“You know, plumbing is easy. I mean, what do you actually do? Go in and unclog drains and screw pipe together? Maybe run some pipe up a wall? It’s easy billy. That’s why your making 14 dollars an hour.” – the guy who has been making 3 times that for two decades doing the same thing
Many plumbers would be pissed to see that. However, this hypothetical is common practice by management when dealing with IT related jobs.
I currently troubleshoot and oversee network infrastructure and user management for a decent sized group of large and small businesses. Sounds fancy? Sounds important? It is. What do I make? A dollar more than an Amazon warehouse worker.
“Well just go find a better paying company” is an easy cop out, but I’ve been in many different IT roles and this issue spanned all of them.
For years I was told “listen just migrate this healthcare companies data it’s easy!” “You don’t need more money, it’s only a 50k Cisco server your tearing apart, no big deal” now it’s “well your just a call center IT network troubleshooter”
I’m fucking sick of it.
Welders, Plumbers, Electricians, Miners exc have similarly crucial roles in keeping the whole of society running. Yet because I’m not breaking my back, I’m worthless.
We need a national IT focused Union. I don’t want to be part of some grab bag Union that covers 10 different industries. If we don’t this will never go away.
This world is in a post capitalist death spiral. Companies and the wealthy have successfully bled all of us to the point of desperation, and pointed the finger at everyone else while society propped them up on a bogus American dream model that only ever helped one generation.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.