[consulting] Unionizing Drupal

Sat Aug 7 09:31:59 UTC 2010

I am so excited that this line of debate has been started.

A lot of very interesting and thoughtful contributions to be sure.

The Adam Smith quote is wonderful. Marx would love it. Did.

Just three quick points:

1. The chess pieces Adam Smith is talking about are the corporations
struggling (many of them unsuccessfully) to stay afloat in the context of
the deepening world capitalist crisis (now felt for the first time in the
heart of the US as many lose their homes, their jobs, etc. and the working
class is besieged with forces seeking to divide it through racism and
placing the blame on immigrants, etc.) can only do so if they force the
working class to pay for the crisis, via unemployment and above all reducing
wages. It's a wholesale attack on the working class world-wide as seen
through the "adjustments" in various European countries. The only way to
fight it is for those who work for a living to oppose that attack through
organization.

2. Unions are hardly a blast from the past. Every day actions take place all
over the world without which wages and benefits would plummet in all manner
of industries and services. Greece, France, Teachers strikes in the US,
other many strikes. The problem that occur with unions is that without a
political program and loyalty to the class it is organized to defend, the
leadership gets bought out and may represents the interests of the state and
the bosses. We need to struggle to take back the unions, and for their
survival, as the only way for working people to defend their wages and
benefits in the workplace via the overcoming of the limits of each
individual workplace, so that wages and benefits can be defended in the
whole industry and not just in a single shop; but we need to struggle also
for these unions to be independent of the bosses and the state and the upper
crust of union bureaucracy they create. As Sam says, the corporations main
need (not because they are bad but because it is the only way they can stay
alive) is to lower wages. Our need is to oppose them, and to propose a
political program to refound society on new foundations to overcome the
limits of capitalism.

3. The organization must be internationalist. Fighting in each country, as
Khalid says, but internationalist in scope, since the same legal limitations
affect everyone: I live and work in Argentina with European, Canadian and US
clients... what redress to I get?

Drupal is not immune to all of this, these forces moving the chess pieces
(and they are the real ones!) are moving us too, and we will be moved,
whether consciously, as architects of our destiny, or unconsciously, as
victims.

The view that the software developer, like the doctor in the middle ages,
will always muddle through by leapfrogging from one technology to another,
doesn't take notice of the fact that there is a huge process of destruction
and concentrations through merging, and most large technology companies are
announcing huge layoffs. The recent surge in freelancers success is due to
corporate abuse of the open source habitats as a way of outsourcing the work
these laid off workers used to do, which will not leave those communities
unchanged and which cannot last more than the time it takes those
corporations to change the product into what it needs and to lower wages to
the lowest possible level: all you need to do is look at oDesk and see that
the level they are trying to get to is $5 / hour.

Victor

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 5:50 AM, Alex Rollin <alex.rollin at gmail.com> wrote:

> A trade union that helped worker cooperatives is one side of things.
> I also think, though, that a model for a Drupal/FLOSS cooperative could
> help collaboration and a lot of other things for us Drupalists.
>
>  This trade union helping cooperatives is the situation with Co-operatives
> UK.  A workers cooperative is a great solution for Drupal teams and IT
> workers in general because the tools/production systems are inexpensive
> compared to, say, a car factory.
>
> I've been working on plans for a Drupal workers cooperative for awhile.  I
> floated the idea at a recent camp in Amsterdam for some feedback and I've
> continued working on it, pretty much solid, for about 4 months.  I'd love to
> share and collaborate with others on the subject.
>
> We could gather some ideas here?
> http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-worker-cooperative
>
> Alex
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 10:13 AM, Kristof Van Tomme <kristof at pronovix.com>wrote:
>
>> At the core a guild is a system where in order to gain higher returns
>> on your labor you need to go through an apprenticeship of unpaid work
>> that will make you part of the community.
>>
>> To become a Drupal rockstar and land well paying contracts (be it as a
>> freelancer or an employee) you need to contribute to the community
>> with unpaid work.
>>
>> I don't think we need anybody to regulate this, we are already a guild
>>
>> cheers,
>> Kristof
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7 August 2010 07:55, Sami Khan <sami at etopian.net> wrote:
>> > Khalid,
>> >
>> > I personally don't have the time to do a detailed study of the issue.
>> What
>> > it looks like and how it functions depends on your goals as an organized
>> > base of power... which like any base of power has room for abuse by
>> those
>> > people that are on the top of the hierarchy. Further, there may be a
>> > minority of employees that abuse rights given by the unions; this can
>> drag
>> > down the organization as a whole. Further, because certain management is
>> > abusive to employees themselves, they create opposition in unions that
>> > wastes tons of company's resources. These three reasons I think, by and
>> > large, are the biggest reasons people equate unions with something
>> > inherently bad. However, unions have brought workers many rights, rights
>> > that in many cases have now been subsumed by the State; however, as the
>> > State's resources become strained or the State becomes more corrupt,
>> these
>> > duties are abandoned, leaving the workers in the lurch.
>> >
>> > One way that this community for instance could attempt to stave off some
>> > competition would be to control the instructional capital of Drupal; it
>> has
>> > been in fact doing the exact opposite; and corporations acting within
>> the
>> > community have been encouraging this behaviour. They want cheap labour
>> to
>> > make returns for their investors.
>> >
>> > "Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the guilds of
>> > medieval Europe, though the relationship between the two is disputed.[4]
>> > Medieval guilds existed to protect and enhance their members'
>> livelihoods
>> > through controlling the instructional capital of artisanship and the
>> > progression of members from apprentice to craftsman, journeyman, and
>> > eventually to master and grandmaster  of their craft. A trade union
>> might
>> > include workers from only one trade or craft, or might combine several
>> or
>> > all the workers in one company or industry."
>> >
>> > Anyhow give the wikipedia article a read:
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union
>> >
>> > If I have some time in the future I would love to do some research and
>> > theorizing on the issue. We'll see if this ever happens.
>> >
>> > Sami
>> >
>> > On Fri, 6 Aug 2010 19:48:19 -0400, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> Forking this discussion under an appropriate subject ...
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Victor Kane <victorkane at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> We can all laugh our heads off, but the law of falling rate of return
>> >>> (Marx) and the huge efforts being made (even in the Drupal community
>> > via
>> >>> the
>> >>> sanctification of oDesk) to commoditize Drupal consulting work will
>> > make
>> >>> us
>> >>> consultants laugh on the other side of our faces.
>> >>>
>> >>> Only an international union (which we should have done at the cusp of
>> > the
>> >>> curve, not now that it is dropping) can defend our rights as working
>> >>> people.
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> Let us for a minute forget the negative connotations of "union" in the
>> >> mindset
>> >> of many in the USA ... That is a bug topic in itself: are unions good
>> or
>> >> bad,
>> >> and why ...
>> >>
>> >> Let me throw in why this will not work regardless of the above ...
>> >>
>> >> A union works within a certain geographical and jurisdiction area.
>> >>
>> >> I can't see how an international union would work. Suppose Elbonians
>> >> refuse to join. What can the international union do to prevent work
>> > going
>> >> to them? Sue them? Under which country's law? Enforcing which laws?
>> >>
>> >> Unless it is The Hague ...
>> >>
>> >> Would site owners be punished for not using unionized Drupal? How?
>> >> What stops them from using Joomla then if Drupal has become such
>> >> a pain?
>> >> --
>> >> Khalid M. Baheyeldin
>> >> 2bits.com, Inc.
>> >> http://2bits.com
>> >> Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
>> >> Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
>> >> Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
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