Is it time for IT to get organised?

Stan Beer
Monday, 26 September 2005 10:00

Opinion and Analysis

The recent announcement that EDS is to retrench 106 of its IT staff, just after the outsourcer's very public stoush with staff over pay claims, highlights an issue that has been threatening to boil to the surface for some time. Is it time for IT labour to get organised?

Up until recent times, IT workers have been fortunate to belong to the better paid professional strata. There was little incentive to unionise because employers, held ransom to the mystique of a technology they didn't understand but knew they needed, had little choice but to pay premium rates to the eggheads in the IT department. However, that all changed in the post dot com era of offshore outsourcing, packaged solutions and the general commoditisation of IT.

About 10 years ago, the outsourcing phenomenon hit and longstanding workers at financial institutions, utilities and government owned authorities found themselves being sold to new employers such as IBM GSA, CSC and EDS. However, with new projects coming online by the dozen, most still managed to keep their jobs and their fat pay packets intact.  Then came Y2K, GST, the dot com boom, and it all just seemed to get better and better. The idea of belonging to a union when employers, including outsourcers were screaming for IT expertise seemed ridiculous.

As we all know, that was then and today things are very different. The chances are that those who have stuck it out with one employer are getting paid very little more than they were five or even 10 years ago. In real terms, their pay has probably gone backwards. Many have found themselves made redundant, to be replaced by some faceless IT professional working out of an office in a cheap offshore labour market. Some have been forced to suffer the indignity of having to train their cheap replacements as a condition of receiving their redundancy packages. Without any union to go into bat for them, these hapless highly skilled IT professionals have had no choice but to cop it sweet.

It looks like things are now on the mend in the IT industry. The post Y2K lag is behind us and new projects are starting to come on line. Some may therefore argue that any talk of unions for IT professionals is now redundant. As the EDS experience shows, nothing could be further from the truth. As soon as a little less than 20% of the EDS professional workforce joined a union, the formerly intransigent EDS was forced to come to terms with the fact that it had to negotiate with a powerful bloc of workers.

The current president of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), Edward Mandla, who comes from a recruitment background, bemoaned the fact that EDS had allowed a union to become involved in its dispute with staff. He intimated that because the IT industry had collectively always been an excellent employer that union involvement should not be necessary. That may have once been the case but when it gets to the point that an IT worker has not had so much as a cost of living adjustment in seven years or where IT workers are forced to train their replacements in order to receive a fair redundancy package, Mandla's excellent employer argument begins to sound like a mantra from a bygone era.

A question that needs to be asked is what role, if any, does the ACS believe it has to play in the changing dynamics of the IT industry? Given Mandla's recently expressed views, it is now not clear whether the ACS purports to represent the interests of IT professionals or their employers. Surely as a professional association, the original charter of the ACS was to represent and further the interests of the IT profession? If this is still the case, then did the ACS, whose numbers have shrunk from 16,000 to 14,000 in the past year, miss a golden opportunity during recent the EDS dispute to come out strongly in support of the IT professionals the organisation purports to represent?

Its silence throughout the whole EDS affair has unfortunately shown the ACS to be an increasingly irrelevant organisation. Meanwhile, an organisation called the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia (APESMA) has shown itself to be the sort of organisation to which IT professionals are increasingly looking to represent their interests. Put simply, IT professionals have no use for a professional certifying body - an employer couldn't give two hoots whether they have an M.A.C.S after their name if they don't have .Net or CISSP on their resume. What IT professionals could use is a good union and, based on the recent EDS saga, the APESMA has shown itself to be a good candidate.