By Lee Conrad
National Coordinator
Alliance@IBM CWA Local 1701

One of the most common questions asked of the Alliance@IBM by IBM employees is “when are we going to have a union and when is the vote?”

Many IBM employees have the misconception that all we have to do is call someone up and schedule a vote. Unfortunately it isn’t that easy and the process to getting to the vote is difficult.

Here is the reality of getting to the vote: First the Alliance must show the National Labor Relations Board that at least 30% of the employees have shown an interest by signing union authorizations cards. But no union goes into an election with 30% support. With that low a percentage the union is doomed to lose. Unions go into elections with a strong majority signed up or not at all.

Another Legal aspect is what is the appropriate bargaining unit? Is it Burlington or all of the Micro-electronics division. Is it one Global Services location or all of the division? What about the 40% of IBM employees who work from home? What would be their bargaining unit?

With this question IBM is able under the law to interject its opinion and in fact has done so.

In 1994 a group of Customer Engineers at a branch office in Denver petitioned through a Labor Union the right to have a union vote. They had a majority of their co-workers signed union authorization cards. When it was taken to the Labor Board IBM stepped in and claimed that the Denver office was not the appropriate bargaining unit but that an 8 State region was. The Labor Board agreed and the employees and the Union (Electrical Workers) were not able to wage an 8 State campaign. The vote at the Denver office was not held.

At one time the Alliance did have employees sign authorization cards but because these cards have a short legal “shelf life” we discontinued them and instead rely on employees joining the Alliance as subscribers or members to prove interest.

Another difficulty in organizing is that US Labor Law has become very unfriendly to workers and their organizing campaigns. We won’t go into detail here but our web site www.allianceibm.org has links that will educate you on this dilemma.

But regardless of all the difficulty IBM workers and workers throughout the US still believe in the right to from Unions and have a voice in the workplace.

So what do we do? We build the Alliance@IBM site-by-site, office-by-office, worker-by-worker. We organize for the long haul and when roadblocks are erected, we find a different path.

One of those different paths is what is called a non-majority union, and that is what the Alliance@IBM is. Even with that definition there is still a lack of understanding of who and what we are. The confusion lies in the term “union”.

The IBM union- Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701- is a nationwide membership organization of IBM employees, retirees as well as outsourced/sold off IBM employees and contractors. Our members are IT specialists, manufacturing workers, engineers, programmers, software developers, SSR’s, and even scientists. Many of our members are mobile or work from home. We are part of the Communications Workers of America, a 700,000-member organization. The Alliance has 6000 supporters and 450 dues paying members located in every State and we can proudly say that IBM has employees with union cards in their wallet. We are a democratic organization, governed by Officers and a council of chapter delegates, all elected by our dues paying members. Our basic principle is that only by standing together with your fellow employees can you hope to keep the benefits you still have, restore the benefits you lost and address key concerns in the workplace like off-shoring, job security and working hours. We believe that organizations like the Alliance and similar non-majority unions are in the forefront of re-defining the word union and employee activism, while also expanding the Labor Movement.

Ever since IBM started taking away benefits that were promised to people when they were hired, the Alliance@IBM has strived to undo the injustices that IBM perpetrates in the name of short-term gain.

Members of the Alliance have taken and continue to take actions such as writing letters to Politicians and newspapers, launching workplace e-mail campaigns, organizing and attending large rallies and smaller meetings, introducing stockholder resolutions and holding stockholder actions, and circulating newsletters and e-mails in the workplace and community. We are also involved in activism around IBM’s toxic exposure of workers and residents in IBM communities. The worldwide media watches the Alliance web site closely and we are considered the source of information on IBM employee issues.

We also are an information source for other workers in the IT industry that share our concerns on off shoring and seek information on advocacy and organization.

The Alliance also works closely with IBM unions and Works Councils around the world and participates in joint actions and dialogue.

While our ultimate goal is a union contract, there is much that can and must be done right now. Our message to our co-workers in IBM is that there is no need to be discouraged that we have not sought or won a union recognition vote through the NLRB. Simply put, we are a union as defined by section 7 of the NLRA and we will act accordingly. We believe that workers standing together can be very effective. In 1999 IBM employees in a revolt against corporate management changing our pension plan to a cash balance plan, held mass meetings nation wide, testified to congress and took other actions that resulted in IBM backing down and restoring choice to over 30,000 US employees. IBM customer engineers in the South organized an e-mail and letter writing campaign to win an increase in mileage. Our web site is very popular even with IBM employees who do not yet belong to the Alliance, because we are the voice for the voiceless inside the company.

Together we can challenge IBM directly, and we can reach out to other labor organizations and community based non-labor groups forming partnerships to address our mutual concerns. Some officers and members of the Alliance also serve as officers of State and Local AFL/CIO Federations

However, effectiveness is directly related to membership. Not only does the Alliance need to add members; we need these members to actively participate in this struggle.

Also if there is sufficient support for a traditional union vote campaign we will certainly pursue it. Neither CWA nor the Alliance is going to win collective bargaining rights for IBM employees; the employees must fight to win these rights for themselves. The future is up to you.