4) Are IT unions in the horizon?

We have discussed the recent acquisition of Daksh, one of India's famous back-office services company, by global software giant IBM in our previous study. What left to discuss was the public's reaction to the news.

One of biggest problems that IT workers have against unionization we found is that it mainly applies to blue collar workers employed by big enterprises. Organizations provide indispensable protection services to laborers in large-scale institutions applying traditional modes of employment. Union intervention is trying to prevent the escalation of key issues like safety of employment, fair distribution of benefits and compensation to workers.

However, how it help white collar jobs, such as software development and testing has become a question? We often find only few IT employees in a corporation to start a union, but meanwhile, IT professionals are, perhaps the most vulnerable.

A survey about software developers’ health has shown that the mortality rate of IT professionals in a company is extremely high. Moreover, the IT department is always in danger of suffering cutbacks, because of the availability of cheaper work. Sometimes, working conditions are not always so ideal, with management being, for the most of time, unable to understand and satisfy the specialized requirements of the employees.

Although there is no IT union yet established in America, the power of the standard workers union has already provided a lot of helps in allaying fears of job loss and benefit cuts due to offshore outsourcing.

Most IT workers acknowledge that this recent success posed by union representation is a good idea. It seems to be a quite natural reaction for a threatened group to stand closer and act defensively.

Maybe this big move can be averted. Generally, within a company, management should ensure that the white collar workers in the IT department should be treated at least with the same respect and given the same privileges as workers in any other division. The feeling of being at risk will at least be lightened, and the work environment should be accordingly improved.

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