Software/IT worker's unions

Hmmm.. This is a little crikey, isn't it? I remember signing something in my old company saying that I will not take part in any kind of union activities. I don't remember whether I signed something similar for my new company. I must have, I think! I would love to know, though, what can any company do if it's employees suddenly decide to form an union. I have a feeling they can't do diddlysquat! They get people to sign these things, just as a preventive measure. I don't think anyone can stop anyone from doing anything in India, whatever one may or equally, may not have signed.

Anyway, that is not the kind of union I have in mind. No fights against the management for me, thank you! I do that well enough even without a union! I can't even begin to imagine what the poor managers would do, if we actually did get that kind of an union! Most of them would jump in a well, I suppose!

What I have in mind, is an union of software workers against the world. Why, you say? Have you ever felt that you are been taken for a ride, just because you are a "software guy"? I mean, everyone, right from a measly rick driver to a humongous nationalised bank, think you must be milked for all the money you have got, just because!!! And do you know why? Because they know that we can't do anything against them! Most software workers are usually alone, away from their homes, and sometimes not even speaking the same language as the state! They ave no one to fight for them. They don't have any political strength or connections. Come on, even the politicians take us for a ride, incidentally, because most of us don't even get to vote! So we don't count! The only value that we add to the society is that of a endless source of money!

So, I ask myself, how to cure this particular bit of anomaly. I think, what is our problem? We our alone. We are Mary's lambs without Mary! So we get ourselves a Mary! And how? We form a union! Everyone, right from the CEOs and MDs till the lowliest trainee temp, will belong to this union. (If any expert in English grammar is pointing out or has pointed out that I suddenly moved from a software worker to I and we, he or she can bugger off! It's my blog and my prerogative!).It will give us the strength to fight for the injustice and idiocy we have to go through. Just imagine, a cloth shop owner sells a software worker something at a costlier price. He or she ( for this particular example, most likely she) logs in to a website and complains about it. Some four-five hundred members of the union are given a call. In major software cities, one can call these number of people every hour and still have lots left over for the next such incident. Well, these guys spend the next Saturday, parading in front of the shop, hanging out, chatting and having a very nice time. AND TELLING EVERYONE WHAT A BLOODY THIEF THE SHOP OWNER IS!!! I don't think the shop owner will ever sell anything overpriced again. I don't think he will sell anything again!!!

But this is a very lowly kind of problem. What about the real problems! The house rents, the property rates. The things that genuinely cost us our hard earned money! In cities like Bangalore and Pune, the only reason rents and rates are so high is because the software workers pay it! And really speaking the software people can't do anything. They know that if they don't pay the rent, someone else will. Its a owner's market! We use the union and make it a customer's market! The union will decide that the rent for a particular area, will be X. And no member of the union will pay a teensy weensy paisa more! Then, suddenly, the rent comes down! So does the property rate! It has to, because if the max rate that a seller is being offered is X, then he can do nothing else but sell it at X.

Of course, it will work only if all the software people work together on it! If some idiot, mostly a project manager, decides to buy a house at the rate at which the seller is offering, the system breaks! But, I guess most people will take active participation in the union, because it will save them money and trouble. And that, in turn, will be the union's greatest strength!

Just think of the advantages! The members will not only have the power to save themselves from the lowly elements of the society (which includes most of the society), they will have some political standing. Thay can force the local government's hands. They can have legal hope! But most of all, they will have someone to back them up, if they get in any trouble! They will not be alone. They will have a big brother to help them out. But then, nobody really cares for you, till you have a big brother, a bhai!

PS: If anyone is questioning the fact that I did not use the term software engineer, but a software worker, I would like to explain that what we do, is hardly engineering! I just didn't have the heart to call us software coolies, which is what we exactly are, so I just used a euphemism. I think we are even worse off than coolies! At least, they get to form unions!