IBM hit by Second Life strikes

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 20 Sep 2007 at 12:55

Disgruntled IBM workers in Italy are planning to picket IBM facilities in Second Life to protest against pay conditions.

The unusual move stems from worker complaints that the large profits being made by the IT giant are not reflected in their wages, and that they have been denied "a small salary increase."

"We asked many months ago for IBM to sign an internal agreement for a small salary increase of €60, health and pension investments, informative rights, and so on," says Davide Barillari, a union representative and member of IBM's technical support team.

"IBM offered only a wage increase of €6, and tried to cut rights for the new young employees. But it's not finished here, this strike was decided in reaction to IBM's decision to suppress the 'productive results benefit', which translates into an annual loss of €1,000 for each employee."

Organisers are cagey on the actual date of the protest, presumably in an effort to catch IBM off-guard, though the union website does confirm that it will go ahead sometime between 25 and 30 September.

The organisers say there will be around 500 avatars in the protest, representing IBM employees in 18 countries.

Virtual offices

IBM maintains around 50 virtual sites in Second Life and it is unclear how many of them the strikers will target, especially given their stated aim of appearing at other locations within Second Life in order to avoid a potential IBM lock out.

What is clear, however, is that the union does not see this as the last action of its kind. "This Second Life strike is the first step of a bigger 'Unions 2.0' project: we will use the 'innovation' to build a new version of unions, worldwide, to respond to the needs of the workers of the 21st century using Web 2.0 or Web3D," Barillari tells PC Pro.

"We are approaching many tech problems due to the high, and unexpected, number of avatars that are joining the strike, not only IBM employees, but many solidarity groups.

"For us, it's a big challenge on the technology perspective but for the first time we have the same tools and skills as a big corporate like IBM, so we can now discuss and negotiate at the same level."