IBM employees and unions strike / protest in Second Life
September 27, 2007 12:31 pm
Now, as I do think the ‘IBM strike in Second Life’ is a neat example of gathering people over real life country and even continent boundaries , I was curious at how an organized* Second Life strike would be executed.
So after reading this post on the IBM protest blog, I couldn’t help myself and TP’d to the Commonwealth Island to start my journey.
From there I left for the IBM Business Center where I saw… a lot of noobs. Really. Despite rather clear instructions from the organising UNI Global Union, a lot of the protesters did not know how to put on their shirts, hold their protesting boards and do basic communications and travelling.
My favourite noobs were the ones with their ‘holding strike sign’ pose activated without holding a protest placard. I stopped counting at eleven. :p
I wonder: did the IBM staff not get any avatars with last name ‘IBM’? As I did not see anybody with a last name hinting at being employed by IBM. Or did all prefer to generate alts for this protest? Either way, what is the actual credibility of the protest if it are ‘just avatars’ without a known owner to back up the avatar’s voice?
UNI Global Union writes on their blog: ‘Confirmed the participation of 900 avatars from more than 18 countries, representing IBM employees worldwide, concerned citizens, solidarity groups, unionists, workers from other IT companies, employees representatives from many European and international metalworker federations!!!‘ But it was nearly impossible to find out who were all present, as profiles were left empty and IMs mostly unanswered.
To my surprise, there were at least 4 avatar representatives with first name ‘abvvBelgium’ walking around, which means they are from the belgian socialistic union ABVV.
I said ‘Hi’ in three languages to all four of them, but none replied. I’m tempted to blame the ‘not enough awareness about how IM/main chat works’ and consolidate myself with the fact that they didn’t talk in main chat either.
As far as I know, IBM is just ignoring the strike / protest and Eightbar stays silent about it too. As it’s always nice to give people good advice they absolutely do not need, I wonder, how would you react when you were IBM? As - I think - Nobody Fugazi said: ‘This is probably a virtual worlds first IBM did not want.’
The strike took place in a virtual still experimental world, which makes I’m heavily doubting between the following two options, but both come down to ‘play along’:
- Give them their 1k back. Why - looking at IBM’s yearly profits - make such a hassle out of that? 1000 Linden Dollars / Italian employee isn’t all that much?
- Gather your still loyal avatars, outsource - just to annoy the unions even more - the creation of security staff combat uniforms - you know: helmets, stunguns, baseball bats or the like,… -, armoured trucks and water canons. Outlaw street meetings and give those avatars the virtual goods mentioned above, a griefing for dummies course, full building and script rights to the sims - which should be damage enabled - and allow them to do whatever necessary to end the protest.
Vint, a communist? ;)
And you, what would you do when being head PR or whatever equivalent department of IBM faced with this type of protest? Ignoring it just seems such a silly and boring solution. :p
More pictures in the IBM strike / protest in virtual world Second Life Flickr set.
*Daily log in behaviour into SL during the real life payed job time isn’t considered striking by Vint.
6 Responses to “IBM employees and unions strike / protest in Second Life”
> 1000 Linden Dollars / Italian employee isn’t all that much?
We are talking about 1000 euro’s, not linden dollars….
“Vint, a communist? ;)”
Watch out, Prok is going to make hir next diatribe/dissertation/foaming-at-the-mouth rant based on that question alone. ;-)
Smoke, I know. Giving them a 1k L$ rise again was my solution. =) I was also talking about SL riot control, not RL riot control.
Tobie, let her. *keeps white font tag ready* ;)
*plays with her pretty pictures in her still fun SL*
E-mail communication from Christine Revkin from the Union Network:
Dear Friends,
Many thanks to all of those who have given us suggestions on how to proceed with the IBM Italy workers’ struggle that had remained unsolved after our historical Protest in Second Life on September 27th.
By the time we went through all of the excellent and original ideas you gave us, some developments had taken place….indeed there are some very positive news we had to share with you:
1. Mr Andrea Pontremoli, IBM Italy’s CEO (who personally received all of your petitions by email) has resigned. It seems our Virtual action had an impact on his role at IBM. IBM Corporation made a complaint to IBM Italy for the way they’ve managed the negotiations with the thousands of employees and how they’ve let it lead to such a harmful image for the company.
2. IBM Italy management have accepted to return to the negotiations’ table and has already met with the Works Council. We expect an agreement will -finally- be signed in the next week or two. IBM workers have now been waiting an entire year for the situation to unblock, so this is really fantastic news. We would like to think that all of this has a lot to do with the incredible support all of you have given them over the last 6 weeks. Your involvement with the protest in Second Life, your news coverage of the events and your ideas to pursue fighting in “first” and “second life” have really helped tremendously. You will never be thanked enough.
Again, we’ll keep you informed of the signing of the new agreement for IBM Italy workers!
IBM Protest organisers
I’m sure the RL protest and such helped way more then the virtual one did, but still, let’s cheer for the Brave New Virtual World that is Second Life? =d
Breakthrough at IBM Italy
One month after a virtual protest staged in Second Life with almost 2’000 avatars demonstrating on IBM islands, a new contract with IBM Italy has been signed.
The new agreement, which still needs to be approved by the IBM Italy workforce, reinstates the performance bonus that was cut unilaterally by IBM Italy management.
The agreement signed by IBM Italy and the trade union Rappresentanze Sindacali Unitarie (R.S.U.) not only includes the performance bonuses from 2007 up until 2010 but also payments by IBM into a national health insurance fund and also states that negotiations will continue with respect to IBM industrial and business strategies in Italy and the improvement of internal communication policies.
The situation abruptly improved and negotiation resumed after the former country manager left IBM in the mid of October, who had signed responsible for the pay cuts in the first place. His departure cleared the air and facilitated constructive negotiations between social partners as this could be expected from a professional management of a high-tech company.
The virtual demonstration organized on 27 September for a whole day has certainly had an impact on the positive development. Almost 2’000 virtual protestors from 30 countries populating IBM premises in Second Life solicited an unprecedented media echo from all over the world, including TV and radio stations, daily news papers, computer and business magazines. The virtual protest had been supported by global unions such as the International and European Metalworkers Federations (IMF and EMF) and UNI Global Union.
The threat of strike action in the “real world” by the Italian unions after the virtual protest has certainly also helped to break the deadlock. Yet, the impact of this historical action in Second Life must not be underestimated.
Care to comment?