The path to a brighter future. Creating and automating the union, why do we need a union, and where does Cambodia

1. Announcement (music of techno-opera Viktor Argonov sounds in headphones)

Hello! My name is Vladimir, and I want to live in a high-tech future. This material is about creating and automating the work of the trade union as part of a long way to the bright future of humanity (as the author sees it, readers will forgive my possible arrogance). The purpose of this material, distracted from thinking about who plays chess better in wet t-shirts: Anna Semenovich or Vera Brezhneva, is to give another impetus to people to want or be able to effectively defend their labor rights and not be gelatinous in life. And for companies to give an additional understanding that a trade union is not just a great blessing, but a necessity for any company, even if this company specializes in sales of elephant pants with a large selection of proboscis sizes. It also discusses how life in Cambodia gives an understanding of the importance of developing the trade union movement, and how only one thought about creating a trade union can help improve the pay conditions for programmers in the whole city. We are talking about the basics of automation of the trade union in the fourth part after the prehistory, which tell why it is needed at all.
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This is the first material from a large series of materials about the way to a bright future through real things here and now and how automation will help humanity in this way. Those who read this material to the end, waiting for a nice look at the bonus (which tricks you just can’t go to popularize the trade union movement).

2. Already a long history

A few years ago I lived in the city of Omsk, I had a small IT company, and I was engaged in social activities. But specifically at the moment I was asleep. The phone rang, and I, like all of us at night, happily picked up the phone, answered. Called my friend, a former director of an IT company in which I worked as a deputy. directors before the company decided to partially repurpose and fully sell to a large company, after which I opened my small, proud and independent IT company, whose scope of activity later expanded to comprehensive business support. We developed and implemented all kinds of software, repaired computers, watered flowers and washed toilets. We had an office in the city center with a kitchen, shower, a conference room with fish and a room for sleeping and outdoor activities. It was fun. My friend described to me how many interesting things need to be done on the automation of workflow, warehouse logistics, security systems, data processing and analysis systems and much more for the large transport and forwarding company “Business lines” where he worked at that time. Since then, it all started. Regular calls at night including.

At first there was a lot of work on outsourcing. The works are interesting, as in films about good intelligence officers and counterintelligence agents who fight bad spies (naturally, we were good ones), but a bunch of nondisclosure subscriptions strongly asks me not to go into details in this place. After a while, I distributed my company in parts to my friends and colleagues and completely moved to work in Business Lines, even though there was no room for sleeping and active rest. The company first had to help create a regional office in Omsk: with programmers, testers, sysadmins and beautiful girls (this was specifically stated: when there are many beautiful girls in the company, it is more fun and more corporate). Over the years in the IT field, I scored a large number of contacts with highly qualified specialists and knew how to quickly search for specialists I did not know before, and since puberty I gained a large base of familiar beautiful girls of different specialties and learned quickly to get acquainted with new beautiful girls ... sometimes I think that it’s good that my wife doesn’t read IT shny resources ... my lovely wife (suddenly she reads all the same) ...

People picked up good and fast, my friend fought for us in the main office, so the mission was quickly completed. And everything worked out quickly, because when I asked if there was a need to coordinate something with a bunch of different services, departments, respected people, etc., I was told that in general, yes, but since everything needs to be done very quickly, do that you want, if only there was the necessary result in the shortest possible time. Quickly allocated the necessary space, quickly purchased the necessary equipment. I gave people tasks to check the breadth and depth of their knowledge, but my main question was whether a person is ready to work without nagging to achieve a goal, and not to hang out in the process. All who were ready, stood in our slender ranks.

Some companies do not take female programmers, in the Business lines there are generally no problems with this. But still, there was a slight bias in Business Lines: they didn’t trust people with advanced degrees a bit. This is generally a systemic problem in the labor market. I think you know that stereotypes often act on such people in society, that they are more theorists than practitioners, or that their minds are not flexible, I tried to break this stereotype, invited the candidate of science and his assistant in research projects, Masters - almost a candidate of science, who then helped many times, for example, at the moments when it was necessary to switch from a high-level coding to a low-level one so unloved by many. For the first time I was able to call my work innovative, something that we did not have any of our competing partners, or was in simpler versions.

It was beyond all this work, when I first got inside a large company, with whom I had previously interacted outside on an outsourcing principle, I began to realize more clearly that a trade union is a useful thing not only for employees, but also for the management of the company, as it allows solve a lot of questions that can not be solved through standard management mechanisms. For example, to obtain more accurate information from the simplest workers, without unnecessary distortion at the level of middle management.

Then I was not up to union work, but the chain of my thoughts about the union, about the existing injustice in Omsk to pay programmers, compared to even the neighboring regions, led me to understand that we can help make programmers more paid in Omsk.

In Business lines in Omsk, programmers were paid in some measure less than in St. Petersburg, simply because the different “cost of living” is different in these cities. But on the other hand, we needed the best ones, and we perfectly understood that the best ones, even if they did not leave Omsk for some reason, may well earn money remotely on third-party profitable projects, and then we will have a conflict of working time. It was better for us that if people want to earn more, then they would work more for us, taking additional, high-paying work. It turned out that we pay 2 times more than the average Omsk, and taking into account the fact that people could work more, they could earn and 3-4 times more than the average Omsk.

In Omsk, at this moment in many places, for example, in the 1C-Franchisee environment, developers at large enterprises and large outsourcing companies programmers and other colleagues in the IT industry more and more “grumbled” against the existing pay inequity in the market. They were told by the leaders that such a situation is such a labor market situation, there's nothing you can do ... I usually ask people in such cases who say such things, and what, the situation has taken your children hostage and prohibits people from paying normal wages? If a company works normally, earns money normally, pay people normally, and if it works poorly, do not suffer from garbage, rebuild the company, do business with high quality ...

Well, I decided to help change the situation and began to spread information about the level of wages offered by Business lines through all my IT ties. It was not a big secret, we wrote it on work sites. Also in the city there were also enterprises that Muscovites and foreigners opened / bought, where people were also paid significantly higher than the average for the city. I also distributed information about them. When, about 2 months later, I and other our employees started calling and writing the leaders of 1C-Franchisee and other IT companies and saying something like: “Are you out there in the Business lines, are you crazy? People don’t want to go to 40,000 rubles to us, they ask for 60,000 rubles, they say, they pay in Business lines like this ”. I realized that we have something turned out. I replied that we were just not crazy, we need the best programmers, whose head is not filled with a solution to the question of where else to earn money. Salaries in Omsk are still subsiding, but we all together were able to partially correct this situation.

What conclusions can be drawn here? (at the same time we will learn Khmer figures)

១ (1). As I said, even thinking about the union can lead to advances in improving working conditions.

២ (2). Dear manager (I can communicate with you on “you”, you do not like unnecessary barriers and are always open to people?), Forget about the local situation, remember that the world has been global for a long time, especially when it comes to IT people, you need the best, offer them the best possible conditions in the world, and if you can't, then you have shortcomings in your work, do not be offended, but if your conditions are worse than you even had in my small company, you are doing something wrong. You will say that you can not change anything. And I'll ask you, how are you doing business with such thinking, how are you fighting for resources? ... Not hooked? Then I will say differently, if everyone pays more to everyone with high productivity, everyone will have more, and you, including, customers will pay you more, too, you will be richer ... I know that I still haven’t got too much, I I know what you think, but do not be greedy, it’s so nice to know that you helped people live well ... well, let's talk about it separately.

៣ (3). Even a small, but rather purposeful group of people can significantly change a city, a country and the whole world. You, my friend, you can too.

៤ (4). Salaries in Omsk are still subsiding, and if you are Omsk / Omsk / Omsk, remember, now the whole Megamind / Habr / Putin / Lenin is looking at you. Act!

We will finish this background. After the end of the first mission, I transferred to the main office in the hero-city of Leningrad, again renamed St. Petersburg. There he led, helped, participated in a variety of all kinds of areas of automation. Everything was tougher there. But even there I was told that I can do what is necessary to achieve the goals of the company. There was an action, I climbed in different warehouses, in different cities, I began to learn Uzbek and Tajik languages. It was fun. It will be a separate story dedicated to various issues, including the fight against bureaucrats. Having an understanding of the situation with bureaucracy in many other companies, I can say that I hardly found bureaucrats in the Business lines, a little more, and one could say that this is a bureaucratic preserve. But still they came across, spoiled the whole picture and had to shoot them ... damn, I almost slept, I would have written where I bought the weapon, when I publish this text, you need to remember to rewrite this sentence ...

Once, when I was at the concert of Mikhail Zadornov, somewhere between the “Americans are stupid” and “the Russians are connected with the cosmos,” I learned that a change of the main IT management that I had already expected was taking place. This is the usual law of growth of companies, according to which at each stage of growth, the company first intensively expands, moves to a new level of development, and then digests what has been gained, systematizes, squeezes the entire profit from the created resource. Usually different stages are led by different people, with a different approach. The new leadership voiced the right strategy, it was for smooth and planned work. I also need an action, and the proposed new strategy was similar, albeit with an active gait, if necessary, even with a run, but bypassing the mountain, instead of climbing through the mountain. I, as you probably already guessed, cannot help but rush through the mountain, almost fall into the abyss a couple of times, pick everything up, but climb to the very top, take a deep breath and spread out your arms to shout something in Khmer language or in international language Esperanto. It was my time to leave the slender ranks of Business Lines ... but the thirst to move loads in me remained, sometimes at night I put on a superhero costume given me with a company logo on my chest, and I help lonely beautiful girls to bring things home. Yes, the famous Grumene, this is me.

3. Now the recent backstory about Cambodia

I lived in Cambodia for half a year. Engaged in environmental and communist projects. Along the way, for Russian IT companies made a couple of reports on the position of the IT sector in Cambodia. As hands reach, I will write about it. In short, buying a calculator with engineering buttons is often a significant IT project ... although it may not be worth laughing, because many of us do not know how to use any of these buttons ... do not rush to the search engine asking what to do with this damn with the button, read this material, especially since by such a request you will most likely find discussions in the style of “Putin, press the red button, homozombi are approaching our borders.” In Cambodia, I saw a lot of good and intelligent people. If not highly educated, then with worldly wisdom. I was in different places. He also lived in a reservation for tourists, where he woke up in the morning, hearing Vladimir Vysotsky singing somewhere far away ... maybe he, like Elvis Presley, actually lives and lives somewhere there? .. and lived in Khmer families. I communicated with different people: with tourists from all over the world, and with Khmer people with different interests. He helped to unite efforts and act to local environmentalists, bikers, Russian-speaking Khmers, people advocating social justice.

Everywhere I saw that many people work only for food and accommodation, often in the same place where they work. In terms of current Russian terminology, Cambodia is now “a sewing appendage of the West”, “sitting on a sewing needle.” I saw how little workers and people in general demand, how little they need for happiness. Workers mini-sewing live on the benches next to the machines. Truck drivers hang a hammock under the car and sleep there. But almost everyone with a happy look. Is it good? There is, of course, a concept according to which you can be content with less and be happy, but still you can’t build such a high-tech future in the foreseeable future, you don’t develop a long life extension medicine, so you will lose your people too early and you don’t have time to do much important.

I have seen how a small amount of “new Cambodian”, including in the crimson sampampas (this is such a male semi-shirts semi-skirt), take for themselves the main share of all incomes, and people in the mass consider that this is normal, even those who live very is poor. Children's dreams now become the same. I tell the boy, the son of one of my two regular cabbies in Sihanoukville, tell me how are you doing, what are you doing, and he told me "Give me a dollar." I promised him that when he became an astronaut, I would give him a ruble if the money still existed. And after a while, US dollars will be needed at all, except for collectible purposes (yes, I was engaged in our agitation there at every corner) ... then the ice cream was presented to the boy, far from space, and the ice cream leaves a good memory of the Russians in memory. And then everything about people like Sergey Polonsky in Cambodia had news ... he was on the island, they talked, he gave up and drove me out of the island, although he promised that he was ready to listen to any opinion, we did not understand each other ... With programmers from Cambodia, I don’t communicated, but many local system administrators are lazy in the square, that is, not only do not work, but do not do something of their own, games on the grid are not even cut. They sleep, eat, sleep, look, what is there on Facebook ... about Habr, they also do not know yet ... Habr's team, help you with what I can with Cambodia ... Myanmar ... Vietnam ... Sudan ...?

Seeing all this, I very acutely realized the importance of uniting workers, not in order to sabotage the work of the vanity of trade union bosses, but in order to seek justice, and in order to motivate people to do productive work also from colleagues.

Moreover, I, what is called “in all colors”, saw the difference between the level of technical development of those areas where people poorly defend their labor rights - there are few equipment and technologies, it is easier to recruit more people with meager pay even if they have sufficiently high qualifications and those places where people know how to effectively protect their rights - there you can see robots helping people ... who are not on strike yet ...

4. Well, that's about the basics of union automation

Initially, this trade union, of course, needs to be created, and only then it can be actively automated (although preparatory work can be started before creation). How this is done, what are the levels of trade union activity, a lot has been written on the Internet, I have just started to accumulate my personal experience, I have only risen to this issue, therefore I will write my vision of this much later.

If we honestly ask some search engine in Russian to tell us about the automation of the union, then we will find more specific information than about the brothel automation ... hmm, I imagine how 1C enters the Netherlands market and releases the industry-specific solution 1C: Wild cats, open the configurator, and then the accumulation register "Orgasms", the reference book "Leather Scourge" ... well, let us return to the automation of the trade union. On the Internet, we find that in trade unions, automation means the installation of 1C accounting, personnel management, and so on. I immediately caught myself thinking that the moment finally came when “automation of accounting” was no longer perceived as automation, it seems to be self-evident, but I still remember when 10 years ago the director of a non-small factory seriously told me about Tom,that the installation of all these programs will not pay off even if you do not buy a license, since support will be too expensive, especially since they all have already been written on Excel, everything is convenient, they are thinking of starting to sell it to other companies ... it was the same time.

Go through the points (we fix the knowledge of Khmer numerals). Automating a union is much like business automation in fact:

១ (1). Automation of accounting and personnel records. A primary trade union cell of 3 persons may not have personnel records, but there will be some kind of accounting, since 1% of salary will be paid in favor of the trade union, and if you do not create your own inter-regional, all-Russian, all-union trade union, you will need to join to some large one that already exists, and they will ask for half of the contributions for their support. Incidentally, this support may include both accounting and legal support. Also, the accounting of the enterprise can come to the aid of the young trade union, if the trade union is created to communicate with the leadership rigidly, but fairly and constructively.

២ (2). Document Automation. Even a small trade union will be perceived better by people, it will be more transparent if the trade union documentation is available to everyone in electronic form, there will be preliminary discussions of draft documents, etc. Also, the trade union will be great, if, in addition to trade union activities, it will also remember about the environment, take care of the paper.

៣ (3). Automating collective decision making. But this is some kind of miracle for many people. Yes, comrades, in public activities, collective decision-making, a fair consideration of the opinions of many people is of great importance. The sad experience of Mikhail Prokhorov, who in political work (which also belongs to the public), began to apply decision-making techniques in his business, and for which he received a kick from the Right cause from experienced political functionaries, shows that people need to listen. The better this is done, the better the result, the fewer options for the union to be seized by bureaucratic functionaries. Unfortunately, professional systems of collective decision-making based on scientific methodologies are not very common and, as I know, in the Russian trade union movement, at least in large quantities, are not used. For major union functionaries, this is all business,and they do not want to lose it, but we have another way, and automation will help us.

៤ (4). Distance learning system . In order for union members to know exactly what and how to do, what advantages the union gives them and what responsibilities it places, especially if they are people who have been entrusted with leadership functions, and for the union to be as useful as possible in the field of professional development of people need a streamlined training system.

៥ (5, in some fonts this snail is similar to the previous snail - number 4, it is different in that it is a snail with a pimple on the head). Sales and customer relationship management systems. Any public organization and trade union, for the realization of its goals, may also engage in commercial activities, such as how to raise money in order to help people work better in their main job. In large trade unions, it all looks like commercial activity really comes first. But in general, if an object appears in the framework of a trade union, such as a dispensary, in order to have resources for its support and development, it would be reasonable to sell some of the places at a commercial price. But even if you do not engage in commercial activities, these systems can and should be used for the development of the trade union. The functionality that is used in CRM for maintaining contacts, for fixing the stage at which work with a prospective client is located,can be used for fixing at what stage there are different people who have not yet joined the union, what obstacles they have to this, a library of cases for dealing with objections, etc. This work is also important to do, the strength of the trade union in its mass.

Let it be for now. Someone will say that little is written about the automation itself, and there is nothing about the proposed solutions, which software to use. Wait, fair reader, hack to the author, leave at least one. Work has just begun, describing it now, while the impressions are still fresh, and in order to help other people more quickly understand the importance of the union. In fact, I wrote twice as much in this section, I wrote what software we are thinking of using, but I understood that it was premature to write a lot of information in an affirmative form, so that later I might not have to disprove myself. I also want to draw the attention of readers that the task I put is still broader, speaking about the creation of a trade union, the establishment of its business processes (organizational processes) and its automation, it was important to first tell why this is necessary,which took most of this stuff.

5. What will happen next?

Further, we, in the amount of several hundred thousand people, could unite in a desire to aggregate our efforts without unnecessary disputes, and here and now build a high-tech poor society, albeit still within one closed city, using the current legislation of Russia, which allows it to show an example for all others, but we still prefer to argue on this topic than to do it, so I will gradually create various materials describing my experience (which I have already done and more It hasn't happened yet) how something can be done better around you.

I hope that I was able to help you learn about the importance of the union, that you can take Habr to the Cambodian expanses to take over the business of all ten local IT people and that it is time to import 1C to the Netherlands.