Talk:IBM and unions/GA2
GA Review
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Reviewer: Mokadoshi (talk · contribs) 05:28, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
here for what they are not)
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Comments
Prose
IBM has a strong corporate culture that promotes strong employee identification to the company, individual relations between employees and their direct manager.
I'm having trouble understanding what this means. Is there a way to reword this to make this clearer? Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
Lead
- In general, significant information should not only appear in the lead.
Anonymous feedback from employees allowed management to address grievances early on. If management became aware of unionization drives, investigatory teams were formed to discourage unionization by exploring alternatives
exists in the lead but I'm not seeing corresponding information below in the article. In its current state, this is undue weight. SeeMOS:LEADREL for more information. P.S., I think you did a good job with this in Apple and unions if you want to compare the two. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)]
References
- I have not yet gotten access to the Early reference, the Dickson reference, or the Cortada reference. No action needed, just leaving this as a note for myself. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
Over 260,000 employees work for IBM world wide as of 2023.
Confirmed with reference. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)In 2011, the global union federations UNI Global Union and International Metalworker's Federation formed the "Global Union Alliance" to coordinate labor activities across the globe among its affiliate unions.
The second reference for this sentence in The Hindu doesn't say anything about UNI Global Union or International Metalworker's Federation. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
The extent of industrial relations between IBM management and trade unions was polled. On a scale of 0–5 where 0 means no union recognition exists and 5 being the best, IBM subsidiaries ranked an average of 2.77 across 11 different European states, slightly above the ICT industry average of 2.64. This ranks them ahead of competitors HP, Atos, Accenture and behind Microsoft, SAP.
Close, but Atos ranked 3.5. And Microsoft ranked 2.75 so IBM isn't behind Microsoft. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
CPSU organized two 48 hour strike actions.
Close. The first reference is a dead link, so I can't verify that. The second one just says it's a 4 day strike, not that it was two separate 48 hour strikes. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
Over 1,000 workers at the IBM Systems Technology Co. (ISTC) factory in Shenzhen went on a 10 day wildcat strike (without union support) between 3 and 12 March 2014, after management announced the transfer of the factory to Lenovo.
Both sources check out. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)In 2007, IBM announced they would cancel a performance bonus worth $1000 per employee. Shortly afterwards, on 27 September, the Italian trade union "RSU IBM Vimercate" which represented 9,000 IBM Italy workers, coordinated a 'virtual strike' inside Second Life. Second Life is a simulation software that was used both internally by IBM for its employees and for marketing to external customers.
Both sources check out.IBM responded by firing four of the top eight BWA officers.
I would be careful that we're not editorializing here. Gilman doesn't say that the firing of these officers was a "response" to BWA, it just says that "eventually" four people linked to BWA were fired. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)- I see you've changed this to
In 1980, IBM fired four of the top eight BWA officers, including one for distributing salary pay-bands.
I think this still has the same issue. As currently written, it leads the reader to believe that the officer was fired because they distributed pay-bands. This may very well be what happened, but we don't know. The source only says that it happened sometime after. Quoting the source:Eventually, within about a one-year span, IBM fired four of the BWA's eight top officers, one of whom distributed confidential IBM salary scales in early 1980.
Additionally, I am not fully sure the firing happened in 1980, only that the employee distributed the scales at that time. From the context of the article, I think we can only say that the firings happened sometime in the early 1980s. Therefore, I would suggest changing this sentence to:In the early 1980s, IBM fired four of the top eight BWA officers, including one that had distributed salary pay-bands.
Mokadoshi (talk) 03:30, 14 April 2024 (UTC) - Optional, but there is other info from this WSJ article that you didn't include in the article that I think would improve this section. I'll include a quote here just in case you missed this from the source.
But the company also carefully monitors its work force for any hint of labor activity. IBM has told its information-services staff manager to "report all sensitive employee-relations incidents immediately." In a memo, which provided round-the-clock phone contacts, sensitive episodes were described as "any indication of group activity, even without apparent organized influence, when the group's purpose appears to be to improve compensation or any asepct of working conditions."
Mokadoshi (talk) 03:35, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
Focused
In a 2014 research study conducted by the European Trade Union Institute on transnational companies across 23 European Union (EU) states, IBM was among the 5 largest companies (employee wise) in Ireland in the electronics and manufacturing sector. IBM was also the top 5 largest companies (employee wise) in 12 EU states in the ICT sector.
What does this have to do with unions? Sorry if the question is dumb but I'm trying to make sure we're not going on unrelated tangents here. Mokadoshi (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)- @Shushugah I don't see a response here about this question. Why does saying that IBM is a large company in EU have anything to do with its relationship to unions? As a comparison, the next few sentences are about how employees ranked IBM above average in its recognition of unions, which is clearly relevant. Mokadoshi (talk) 03:11, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
- @Mokadoshi thank you for your thorough review, I hope to get to it either today or Sunday. Finding time right before the holidays has been tricky for me, but I already started going through the dead/pay-walled links, to see if I can find open-access equivalent and will respond to your other comments. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 02:55, 30 March 2024 (UTC)