This posting will unfortunately betray the fact that I may have entered that period of life known as the “senior years”. With that comes a degree of reflection and I was thinking of the technical progress that I have seen in my professional life so far (and hopefully more to come!) This was also prompted…
The campaign to de-fang unions and thence the power of their workers continues throughout various states and lamentably with undeniable success. One of the most powerful weapons that the enemies of our unions have at their disposal is the possibility to remove the right of unions to collect their dues by “check off” from the…
I use this phrase to describe what a great many unions (and other organizations) use as their systems development “strategy”. In this paradigm there is little thought given to pro-active planning of upgrading software or hardware. Staff skills are rarely considered either. I am reminded of an old “Seinfeld” episode where Jerry is describing the…
It’s no secret that these days unions are under attack at many levels from their political and ideological foes. Some of the more recent tactics are directly aimed at disrupting or crippling a union by using indirect methods, such as attacking their administrative functions. A prime example of this is the threatened removal of “dues…
As specialists in union back office systems we often hear the old saying (upon which I’ve based my title above) “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” This is often used when talking about software which could be referred to as “past its sell by date”, “vintage” or well….. Just plain old. There is some…