[ctonious]

About 10 years ago I had a friend who worked for EDS tell me that the Federal government has specifically disallowed software programmers from ever striking. She was very active in all kinds of software standards committees (as an aero/astro type - these kind of social scenes were beyond me), but she was very emphatic that this was the case.

I have to admit that I really doubted this, but she insisted that this was the case, and went on further to say that this situation is not well known outside of programmer circles - but that the government wasn't worried because programmers were generally a meek and mild set, which would never dream of shutting the government and the rest of the parasites down.

Can anybody confirm or deny this? If this is not the case, then I suggest it's time to unionize.

[luckystarmom]

I haven't worked as a software engineer in 7 years, but I never heard of anything like that. Most software engineers are just anti-union types.

[Mike Darancette]

About 10 years ago I had a friend who worked for EDS tell me that the Federal government has specifically disallowed software programmers from ever striking.

Probably just what Ross Perot wanted his programmers to believe.

[SandfleaCSC]

Your friend is right. Not only that, companies make it hard for programmers to unionize with a industry blacklist and handing out meaningless managerial titles to programmers and IT people.

[dread78645]

About 10 years ago I had a friend who worked for EDS tell me that the Federal government has specifically disallowed software programmers from ever striking.

I'm not aware of any union for programmers.
There is a effort to set standareds for System Administrators, not unionize, just clarify levels of competence.