It is tough, you have a great contractor job at Microsoft, then the economy changes and you are staring down the barrel of job loss or wage cuts. This is a hard choice to make, there are few jobs out there, you have to be the best of the best to get employed, and many contractors essentially live paycheck to paycheck. Overall, this could be interesting for a year maybe, but then unfortunately everyone will go back to business as usual.

Techflash, The Seattle PI, and many others are reporting that Microsoft is doing an across the board 10% pay reduction for contractors that is now delayed by two weeks. With another 5% pay reduction to happen at a later date. What worries me are some of the comments that are showing up, from the start of the MSRateCuts.org web site, to active comments on the Seattle PI, contracting companies and Microsoft might be in for a really unhappy surprise on this one.

Well, have you ever heard of good of fashioned sabotage? Now, I’m not talking physical harm or vandalism, but if your pay is being cut 10%, then simply do ten percent less. Maybe not work as hard or fast. We all know places or areas of our work where we can be a little sloppy, and not be detected. Maybe leave a bug or two in the code or something. Seems fair to me.

An a-dash here. We have won round 1. We have forced MS to delay the cut. Let’s press the fight. We have two weeks now. Let’s teach MS the meaning of “wildcat strike”.

This is EXACTLY why tech workers (and all workers) need a UNION!

Source: Seattle PI here and here

I only chose the more inflammatory responses for this as a sampling of the general mood when it comes to a deeper anger. Of course we will remember this for a while, but then as times get better we will forget this and go back to the A-/V- (A Dash/V Dash) life style, and if we don’t there will be hundreds of people ready to fill the shoes that people decide not to fill again.

At least there are some smart things going on here, the whois for the MSRateCuts web site is protected for now, so we can’t find out who did the web site. This is good for the person who put up the web site. The other good bit about the web site is that this will allow folks to track the mood of the people who participate there, and depending on what they do with their petition, a list of names of people who signed the petition. This petition can be subpoenaed if necessary.

There is nothing on the WashTech web site right now in regards to contractors, Microsoft, and the news that is currently clogging the networks. It would be interesting to see what WashTech comes up with for this, and it might be the ideal time to work out a union proposition that will stick. The problem is going to be on exactly how to herd cats on this one, technology workers are hard to bring together depending on what they are doing.

The Aditi staffing response here on the Seattle PI is going to inflame passions, it was worded wrongly, and gives the wrong impression about the company. Like other companies who have bad reputations, they might find it harder to find workers in the future without touching on internal contacts or having to find alternative ways of hiring. Although when technology workers start running back into jobs in about 12 to 18 months, few will remember or car the Aditi letter at all.

The news on Techflash has given some people hope that the ground swell of resistance caused the two week delay. This is probably false hope, there are 10’s of thousands of contract workers, meaning the payroll and administrative side of the contracting house is most likely seriously overworked and will be until the changes can be made through all the systems that they interact with.

You can read the original letter on this at Techflash that covers the scope and intention of the impacts on temporary agency staff workers.

While there is no revolution now, and there is unlikely to be one in light of the economic realities right now, we are going to lose people who are going to move past technology. Or we will gain better skilled people because they will go back to school, and with their shiny new degrees go back to work at a better rate of pay. People who are struggling now will continue to struggle unless they upgrade their skills. In the longer run though, this could have been handled a lot better on everyone’s part. Where is a good PR Firm just when you need them.

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