[consulting] Unionizing Drupal

[Eric Goldhagen]

At 12:56 PM -0700 8/7/10, Sam Cohen wrote:
>The problem I have with talk about a union is that it's not at all 
>obvious that the rules that apply to other industries apply here. 
>
>If you take the car industry as an example, it seems to me that 
>Drupal consultants are not at all like the line workers that build 
>cars -- and I definitely believe in unions for line-workers. 
>
>It seems to me Drupal consultants are more like the thousands of 
>auto repair shops and the mechanics they employ.
>
>If this analogy holds water then it's not at all obvious to me that 
>a union would be beneficial to the   "repair/web" shops or to the 
>"mechanics/developers" that work for them.

I think the closest unionized example would be Theater and Movie 
workers -- the techies and designers that make Broadway, TV and 
Hollywood function. Their union, the International Association of 
Theatrical and State Engineers, IATSE, has much to offer us in terms 
of how to unionize an industry that is mostly independent workers 
doing relatively short-term contract/project based work.

I've been working on a drupal based project with the IATSE Naitonal 
Benefit Funds for the past 6 years and from what I've seen they have 
a model that non-theater techies can learn from.

I don't want to mis-state how they organize, so I'm going to make 
sure I have it right by talking to some of them first, then I'll post 
more here.

--Eric
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Openflows, Inc.
a technology workers cooperative
http://openflows.com
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