Labor unions are rarely found in IT organizations. It’s not unheard of, but generally high pay rates and frequent job mobility have made labor or trade unions appear to be of limited benefit to the employee – and therefore rejected. In general labor unions impose rules on the management that require employees with the greatest seniority (most time at the company) be promoted to more senior positions as they open up. And they require new employees to be brought in at the most junior level. IT, with frequently changing technologies, requires bringing in subject matter experts and promoting those demonstrating top technical skills to technical leadership positions. Recently I’ve been doing some consulting on a large scale IT project, which involves quite a bit of Service Oriented Architecture and involves a unionized IT department. They’re struggling both with the technical aspects of a major technology and architectural approach change and with the union job impacts of such.
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