16 Microsoft Temps Organize Into Bargaining Unit
In a groundbreaking move that could help shape labor relations in the rapidly growing high-tech sector, a group of 16 temporary employees at Microsoft have organized as a bargaining unit and signed a petition asking a local union to represent them.
The group, which includes accountants, lawyers and business school graduates, hopes to negotiate improved benefits with Microsoft and the four staffing agencies that pay their salaries. All but one have become dues-paying members of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech, a Seattle affiliate of the Communications Workers of America.
“Our goal is to improve the working situation for the group as a whole,” Barbara Judd and Squire Dahl, representatives of the group, wrote in a letter to four temporary employment agencies. “We expect to achieve our goals without resorting to work stoppage or a disruption of the project.”
The move is significant because labor unions have had a tough time organizing professionals, and have had almost no success with skilled temporary workers, who play an increasingly critical role in the technology sector.
“This is unheard of. They’re testing the parameters of the law,” said Greg Tarpinian, a New York-based labor consultant.
“We need to stand together because individually we haven’t gotten anywhere,” Judd told the Los Angeles Times. An MBA who has worked at Microsoft for 13 months, Judd said no one in the group had ever belonged to a union but that all were frustrated about being shuttled between Microsoft and their temp agencies.
“Microsoft says they can’t talk to us because they aren’t the employer, but the staffing agency says it is Microsoft that sets all the rules,” Judd said.
The workers, who are classified as accountants, are paid $15 to $35 an hour. Because their work involves writing software code, they want to be reclassified as programmers because those jobs offer better pay and benefits. They also want their employers to match contributions to their 401(k) plans and to pick up some of the $300 a month they pay for family medical insurance coverage.
Marcus Courtney, a WashTech representative, said the group will not seek certification by the National Labor Relations Board. “The laws are based on the 1930s and ‘40s. They don’t fit the realities of today,” Courtney said.
The workers, all tax analysts working on a new financial software product, would have to persuade the board that they represent a logical bargaining unit to win certification, a tough task when four staffing agencies and Microsoft are involved as employers. Without certification, the group cannot force employers to negotiate.
In a letter to the workers’ representatives, Rebecca Stockwell, branch manager for Volt Services, one of the employers, said the company does not believe the group “is an appropriate bargaining unit under the federal labor laws or that WashTech represents a majority of these employees.”
Dan Leach, a spokesman for Microsoft, said it would be inappropriate to comment on the matter because “bargaining units are a matter between employers and employees” and Microsoft is not the employer of the workers.
Even without certification, the workers can still legally use the threat of a strike to pressure their employers to bargain, said Michael Belzer, professor of management-labor relations at the University of Michigan.
Although Microsoft could easily replace the workers or otherwise crush such an effort, it would risk delaying the release of an important product and would potentially antagonize an army of 6,000 temps.
The Microsoft decision nearly a decade ago to fire contractors and force them to work through various staffing agencies set off a successful lawsuit by a group of temp workers to win recognition and benefits as regular employees. When Microsoft required temps to take a month of unpaid leave each year to underscore their temp status, hundreds of angry temps fired off e-mail and became founding members of WashTech, a union that now has 200 members and a mailing list of 1,100 tech workers.
