Talk:IBM and unions

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kingsif (talk) 18:07, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the National Black Workers Alliance and other IBM worker organizations distributed fliers at a shareholder meeting, comparing their employer's business deals with apartheid South Africa to IBM's role during Nazism? Source: IBM Workers United

Created by Shushugah (talk). Self-nominated at 20:16, 21 April 2021 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Hi @Shushugah:, this is my first DYK review, so I hope this review will go according to the rules and common sense. Here are my comments on the text: I can't find any information on the underground newsletter "The Resistor" to which you refer. The only source I could download is a leaflet with the content you mention. If this is the case, you would probably better write: "...distributed a leaflet to IBM shareholders that...". Also, I think, you could replace "protested" (which needs the preposition "against") their employer's business deals with "compared"? In the text, I would add "Since its foundation in 1924,...and you could add a short article description. But most of all, there is no bolded name of the article in the lead. And, finally, was it really IBM Europe who formed a European Works Council, or rather the union? (or IBM Europe accepted a...) Article length and age are fine, no copyvio or plagiarism concerns, reliable sources are used. The lead needs a bolded expression of the article name. And the hook needs to be slightly changed. Munfarid1 (talk) 21:15, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Shushugah:, now both the article and the hook look fine to me. The only thing I am not sure about is the fact that you don't have a pagename in bold at the beginning of the article. I couldn't find on the Help pages, if this is really obligatory. So just to be sure, that everything is according to the rules for review and article formatting, I am asking @Gerda Arendt:, a seasoned and very helpful DYK reviewer to give us her opinion. As soon as this is clear, I will finish the review with a yes. (One more question to Gerda: I have to prove my first QPQ, before another of my own articles can be ready for DYK. - How will that reviewer know that I actually reviewed this article on IBM worker organization?) - Thanks in advance, Munfarid1 (talk) 06:52, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi everyone, thanks for helping me to finish my first review. After adding a sentence and the bold pagename, everything is fine, and I have just added the green tick for the next stage. Munfarid1 (talk) 08:01, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Shushugah:, as another reviewer mentioned that there are too many repetitions of IBM in the hook, I have just changed your hook, and hope this is okay by you.Munfarid1 (talk) 20:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Came to promote, but I'm not finding the hook information in the article. The article says there was a newsletter, doesn't seem to mention a flier or distributing it at shareholder meetings? (Also Munfarid1, when you suggest a new hook, it's generally best to strike the hook you're rejecting and give the new hook a new number -- check other nominations to see how we number additional/new hooks -- and you can't approve a hook you suggest, so if you write the new hook yourself you need to ask for another reviewer to approve.) —valereee (talk) 16:47, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Valereee:! I have updated the article, to be explicit that fliers were distributed at a shareholder meeting (sources don't make it clear if Resistor or not, I won't speculate, but they all do mention role Resistor had in sharing/spreading this news), since the existing sources already mentioned that, but it wasn't formally in the article itself. Thank you for catching that! Shushugah (talk) 17:50, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism with Dates

There has been some vandalism in the dates, all of them are wrong, the first sentence is also contradictory and I think it was not in an earlier draft. Just wanted to give a heads up to any editor who might want to clean this up, don't have time to work on it myself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.115.230.109 (talk • contribs)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:IBM and unions/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vacant0 (talk · contribs) 12:02, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I'll be reviewing this GAN as part of the ongoing GAN backlog drive. --Vacant0 (talk) 12:02, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
· · ·

Initial comments

• There is unlikely any copyright violation in the article. Earwig's Copyvio Detector has reported only 1.0% in similarity.
• There are no cleanup banners, such as those listed at WP:QF, in the article.
• The article is stable. There has not been any edit warring in the recent period.
• No previous GA reviews.

General comments

• Prose, spelling, and grammar checking.
  • Lede: Change "there are several trade unions recognized by IBM, with limited recognition" to "there are several trade unions that have limited recognition by IBM".
  • Lenovo, not Lenevo.
  • No problems were found in the rest of the article.
• Checking whether the article complies with MOS.
  • Change the short description to "Relationship between IBM and trade unions", the current short description "Worker organization" is not a concise explanation of the scope of the article.
  • The opening sentence does not make sense, I am pretty sure that it is supposed to say "Trade unions have not historically been recognized by IBM". Bolding won't be needed in this case.
  • The lede does not provide a summary of the article.
  • There is inconsistency in numbers: there is 3,500 with a comma and 1000 does not have one.
  • Article currently stands at 12k bytes so it should have one or two paragraphs.
  • Change "External" to "External links".
  • The article complies with the MOS:LAYOUT, MOS:WTW, and MOS:EMBED guidelines. There is no fiction here, so I am skipping MOS:WAF.
• Checking refs, verifiability, and whether there is original research.
  • Reference section (notes and references split) with proper templates is present in the article.
  • No referencing issues.
  • Ref 1 and 18 are missing pages.
  • There are problems:
    • Notes are unsourced.
    • Ref 2 is not open access, it requires an account to see the content.
    • Ref 19 (Medium) is a blog hosting service and per WP:RSP it is considered generally unreliable. The author does not appear to be a subject-matter expert. Crossed per comment below.
    • Other references are reliable.
  • Spotchecked Ref 1, 3. See comments below
    • Ref 1 mentions IBM, but there are no mentions of Germany and Australia.
    • Ref 9 clearly specifies that protests in Guangdong happened during that period or earlier than that. So, change "The strike is part of" to "The strike was part of".
    • Ref 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 20, 21, 23 verify the cited content.
  • Copyvio already checked.
• Checking whether the article is broad in its coverage.
  • The lede will have to be expanded and re-written so that it provides a summary of the article.
  • Australia: Do we know what happened after the two 48-hour strike actions?
  • China: Do we know what happened after the wildcat strike in Shenzhen?
  • The article stays focused on the topic, though some context is missing as I've stated above.
• Checking whether the article is presented from an NPOV standpoint.
  • The article meets the criteria and is written in encyclopedic language.
• Checking whether the article is stable.
  • As noted in the initial comments, there has not been any edit warring in the recent period.
• Checking images.
  • There are no images in the article but it would be good to add one in the future.

Final comments

@Shushugah: There is a lot of stuff to fix and you're already reviewing a long article of mine so I'll put the article on hold for a week. If you want, I can quick-fail this and when you fix the issues that I've pointed out in the future, you can ask me on my talk page to review it again. Cheers, --Vacant0 (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Driveby comment: the Medium ref is to OneZero, a news site hosted on Medium, which does have editorial control. There are a couple of these, so it's important to double-check where something with a Medium url is coming from. No comment on the rest of the review (which seems good on the merits), just that this is something that comes up pretty often. Vaticidalprophet 21:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for pointing that out! Vacant0 (talk) 21:04, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

A week has passed so I'll look at where the article currently stands:

• The article was last edited on 5 August.
• During this one-week period some changes were made: the article now meets the 1a criteria, some MOS corrections were made, and references were added to the notes.
• However:
  • The lede still does not summarise the article. First, the content from the lede should be moved to the body instead. Then, the lede should be rewritten in order to summarise the whole article.
  • Ref 1 and 21 (previously ref 18) are still missing pages.
  • Ref 2 is not open access so I cannot verify the content.
  • Most of what I spot-checked is fine but there are still some issues that I've noted above.
  • Lastly, in the article we do not know what happened after the actions in Australia and China.
• This article, for now, fails the GA criteria. The nominator should address these issues first before re-nominating the article for another GA review. --Vacant0 (talk) 09:41, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GA nomination

Hi @Shushugah - I came acroess this in the GA nomination list and was thinking to review it. However, looking at the first review and current state, I'm concerned that it might not be up to GA status. There's a lot of information which seems a little dated and there's sourcing available not included. My main concern is that there's too much to be completed in a review. My suggestion is we work on it together and do a joint renomination? Here's some more sourcing that could be added:

• James Cortada's "IBM The Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon" (MIT Press 2019)

 Partly done added source, probably more stuff to search/find

• Bruce Robinson "PICKET LINES IN A VIRTUAL WORLD: LABOUR AND THE PRODUCTION OF (CYBER) SPACE" IADIS International Conference e-Society 2008 [1]

 Done Used a more updated version available here

• "IBM CEO requested to provide transparency and guarantees to IBMers" IndustriALL Europe 27 MAY 2021 [2]
• T. Dickson et al "Big Blue and the Unions: IBM, Individualism and Trade Union Strategy" Work, Employment and Society Volume 2, Issue 4 Dec 1988 pp 420-566 [3] (also at JSTOR [4])

 Partly done added source, probably more stuff to search/find

• "IBM rejects pure DC pension contracts in Germany, union says 22 August 2022 [5]
• "Collective regulation of algorithmic managemnet" European Labour Law Journal [6] - has details on the German IBM Works Councils agreement

 Done The reference to IBM Works Agreement goes here and is included already

• Restoring multi-employer bargaining in Europe: prospects and challenges ETUI (2018) [7]

 Not done Very interesting data, but also very difficult to use. It suggests which countries where unions may exist, but nothing about specific bargaining coverage, union density, let alone names of worker organisations. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:43, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Shushugah - this document has very useful data: delcining employment (shedding 15% of employment in 2014-16) (p.97), comparative labour management relationships with other ICT companies and MNEs in general (p.133) (sits around the average for ICT, but below the average for MNEs in general). Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 23:03, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

 Partly done I have included pages 133, 201 and 215-216. I could remove the mention about Electronics/Manufacturing since IBM is the top 5 largest employer only in Ireland, but for ICT sector...they're the top largest in 12 states so that qualifies this nicely. Their industrial relations in ranked in 11 states (Italy is not included for whatever reason). In general, the paper argues that CEE states have lower industrial relations specifically in private sector, so not surprising that IBM's lowest ranked states were in CEE as well. Added to IBM and unions § Transnational ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:18, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

• IBM unions agree new global strategy to fight job cuts [8] IndustriAll 18 April 2014
• Multinational tax integrity and enhanced tax transparency – PSI/ ITUC submission to public consultation [9] 2 September 2022
• Japan: First labour dispute involving IBM over AI-driven wage assessments continues for more than 18 months after IBM allegedly refuses to disclose information requested by union [10] 30 December 2021

 Done Found primary source claiming they existed since 1959. And added reference here.

• China: Striking behaviour: Chinese workers discover a weapon against labour-market turmoil 29 March 2014 [11]

 Done added

• China: Shenzhen trade union seeks to help striking workers sacked by IBM [12] China Labour Bulletin 13 March 2014

 Done added

• Hungary: Agreement between IBM and unions over plant closure [13] 13 November 2002

 Partly done see longer thoughts/comments below about Hungary sources ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:43, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

• Employer opposition and union avoidance in the UK [14] Industrial Relations Journal 2002 - useful as characterises IBM as a non-union employer.

Let me know your thoughts. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 00:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

It would be an honor to collaborate and thank you for digging these sources! I should have access to all of these. Given the huge overflow of GAN it won’t affect status of a hypothetical review until the GA drive starts in February, but I can also delete it/rephrase it as a joint-nomination. I'll make this article a personal priority in January. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

China

I have added what I could about the 10 day-wildcat strike. This is the most detailed info I found, it's a machine-translation from a Chinese language article, but unclear what/where. It doesn't lead to a conclusive result of what happened. In general, as far as I can find, IBM opened/expanded in China in 2002 with sale of the hard-disk drive business, with a partial stake in Chinese firm Lenovo. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 15:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Hungary

In short, I could not find confirmation which trade union(s) have a collective agreement (if any) with IBM and am unsure how to go forward without committing WP:SYNTH or at best, a very vague/roundabout statement.

Most likely the union is Vasas (they also founded Vasas Sports Club) and are affiliated to MSzOSz and IndustriALL. Their internal website makes loose references to IBM but nothing more.

This paper mentions IBM in the context of industry/wages, but does not mention them when discussing union VASAS successes or challenges..

This report (overlapping author as previous) qualifies VASAS as most important union in electronics sector and contextualises local trade union/works council structures. The second union (fewer sources mention them) is VDSZ but no specific mention of IBM. This article mentions cases of Works Councils in Hungary, without union representation e.g Samsung, but again nothing about IBM.

The unnamed union is criticized as being corporate lapdog for IBM, and quickly agreeing/not fighting the relocation of jobs from Székesfehérvár to China.

@Shushugah: Give me till the weekend and will come back to you. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 23:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

References

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:IBM and unions/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mokadoshi (talk · contribs) 05:28, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): Close, see comments below. Issues addressed. b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): Close, only have concerns with the lead, see below. Issues addressed. It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): See below. Note: the Medium reference is a reliable source because the publication (OneZero) just happens to publish its content on Medium. See the talk page for more info. c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): Earwig gives 1.0%. It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): See below. It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): N/A - there aren't any images. b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail: On hold to address feedback.
· · ·

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)

  I think this is good. Mokadoshi (talk) 03:05, 14 April 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. See MOS: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)

  Addressed by moving out of the lead. Mokadoshi (talk) 03:05, 14 April 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. Y 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. N 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)

  Looks good. Mokadoshi (talk) 03:07, 14 April 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. N 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)

  Looks fixed. Mokadoshi (talk) 03:11, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

• CPSU organized two 48 hour strike actions. N 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)

  @Shushugah I don't see a response from you about this. Mokadoshi (talk) 03:13, 14 April 2024 (UTC) Sorry, I see there is a new source here and it says it was two 48 hour strikes. Mokadoshi (talk) 06:25, 14 April 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. Y 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. Y 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)

  N 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)

  Hi, any update? Mokadoshi (talk) 04:40, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Mokadoshi Thank you for your patience, I believe I have addressed all the issues now. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:20, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

  Looks mostly good but I've pointed out a couple things missed. Thanks, Mokadoshi (talk) 03:36, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.