Brace Yourself: Italian IBMers to Strike in Second Life Next Month

According to IBM faces Second Life strike, behind the amusing commentary:

...A statement sent to The Register by the RSU sets out the reasons for the industrial action as follows:

It seems that the reasons for this first virtual strike are related to the renew of the internal agreement. While IBM is one of the company with major profits, its employees are receiving very few fruits of this big mountain of money.

The internal climate is below all the IT industries (taking advantages for the famous IBM's competitor: HP), and the drop that overflowed the glass is the long and inconclusive negotiation for the internal agreement. While the works council, supported by the majority of IBM Italy employees, was asking for a small salary increase, IBM responded with the complete suppression of the "productive results benefit", with a loss for a single employee of €1000 per year. For a company that wants to lead the corporate social responsibility, this is really too much.

..."The high offices of the company are worried, because this action will turn on the lights on the project of creation of a global union alliance, that is engaging the unions from over 16 countries worldwide, including the new IT boundary: India," the statement said.

What can be used to motivate people to buy products or services can, just as easily, be used to inform and motivate workers in a global economy that they can take global collective action. They could even test out industrial action tactics in relative safety. It could be a tantalising prospect for a committed union activist. It will be interesting to see what actual impact the virtual industrial action has in the real world, and how IBM handles it.

Now that is certainly interesting... can you imagine 'Strikes Without Borders'? Remember that 100 million dollar budget IBM allocated for virtual worlds? Methinks that their employees may cash in on that too.

Behold, a whiplash that very few would have expected. A successful presence in Second Life should probably include happy employees in real life. I wonder if this will be negotiated quickly to avoid it happening... This is a 'first' that IBM probably doesn't want.