

Don’t mess with IBM - Toshio
http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/22/dont-mess-with-ibm-one-downside-of-suing-a-tech-company-that-thinks-like-a-law-firm/

======
ck2
Sounds vaguely like walmart's anti-union emergency lawyer team:

 _Wal-Mart has responded to the union drive by trying to stop workers from
organizing -- sometimes in violation of federal labor law. In 10 separate
cases, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Wal-Mart repeatedly
broke the law by interrogating workers, confiscating union literature, and
firing union supporters. At the first sign of organizing in a store, Wal-Mart
dispatches a team of union busters from its headquarters in Bentonville,
Arkansas..._

 _...The retaliation can be extreme. In February 2000, the meat-cutting
department at a Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the UFCW -- the
only Wal-Mart in the nation where workers successfully organized a union. Two
weeks after the vote, the company announced it was eliminating its meat-
cutting departments in all of its stores nationwide. It also fired four
workers who voted for the union. "They held a meeting and said there was
nothing we could do," recalls Dotty Jones, a former meat cutter in
Jacksonville. "No matter which way the election went, they would hold it up in
court until we were old and gray."_

<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/03/against-wal-mart>

------
andyjohnson0
The post by Cringely provides no references, which I find odd. I found a
Bloomberg wire article [1] about the judgement, but nothing at all about the
alleged subsequent retribution.

[1] <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/technology/23IBM.html>

~~~
rada
Recap of the "payroll restructuring":

[http://www.informationweek.com/ibm-responds-to-overtime-
laws...](http://www.informationweek.com/ibm-responds-to-overtime-lawsuits-
with-1/205917177)

Workers' petition, with names and an occasional email:

<http://www.petitiononline.com/petitions/ibm1701/signatures>

Short legal recap:

[http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/features/overtime_calif...](http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/features/overtime_california/overtime-
california-ibm.html#.UIaphcWHLh5)

~~~
andyjohnson0
That seems to be appalling behaviour by IBM.

I did an intern year with IBM UK in the late eighties and (with hindsight) it
seemed to have very good employment practices. I wonder if IBM in the US was
once like that, and if so when things changed.

------
guard-of-terra
If the company is in position to treat you as a slave (e.g. it can decrease
your compensation or degrade your status without suffering and the only thing
preventing it from this is their goodwill), there is a good chance they would.

If the jobs market is so badly screwed that they can treat server admins as
slaves, maybe USA is no longer sustainable after all?

Because you know, in a normal job market, those server admins quit. And IBM
has to hire new server admins. For considerably higher salaries (because of
bubble inflation and because of haste to fill positions).

~~~
PakG1
No, it's quite possible to hire new server admins at the same salaries or
less, and just endure lower quality work. I see it all the time. It all
depends on where the company's priorities are, normal job market be damned.

~~~
wabash
I think you didn't get his point. You're actually agreeing with him. You're
saying that it's quite possible to ignore the notion of a normal job market in
the USA. So, it's not sustainable, competitive equilibrium don't exists.

~~~
mpyne
I think instead he's saying that in a "normal" job market it's possible to
higher server admins of lesser experience for lower pay and suffer through the
consequences of having to train them up and get them proficient. There's good
business reasons not to do this but that doesn't make it any less of a normal
job market

~~~
wabash
But it's a normal assumption on this kind of discussion to deal with employees
of the same quality. You can always pay lower and get less.

~~~
PakG1
If that were a normal assumption, we wouldn't be seeing otherwise decisions in
the real world so frequently.

------
debacle
The solution is to unionize. I really don't understand why we don't have an IT
union, especially for network ops and engineering - it's a very logical aspect
of the industry to standardize and unionize.

~~~
huhtenberg
I _hate_ unions and everything about them.

You don't like working conditions in the company - leave. You don't like
conditions in your industry - switch specialty, go elsewhere. Too lazy to
switch or too gifted to leave? Well, sure, OK, let's instead arm-twist and
blackmail employer.

Given, there are circumstances when you can't leave or switch. Say, if you are
a miner in a small mining town. One employer, one skill set, no possibility of
re-training. But unions are essentially an artifact of the 19th century.

~~~
knieveltech
The very concept of work/life balance is an artifact of unionization. You hate
everything about unions? Fascinating. How many have you worked for?

Edit: upon reflection my original comment left a lot on the floor so I'm
circling back to pick some of it up.

Here's what a "typical" union experience looks like:

The union hall staffs individuals that find work for you. The bulk of back-
office paperwork and other hassles (including wage negotiation) are handled on
your behalf by the hall. When you first hire on it's typically as a pre-
apprentice (no prior experience) or apprentice (some applicable experience to
the trade). OJT and training/certification materials are provided for you.

Your coworkers are trained, experienced craftsmen. All applicable safety
guidelines are rigidly enforced. From day 1 you are presented with the kind of
benefits package that is no longer available to your average worker. In
addition to credible health insurance this includes pension, annuity, on the
job training and certification, and death benefits. In addition to your wage
you are guaranteed additional compensation for overtime and hazardous work.

By way of comparison, working in the trades for a non-union shop is at best a
crapshoot. There's no guarantee SS and other taxes are being taken out
correctly or at all. I've known several subcontractors who've gotten royally
screwed by the IRS come tax time when they found out that they (unexpectedly)
owed thousands in taxes. Safety guidelines are routinely ignored, it's nothing
to get shorted on your paycheck (or go weeks without pay), benefits are
typically non-existent, no guarantees of overtime, and you're working sink or
swim with whoever the boss could scrape together to form a crew, typically for
less money than you'd make in a union shop and that's after dues. General
contractors also tend to maintain a good-ol-boy network, so you go rocking the
boat about substandard pay or unsafe working conditions and it's a very real
possibility that you could find yourself blackballed in your area.

TL;DR: Union: guaranteed pay, safe working conditions, training provided for
career advancement, benefits, retirement plan. Non-union: good luck, buddy.

Full disclosure: I worked in the trades (both union and non-union) for several
years before changing career tracks to become a programmer. I do not regret my
time with the Union and would go back in a heartbeat if for some reason coding
was no longer a viable career option.

~~~
TheCapn
Based on anecdotal experiences mine were nearly the opposite. Now I was never
a trades worker but I did work for a unionized company. Up to a few months ago
before leaving for private sector.

 __Union: __

\- Everyone is complacent with work, majority of time is spent faking work or
finding ways out of work (pay raises are not tied to performance)

\- Net pay below average for industry (Below 50th percentile)

\- Under-skilled workers protected by the union from being let go.

\- Successes & Failures of the company are shared amongst the entire employee
base. As a result there is no motivating drive to work harder to push better
products out faster because there is no direct feedback resulting from it

\- Training is provided on a seniority basis

 __Non-Union: __

\- Identical benefits (or at the very least negotiable) but higher base wage

\- Skilled workers who are hired based off of recommendation of trusted
employees _exclusively_

\- Strong motivating factor to produce more deliverable work as it is a direct
correlation to the business's success and therefore yours (profit sharing)

\- Pay raise is tied to performance

\- Training provided on an as needed basis -> The new guy might get training
before the 10 year vet because he/she is the one going to be working with that
particular skill set in the short time frame

\----

Shared amongst those is equal work/life balance and safety. Labour laws have
protected the workforce from shady practices you experienced (arguably an
isolated incident). I'm thankful for what unions of the last few centuries
have brought for us, but speaking in the majority of cases I've heard of,
(anecdotal: take it as you will) they are now power hungry bodies that are
corroding industry from the inside out.

~~~
knieveltech
I can't speak to your experiences other than to say it's disgusting
mismanagement if true. I've heard similar stories involving non-trades union
companies. I've also heard amazing success stories involving companies bought
out of bankruptcy by their employees and turned into financial success
stories. Guess it depends on the people involved.

One thing I can address is this:

" Labour laws have protected the workforce from shady practices you
experienced (arguably an isolated incident)"

In manufacturing and trades (especially trades) this isn't even slightly
accurate. Laws don't protect people, they provide a theoretical framework for
compensation or punitive action after the fact. In practice a private citizen
has almost no chance against a corporate lawyer in court, so it's almost
impossible to prove workplace safety violations. On the rare ocassion that
something does stick in court companies caught violating worker safety laws
typically get a slap on the wrist, meanwhile whistleblowers better have a
spare career up their sleeves or line up a settlement big enough to retire on
because they won't be working for any outfits in their industry once they pull
the trigger on a court case. Good luck proving the last company you
interviewed you didn't hire you because you blew the whistle on your last
employer. :/

~~~
TheCapn
You're probably right on trades but what you said about management is entirely
right. You can have good workplaces and bad ones regardless of union status.

------
drone
The final statement in the article engages in a fallacy that all members in a
job market have the same level of mobility without consideration of individual
factors, such as:

* Potential age-bias for older workers ([1] is an example of the discussion related to this, without being exhaustive obviously) * Local job market (relevant and equivalent positions) * Physical mobility (family situation, value of house in market relative to mortgage for re-location) * Spousal situation (Spouse may not be able to relocate)

It's always so easy to dismiss the workers in these cases and say "they should
just leave," but this meme gets out-of-hand. The reality is it's often no
easier to leave than to stay, and in some situations quite difficult to do so.
This should never be used to excuse abusive practices by employers with the
line "well, the market will take care of it."

[1] <http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html>

------
macavity23
Offtopic, but the flash on that page slows my browser down to a crawl. C'mon,
guys, this is 2012, you can't write a tag cloud in JavaScript?

~~~
mike-cardwell
It's 2012 and you're still letting Flash run automatically on arbitrary web
pages? Next you'll be telling me you still have the Java plugin enabled...

~~~
wtvanhest
I don't have control over it on my work computer.

~~~
npsimons
That's employee abuse, just like this article is talking about! You should
quit and find a better job, the market always provides! (sarcasm).

~~~
LearnYouALisp
That would be a doubtful reason to put on an application: "Corporate computer
did not have script & embedded content control."

------
Nursie
If you're with them in the US right now and you want to keep your job, yeah,
probably best not to mess. This is because it is pretty much stated policy to
scale the company back in that area, in favour of building the company in
'growth' markets where people are cheaper and closer to the action.

There's not enough growth in the US to support the revenue requirements of the
behemoth, and as US employees are both expensive and easy to get rid of _,
they tend to be the first to suffer.

(_compared to, say, EU employees who are also expensive but harder to ditch).

~~~
kalms
Denmark is known for its flexicurity model. We're not hard to ditch, and we're
even easier to employ.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity>

~~~
Nursie
Interesting. I think the (generous) social security provision is what's
missing from the US at-will model.

~~~
_delirium
The very generous and un-bureaucratic short-term unemployment benefits really
help as well, I think. For up to two years, you can get up to $3k/month
unemployment without even having to deal with a government office, through an
a-kasse, which are subsidized membership organizations you can join. They'll
help you find work as well, and line up classes or unpaid internships if you
need to gain skills/experience.

It ends up smoothing over some of the friction that discourages people from
changing jobs, because if you quit your job and take a few months to find
another one, you still get a livable salary in between, so there isn't this
huge fright of being between jobs that keeps many Americans from jumping even
when it would ultimately be advantageous to do so (the fact that you don't
lose health care coverage when you quit your job helps too).

~~~
sethg
Two years of unemployment benefits are considered “short-term”? Wow.

In the US, benefits usually run out at 26 weeks. Congress took note of the
Great Recession and extended that to 39 weeks, or 48 weeks in states with
over-6-percent unemployment, but that extension expires at the end of this
year.

And Americans only get unemployment benefits if they are laid off; if you quit
or are fired for cause, you’re screwed.

~~~
notlisted
If you're self-employed and even if you are able to make the same wage for 10
years, and pay taxes, you get zilch. Makes no sense to me.

By the way, the max is 73 and 63 weeks (was 99)

[http://jobsearch.about.com/od/unemployment/a/unempextension....](http://jobsearch.about.com/od/unemployment/a/unempextension.htm)

~~~
sethg
Well, if you employ yourself and you could collect unemployment insurance
after laying yourself off, some would consider that gaming the system.

~~~
notlisted
If I work as a consultant for 10 years and on average make $100k a year, I
have to pay taxes on said $100k, like everyone else. Actually as a self-
employed person I pay more than those with jobs, yet if the economy or my
business collapses and I get no clients for 6 months, why would I not be
entitled to collect on what I've paid into the system?

Someone who came right out of college, made $50k for two years, _is_ entitled
to double digit weeks of unemployment benefits.

Edit: Egg on face. Just looked up the details, while I pay taxes, it seems
none of these go towards unemployment insurance, unlike when you're employed,
which is why the self-employed don't qualify. Lots of differences from state-
to-state too, but in NY it's impossible to "participate" unless you set it up
as an s-corp.

~~~
Retric
If you really want to you can set yourself up as an employee, pay taxes as
such, and be eligible for unemployment benefits.

------
notlisted
I wonder how they could have won the lawsuit...
<http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/overtime/info.htm>

"The FLSA requires that covered employees in the United States be paid at
least the federal minimum wage for each hour they work and overtime pay at one
and one-half the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40
in a workweek."

For the FLSA section 13(a)(1) exemptions to apply, an employee generally must
be paid on a salary basis of no less than $455 per week and perform certain
types of work that: [...] is in the computer field, or [...]

~~~
jonknee
Did you not keep reading?

> A number of states have also enacted minimum wage and overtime pay laws,
> some of which provide greater worker protections than those provided by
> FLSA. In those situations where an employee is covered by both Federal and
> state wage laws, the employee is entitled to the greater benefit or more
> generous rights provided under the different parts of each law.

------
lnanek2
This doesn't really surprise me. At some point IBM did the numbers and figured
out they were more profitable concentrating on services, and they ditched
their printer division, ditched their storage division, ditched their laptop
division, etc..

Companies are supposed to be money making machines that always follow logical
decisions to make more, it's supposed to make selling business
services/software to them easier because you just have to prove you'll save
them money, but I don't think a lot of them would have changed over like that.
They play hard ball, even with themselves.

That said, I've worked for IBM, and was treated very well. I worked overtime
all the time, though, and it wasn't odd to see managers around even very late
at night doing the same thing. I don't think I've ever had a full time
programming job where everyone didn't work overtime for salary without
overtime pay, actually. I think there were some contractors around when I was
there, but they counted their hours, only did little jobs that amounted to
exactly what they were told, and were not very effective or useful. You didn't
want one on your projects, that was for sure.

So it doesn't surprise me if IT professionals who start demanding that start
getting listed as more expensive for the business and cut out. It is the
logical money making decision by the business after all.

~~~
thewarrior
Just because its a logical decision on IBMs part dosent make it ethical . You
've completely neglected to mention your view on whether this is right or
wrong.

------
JulianMorrison
It surprises me that this doesn't count as "constructive dismissal".

~~~
gknoy
It might, but you'd have to argue against IBM's lawyers to prove it. They seem
to have a reputation for effectiveness, so that might not go so well.

------
scotty79
Why does the article talk about lack of overtime as if it was a bad thing?

~~~
trhtrsh
It means overtime work without overtime pay.

~~~
scotty79
Article says:

> Next IBM restricted the workers to 40 hour weeks so there would be no
> overtime. > VP approval was required each time someone was needed to work
> overtime. The net result was all the server admins worked exactly 40 hours a
> week and for 15 percent less pay.

I'm assuming they weren't physically allowed to work for more than 40 hours a
week and I wonder why it's perceived as a bad thing.

~~~
yen223
I honestly won't be surprised if the workers were expected to work overtime,
but just weren't allowed to _log_ more than 40 hours a week in their
timesheets.

------
bluedanieru
Don't _work for_ IBM.

I'm not one to normally subscribe to the 'if you don't like the working
conditions don't work there' line of reasoning, especially in the US where
unions are so weak. But in tech, eh, we have options.

~~~
gvb
That's naive.

a) The lawsuit was _settled_ in 2006 (ref andyjohnson0's post
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4687336>). The article doesn't say when
it was instigated, but it was likely a couple of years prior to that. In 2006,
the tech industry was still working its way out of the collapse of the tech
bubble.[1][2] Workers and companies were still pretty shell-shocked.

b) A lot of people live in places where the technology sector is not that
strong and thus there are not that many options. Often moving is not a viable
option due to family responsibilities or other circumstances.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nasdaq2.png>

~~~
bluedanieru
Uh, thanks for the wiki link to the dot-com bubble, I guess.

a) I don't really care about. I doubt much has changed and I don't think it
was from fiscal necessity. Also, if they were shell-shocked in 2006 I can't
imagine things have improved since then. It's actually disappointing as I
rather admire IBM's leadership in open source. Alas, much easier to damage a
reputation than build and keep a good one.

As for b), okay point taken. So, don't work at IBM, _if you can help it_.

~~~
Hairy_Sandwich
"b), okay point taken. So, don't work at IBM, if you can help it."

You can't really help it because there is no guarantee that IBM won't just
come along and buy the company you work for. I know lots of people that quit
my company when IBM bought it. For this one older lady (HR Director) she has
had to keep getting new jobs because 2 of the last companies she worked for
got bought by IBM. She doesn't want to work for them so she just had to find
another job and then quit.

~~~
PakG1
That's a scary track record. Seriously, what are the odds? :)

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
Pretty good apparently. My current small employer was almost bought by IBM.
Only because it is privately owned, and the owners didn't want to sell.

