Saturday, February 21, 2004

Employment She applied for nearly 200 hundred jobs this past year and has been collecting  unemployment. She is an IT professional with 25 years of experience and has held some incredible positions over time. She was once the only person on the West Coast that could defrag the Wang hard drives. She has programmed, managed and built many networks, but one thing that stands out, is while she was working as the IT manager for a company of 200 users, introduced VOIP to that company (it paid off in 3 years), designed the Win2K upgrade, she was unable to network with others in the IT industry. When the company she worked for downsized, she was terminated because of her salary. Her assistant was kept on at a salary of $54,000. This was a savings of only $20,000 but the other benefits may have added up to the same as a full time employee. The important point that I am making here is that she was employed for 25 years. During the last twelve years she was isolated. She was happy with her job and did not associate with other IT professionals or other businesses outside her company. The idea of talking to other IT professionals in other companies similar to hers was not really looked on with approval. There is the confidentially problem to consider and as most IT professionals know, small companies can recruit new people with ease. The opportunity for networking with other IT professions or business may have been seen as looking for a new position. That was wrong. She should have openly and consistently networked with other IT professions, businesses and business people who could have helped each other in their professions. We will be actively networking with other employers, people and businesses. Not job, no matter how long you have worked in the organization, how strong your union is can be considered secure in today's economy. Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, Communications Workers of America, Local 37083, AFL-CIO   10:10:26 AM    comment [] trackback []

Economic, Politics and War Yesterday, I emailed all of the Washington State legislatures in my district, Belltown in Seattle. I requested their attention to the Personnel System Reform Act of 2002, which will totally revamp the classification and compensation structure of all the departments in the State. Specifically, I requested their attention toward the definition of "overtime" pay. As it stands now, one receives overtime pay for any time after eight hours in a twenty-four hour period. As the Department of Personnel rewrites the section, overtime would only be paid after forty hours of work even if you had a holiday in the week. Managers would have the option of sending you home before you could accumulate any overtime. Now, overtime, as I understand, is an incentive for the employer to hire more workers, not work employees more. It is penalty for employers to pay time and one half for working on holidays. In short, it is a deterrent that limits the employer from exploiting the workers. 9:21:20 AM    comment [] trackback []