[consulting] Unionizing Drupal

[Eric Goldhagen]

At 6:31 AM -0300 8/7/10, Victor Kane wrote:
>I am so excited that this line of debate has been started.

I'm excited as well to see this discussion and debate.

There's already been a certain tone of disrespect in the thread that 
I hope it can be brought back on topic and turn more productive.

Unions are a valuable and important part of society. Unions gave us 
the weekend;  collective bargaining created a more level playing 
field that as a result gave birth to the middle class.

As labor see the erosion of those gains, we see the middle being 
pushed down, the gap between rich and poor grow. Since the beginning 
of the decline of the power of organized labor in the US (1979), the 
salary of the executives has grown by 281%, while that of the 
middle-class worker has grown by only 25% (and lower down on the 
economic scale, the lower the increase).

Not all regulation is bad. All of us that use Free Software are 
already bound by a regulation we all take seriously -- the GPL.

One critical part of our agreement to be bound by the GPL is that we 
agree that the end product of our labor can be used by anyone, for 
any purpose. So, essentially we agree to put our politics aside and 
work where we have common ground.

Let's have a lively debate, but let's not say things we might regret 
or that will impact our collective labor on Drupal itself.

 From my perspective, the existence, prevalence and quality of Free 
Software tools and communities like Drupal, shows clearly that 
alternatives to traditional free market capitalism exist and are 
viable.

The level of cooperation and sharing of resources and information 
between those that also compete with each other is rather radical in 
and of itself.

I encourage individual freelancers to join together as cooperatives, 
and I see unionization as a potential outgrowth of that.

There are a number of unions in different countries working to 
organize freelancers. I'd say that where those exist we should try to 
figure out how to make those unions more powerful and useful.

This would only be a small part of what is necessary, I agree with 
Victor that since capital can so freely cross borders, labor 
organizing should be international as well. Organizing such a thing 
is a massive undertaking that I unfortunately can not commit to. So, 
really I have no answers, just a desire to see collaboration and a 
level playing field.

--Eric

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