. Get this guy off the air.”

or words to that effect….

David..MS did those things probably because they had been told, as many companies are told who have long term temps working in house, that they must never, ever allow temps to make the mistake of thinking that somehow they are the same as payrolled employees. So, anything ’special’ that is offered to the payrolled employees must never be offered to temps. If they did that, it would be another piece of evidence that temps could use with the Labor Dept. to prove that they are really employees.

Cujo said, “The two-tier system makes some sense in the academic world. Most of the grunts there are only going to be there long enough to get their degrees.”

Actually, as one of the grunts– no. GTA (graduate teaching assts) are a separate job category from adjuncts. Most adjuncts teach semester to semester, but forever. I’ve worked with teachers who have been adjuncts for 20 years– $1700 a section, so maybe if they kill themselves and teach at 3 different schools, as David suggests, they might make $24K a year, no benefits, and I mean NO benefits. They do amazing work. Most freshman comp courses, most freshman courses in every discipline at state universities, are taught by adjuncts. I get — you’ll laugh at this– a desk for 2 hours a week, and a file drawer. 500 copies on the copy machine every semester. No secretarial help. I have probably 15 hours of “required” meetings I have to attend every semester without any compensation, not to mention the “orientation” of 8 hours or so at the beginning of every semester. Not a penny extra. And the “senior faculty” (the tenure-track and tenured ones) ignore us, because they know each one of them would pay for 4 of us, so they’re scared, and well they should be– the universities are getting addicted to instructors who make less than janitors, and pretty soon, the faculty will be 90% unbenefitted (”part-time” is actually a misnomer, as so many adjuncts teach 4 or more courses– one school I teach at — I teach at three– allows adjuncts to teach SIX courses a semester, which is twice as many as my father, the tenured professor, ever taught).

And the adjuncts are very quiet about this, because they all love to teach, love the school, love the students, and are afraid they’ll be fired, or “unrenewed”.

David, can you tell us more about that Boeing CEO with the midlife crisis who so worried the employees?

I think you mean Phil Condit. He was one of the most accomplished engineers who ever worked for Boeing. He led the teams that designed two of Boeing’s most successful planes, the midsized 757 and the wide-body 777. But, after he became chairman and CEO in 1996, he started living large. First, he lived in hotel suites; then he bought himself a mansion and hosted lavish Camelot-themed parties.

Still, Condit was well liked by many Boeing employees, especially after the merger with McDonnell-Douglas. Machinists, engineers and technicians saw him as the representative of Boeing’s traditions against the more cut-throat McDonnell-Douglas, which was represented by the chief operating officer (and, later, CEO) Harry Stonecipher.