Boo Hoo...
I was an IT worker for decades and never got a chance to go on strike!
The Public and Commercial Services union has said that 1,000 of its members working for HP will take another four days of industrial action. The strikes will mainly hit the Department of Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Defence and General Motors work in the north-east and north-west. Staff at centres in Newcastle, …
it quite hard. These people are unlikely to be under-educated or uninformed. Yes they are taking a risk, but don't you think that things must be pretty bad within HP for this to happen? I worked for HP until a few years ago for 15 years. Great place to work, sometimes stressful, often challenging, but good performance was well rewarded and supported. We even (well most of us - all of my team) took a voluntary wage cut to help save posts. The aftermath is another matter - the reign of Carly (she sacked people anyway and pocketed the 10%) - probably the beginning of the end of a once great company.
It no longer seems to be the case - my company has taken on a number of extremely good ex-HPers recently, all refugees from a very poor and deteriorating management culture.
It's called 'capitalism', the workers say they are not going to work unless they get x, and when they don't get it they strike. It's no different from HP hiking prices by 10%.
HP can give them what they want or fire the lot of them. Your time is a product you sell to companies after all - why should they be the only ones that can choose what to charge?
No pay rises for 2 years? In the area I work in at HP many people have had no, zero, zilch pay increases for at least 4 years. In general, people have had one or two pay awards since 2000 which normally total about 3%. This really is a sh!t company to work for - happily I am off soon, but I should have left ten years ago :-(