IT managers everywhere have watched with interest as the drama plays out. As former eTown workers find other jobs and the union efforts move slowly at Amazon.com, managers are asking, "Where will this happen next? Could it be at my company?"
The union drive at Amazon.com, for example, started in mid-November with fifty customer service representatives in Seattle. According to JJ Wandler, an Amazon.com customer service representative in Seattle and a union organizer, the e-tailer's response was less than flattering. "Management has posted an internal web site which paints union membership and objectives in a very unflattering light," Wandler says. "Much of their information relies on a largely outdated picture of violent teamsters and money hungry union bosses."
Wandler's efforts have come to nought. In late January, Amazon announced the closing, set for May 4, of its McDonough, Ga., distribution center, and one customer service operation. That service center happens to be the Seattle unit where the organizers are employed.
Is it contagious?
In the corporate world, call center and help desk employees have much in common with the customer service reps at Amazon.com and eTown. Will these groups move for unionization elsewhere in the IT industry?
Bill Hallett is an independent call center and customer service consultant who has managed call centers at Tandem, Tivoli, and, most recently Wayport, a high speed internet access provider in Austin. "I don't think we are on the verge of a wave of union activity in call centers," says Hallett, "but the efforts at Amazon and eTown should be seen as a wake-up call."
This wake-up call has Hallett and his colleagues talking about the issue. "There are two extremes of opinion," he explains. "One is that, because we are in high tech, we are immune from union activity. This goes way back to IBM when Big Blue did a number of things to make employees feel more secure, more a part of the company. The other extreme is that we managers of call centers should be very worried by events like those at eTown and Amazon."
Hallett is in the middle. "The real issue is that call center employees are often viewed as second class citizens, and too many senior managers, CxOs, are not cognizant of the potential problems this can create."
If you are an IT manager, heed Hallett's advice: "Don't lose touch with the people taking the calls. And don't think it is just about compensation. It is also the work environment. An hourly call center employee who punches a clock day after day while watching the engineers come and go as they please may get ideas."
Scott Nostaja, senior vice president of human resources and administration at PeopleSupport, a Web-based customer care service and product company, in St. Louis, Mo., holds another view. "I don't think we are on the verge of a new wave of unionization in high tech, or even in call and customer service centers."
But Nostaja, who spent twenty years as a labor relations executive in the motion picture and television industry, does say that management cannot afford to ignore recent events. "High-tech employers now face the same issues that the brick-and-mortar folks have been dealing with for years. Labor relations is one of them."
The union you deserve
Lloyd Loomis, a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, a law firm in Los Angeles, says many high-tech firms have led a charmed life when it comes to labor issues. "They have been lax about overtime, pay scales, and just having an employee handbook with policies and procedures clearly defined," Loomis says. "These things can come back to haunt to you."
And he should know. "It is my job to defend management in labor disputes," Loomis says. "But frankly it is tempting to pick one of these dot-com cases and argue it from the plaintiff's side. The high-tech industry has always been so confident that none of their own would ever want a union that management is amazingly ignorant of basic labor law."
Loomis adds that organized labor is not particularly savvy about the high-tech sector, but that is no reason for management to get complacent. "Sweeney [John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president] is a smart guy. He will learn."
The message, Loomis continues, is clear: High-tech managers must learn what their steel mill and auto plant peers have known for a very long time. "It has been easy to believe, especially for younger people, that unions in America are essentially dead," Loomis says. "This is just not the case, and high-tech management would do well to heed an old saying, 'You get the union you deserve.' "
Circle the wagons time
Does Amazon.com management believe they deserve any union at all? Hard to say. Amazon.com turned down repeated requests for an interview. When the company fired over 300 customer service reps in late January, including many pushing for a union, it was, some say, a public relations debacle.
Amazon.com has been tight-lipped about the unionization activities, as might be expected. Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO is quoted as saying to Wall Street analysts that "[closing the Seattle call center] was clearly the right business decision for us as we pursue making this into a profitable company." The argument is not altogether implausible. Amazon.com, after more than five years of losing money, is facing grim numbers.
Even Amazon.com union activist Wandler refuses to draw too many conclusions from the fact that he will be officially terminated from Amazon.com on May 4. "It would be pure speculation to say that the layoffs were done to shut down the union," Wandler says. "However, Amazon's rationale was that CSR [customer service representative] costs in Seattle were too high. But CSR workers in nearby Tacoma earn the same wages, and that facility will remain open."
Tacoma, say some observers, isn't the only locale on the minds of those in Amazon.com management. "Outsourcing of CSR centers is now a reality," Wandler says. "This was definitely a factor in our efforts to organize. Amazon now has a center outside of New Delhi, India."
Even so, the Tacoma call center workers were not part of the union movement and some question why. "The short answer," says Marcus Courtney, co-founder and organizer at the Seattle-based WashTech (Washington Alliance of Technology Workers), "is that there never was enough unionization interest among the Tacoma CSR folks."
Amazon.com has also kept relatively quiet about internal reactions to the unionization activity and to the customer service center closing. The e-tailer has tried to keep workers from talking about the events. Earlier this year, terminated workers were effectively put under a gag order by Amazon.com -- departing workers who said anything negative in public about the company would have to settle for a smaller severance package.
But in early February Amazon.com backed off from this position. "I can now talk freely to the press without jeopardizing my severance," Wandler says.
Amazon.com has asked departing workers to sign a general release clause, Wandler says. "This one basically affirms that you will not file any complaints, lawsuits, etc., against the company. It seems to include things like racial and sexual harassment, and unhealthy work environment. The union organizer has decided to sign. "They are holding out a pretty large carrot," Wandler says.
Union organizers have six months to file an Unfair Labor Practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, charging that Amazon laid off the Seattle division for the express purpose of nipping union activity in the bud. Wandler and his unionization cohorts do not work alone. WashTech, which is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America, champions their cause.
Officials at WashTech and workers at Amazon.com have not yet decided whether or not to go forward with the charges. Loomis says there are at least two reasons.
"The burden of proof is with the organizers," Loomis explains. "And I am confident that Amazon.com has good legal representation. The other reason is time. Even if the organizers are successful, it could be years before they see a dime in settlement." The call center employees, most of them young, may not have the staying power for a lengthy ordeal with such an uncertain outcome.
Much ado about nothing?
Some are still unimpressed by the unionization rumblings at Amazon.com and eTown. "I think this is an issue that has been created," says Kazim Isfahani, analyst with the Giga Information Group. "We still have negative unemployment in IT. The data still suggests that employees, not employers, have more leverage. This does not make for an environment that is conducive to unionization."
For their part, eTown management sounded almost congenial before the company's demise. Steve Ramirez, vice president of marketing at eTown, at one time said he wanted to see the union election go forward. "We would like to see employees vote their feelings in an election, if that is what they want to do."
A marketing official at another b-to-b startup, however, thinks it is high time IT management started paying more attention to human resources issues. "It is common to put in 12, even 14 hour days here, and not unusual to see people working on Saturday. Now that stock options no longer look like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, these issues can become real union incubators."
Is it a matter of time?
But even labor organizers admit that union incubators tend to be slow. "Labor is called a movement for a reason," says Erin Tyson Poh one of the Northern California Media Workers Guild, organizers behind the eTown effort. "Movements begin small."
And labor attorney Loomis isn't predicting big changes for high tech anytime soon. "I am not saying [unionization in high-tech and dot-coms] will be an overnight phenomenon," Loomis says. "But, especially if we continue to see pull backs, management would be well-advised to bone up on wage labor laws, ergonomic laws, and discrimination statutes."
Come May 4, the center close date, over 300 Amazon.com customer service reps will have plenty of time to ponder these labor issues and more. "I will probably take an extended vacation in Mexico," Wandler says. "After that, I don't know. I would think twice about going back to work for an internet company. I might go back to school and become a teacher."
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Unionization at e-town
The experiences of working to organize a union of customer service reps at eTown and then of losing both his job and three weeks pay when the San Francisco e-tailer folded have given Eric Anderson ideas. "I have talked to Bill Wyland and Erin Tyson Poh with the CWA [Communications Workers of America] about becoming a labor organizer," says Anderson, now a customer service rep with KLA-Tencor, a supplier of process control and yield management solutions for the semi-conductor industry, in San Jose.
Late last year and through early January, Anderson worked with other customer service reps at eTown and got further in unionization than their counterparts at Amazon.com. The e-Town organizers actually had a union election on the calendar, scheduled for Jan. 12. If the election had taken place, and if the organizers had prevailed, eTown would have been the first dot-com company with a unionized customer service department.
But the election didn't happen. Claiming unfair intimidation tactics on the part of management, the organizers canceled the election and filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board. "Management did paint a negative image of unions run by corrupt bosses," says Anderson.
The reasons behind the unionization attempts at eTown sound familiar to dot-com veterans: The reps were asked to work long hours and juggle erratic schedule changes.These are the kinds of sacrifices typically expected at shiny, New Economy startups. But with some of the luster gone from that shine, one analyst says he is not surprised to see some grumbling among the troops.
"Big payoffs from stock options don't seem as likely now," says Dean Baker, analyst with the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, DC. "There is no question that the economy is slowing down. And I don't think we have seen, since the recession, the number of layoffs we are starting to see now."
It means, Baker continues, that workers suddenly feel more insecure. "Long hours and sacrificing for the company -- these things are harder to sell. Now it is back to basics."
So you want to start a union?
This is a road you might find yourself on.
1. Contact local labor union.
2. Form organizing committee.
3. Identify bargaining unit.
4. Rally support among affected employees.
5. Employer voluntarily recognizes bargaining unit as union. Union formed.
6. Sign 30 percent of affected employees to election filing with National Labor Relations Board.
7. Bad news -- NLRB determines bargaining unit not properly defined. Back to step 4.
8. Good news -- NLRB notifies employer of union election petition.
9. Set union election date.
10. Management engages in unfair labor practices. NLRB conducts hearing on charges.
11. NLRB rules in employer's favor -- no violation. Back to step 9.
12. NLRB rules that employer engaged in unfair labor practices. De facto union exists.
13. Vote on whether to form union.
14. Less than 51 percent of bargaining unit vote for unionization, back to step 1.
15. 51 percent or more vote for union. Union formed.
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