What He Said

Y'all won't be surprised to read that I am a big fan of unions, especially for highly schooled folk such as myself. My science PhD gives me the right to beg for a job in $100k range, but it does not in itself give me control over anything. In point of fact, the years of obsessive effort I invested in becoming the expert in my part of the field leave me at a competitive disadvantage when compared to the conniving weasels who invested those years in sucking their ways up the organisational ladder. Opportunity cost and all that.

We are, despite our highish salaries, at the mercy of the guys who control the money flow; when they stop smiling upon us, we are well and truly hosed. The only way to get any justice is for the technically adept folks, the ones who actually make the machines work, to join together and wield a credible threat against the goose that lays the golden eggs. We don't have to be jerks about it, we don't even have to make the threat explicit if such talk makes our own people uncomfortable, but the threat must be there.

After all, it is exactly this threat that gives the money guys their terrible influence over us.