Anti Microsoft protest fizzles out
By Techgirl

Many Americans dislike unions, and they have had very little traction in tech companies. With a global recession looming, Microsoft, like other heavyweights, announced that it would reduce its head count by 5000 over 18 months. Quite separately, Microsoft said that it would cut the wages of all temporary workers by 10 percent. A protest against the pay cut has fizzled out.

When Microsoft told the American temporary staffing companies like Volt that they would cut their wages by 10 percent, the HR Company passed on the reduction to temporary employees they placed in the software giant.

Most temporary employees just grinned and bore it and were thankful they had a job.  Not so 23-year old American, Phil Palios, who is a long time temporary software developer with Microsoft, USA.  Phil emailed 2000 temporary employees in USA urging them to join public demonstrations against the software giant.  While a few hundred were expected for the public demonstration, only 30 showed up.  The handful of protestors stood out the Microsoft campus at Redmond and shouted slogs like ‘I am a PC – Pay Cut’.

Phil told the Seattle Times that since contracting for Microsoft in 2006; he felt something was “not right” and that “this attempt to unite the workers would open up communications channels with the company”.

Now Phil Palios has backtracked and accepted the pay cut. Microsoft has accepted him back and on the surface there seems to be no hard feelings between the tech giant and the temporary contractor.  Explaining his decision to discontinue his organization of anti-Microsoft protests, Phil blogged:

“
Leading a protest against pay cuts for temporary employees at Microsoft this past week has been one of the most intense experiences of my life. I had the chance to speak with hundreds of people affected by the pay cuts and attract media attention to an issue that had a strong emotional impact on me. As I became an important figure in this issue I quickly saw myself becoming more of a labor organizer and having less focus on software development. After my emotions calmed down and I had more time to think I realized I had begun walking down a path that was not helping me achieve my goals in life.

I first found out about the pay cuts when a friend sent me a link to the Seattle Times Pri0 blog posting announcing 10% rate cuts for temporary employees at Microsoft. Finding this out from the news rather than my employer was disturbing and the lack of any warning or choice in the matter led me to become angry and feel that Volt was taking advantage of its workers. Over the weekend following the announcement I kept waiting for someone to stand up and try to get a feel for how the thousands of temporary employees in Redmond felt about this pay cut. I discovered the MSRateCuts website and saw that I wasn't alone in my concern about losing 10% of my salary. However the efforts that MSRateCuts seemed to be pursuing weren't good enough for me, I wanted to get people talking and felt a need to reach out to all of the temporary workers so that we could talk about the rate cut and demonstrate our concern to Volt and the other temporary agencies.

There was no easy way to reach out to workers quickly that I could think of, then I experimented with the Global Address List on Microsoft's e-mail system and found that I could get a listing of all "a-" e-mail accounts. This was the way of quickly reaching out to my fellow temporary workers that I was looking for, but at the same time it was a gray area in e-mail usage. I decided to e-mail half of the people my search returned with a meeting request and letter stating my concern and inviting those who shared my concern to join me on a busy street corner of the main Redmond campus that evening (and every evening for the following two weeks).

This is where the madness started, I did not anticipate recipients use of the "reply all" feature in Outlook and in a matter of hours had over 800 unread messages in my inbox. Luckily I was able to setup a rule to filter out these e-mails and never responded to these massive threads. That afternoon I met with Ben Romano from the Seattle Times to discuss my thoughts on the pay cuts and as word about the protests spread I began being contacted by media outlets from all over Seattle. I showed up to the protest and was joined by about 30 colleagues at the peak of the evening as well as many journalists. I was expecting more like 200 people to show up based on all of the responses to the e-mail I had sent out, despite this it was a very energy-filled couple of hours. I accepted several interviews with local TV news networks and made the mistake of talking to them at length as I had done earlier that day with Ben. The difference here is that TV news don't air everything you say, they don't even air 15% of what you say. They are looking for the most controversial or provocative snippet they can find and broadcast it in a brief clip on the evening news. This was one of my first lessons learned from the ordeal.

The next day (Tuesday) everyone seemed to know about my little crusade. Friends, family members, colleagues and press that had not known about the protest barraged my personal phone and e-mail. I received dozens of e-mails in support of my efforts from other temporary workers and began to feel enveloped in this issue. Overnight I had gone from a software engineer to a labor organizer, and it scared the shit out of me. I was still energized and felt that all the media coverage would lead to the turnout I had originally been seeking at the next protest. But yet again we only had about 30 people at the peak of the evening and much less media in attendance. Leaving the second night of protests left me with a contemplative feeling and I think the strong emotions I had developed on Friday were starting to fade and I began to see the issue in a more objective light.

When I sent the e-mail and met with Ben my intentions were to open communication among temporary employees and allow them to discuss this issue. Based on how the majority of people felt we could proceed with labor organization and/or legal action. I believe I was successful in opening up communication by sending the original e-mail and getting people to attend the protests, which were really more like a town hall meeting than a protest. Combined with the work of MSRateCuts, people were now talking, in addition to the e-mail and in-person discussions an online forum was created where people could discuss their concerns. But I was constantly being asked "What's next?" "Have you talked to the lawyers?" "Have you talked to the unions?" "Have you been fired?" I had gone from trying to open communication to leading the crusade for retribution and not only was it turning into a full-time job but something I couldn't handle on my own, even if I dedicated all my time to it. Requests from media outlets around the country were now pouring in and it seemed like every temporary employee at Microsoft wanted to have "five minutes of [my] time." Meanwhile I still had a full time job writing software, I realized that I would have to choose between the two and if I went for the labor organizing I wouldn't have time to write software, at Microsoft or anywhere else.

On Wednesday I decided that I did not want to become a labor organizer and give up my work in software. I love software, it is my passion in life and I still had a great job on an amazing team at the best software company in the world. I spent the day with my cell phone off and trying to stay out of the world of protests and labor organization so that I could devote my full attention to my job, which I was struggling to do the previous two days. I had a second meeting with Volt to discuss my concerns over the pay cut and decided to sign the contract amendment, accepting the 10% pay cut. I made this decision for a few important reasons: I really like my job and I felt that even at 10% less pay, it was worth being able to continue working on the projects I am a part of. I also think that it's unfair to think one can be immune from a shattered economy. This was the first direct impact of the crumbling economy on me, but to think I could go on without being affected by the economy was not realistic. Microsoft had a lot less revenue than they had planned, forcing them to make budget cuts so they could continue their investment in innovation, this affected Volt by a cut in their bill rates which trickled down to me by a cut in my salary. It's unfortunate, but I have confidence that with my continued hard work and time the economy will begin to improve and I will have the opportunity to make more money. As many commenters have pointed out, I am lucky to be in my current situation, even with a pay cut.

While there was strong support for my protest, I feel it's important to recognize that 30 people showing up and a few hundred calls and e-mails from temporary workers is still a very small portion of the thousands of temporary employees at Microsoft. This group is particularly vocal in their concerns, but there are thousands who chose to accept the pay cut and while I haven't had the chance to speak with them I believe in most cases it was for similar reasons that I accepted the pay cut. With my goal of opening communication and seeing what people wanted I was most concerned about what the majority of people wanted, not what the loudest people wanted. I believe the majority of people were unhappy with the pay cut, but willing to accept it.

After receiving so many e-mails and phone inquiries I felt my time would be best used by writing my experiences in this letter and addressing the major points people were asking me. I hope that this has provided you with an understanding of my perspective.
“