So Long!

After dedicating almost two decades of my professional life to QUB software, we have reached the end of the road. QUB has no use for me, and I have no use for QUB. I hold the unions primarily responsible, particularly the United University Professions (UUP), but there were other contributing structural factors. Before you curse me, consider thanking me for not selling you out to hackers.

QUB was software for analyzing ion channels and other molecules. It was initially developed by graduate students at SUNY Buffalo (UB). However, graduate students in biophysics are expected to spend all their time experimenting and writing papers. Professors are expected to just write papers and grant applications. One by one, they each brought their piece of the software halfway to 1.0, then moved on and stopped maintaining it. UB could have reassessed the curriculum in light of the increasing importance of software — these programs literally define their research methodology and tolerances — but instead they outsourced it to at-will, temporary labor — me.

Of course, it's absurd for scientists to rely on software for the core of their work when they have only the vaguest idea how it works. It's even worse when you subject the programming staff to regular hour reductions and layoffs. (My position was funded through short-term grants. No grant, no hours.) Eventually, there is nobody left who can maintain the software, and pretty soon there's no software at all!

That's why I tried for several years to involve the unions, particularly the UUP. I had read a news article about the definition of "employee" as it relates to McDonalds workers and franchises, and I realized my situation was more clear-cut than theirs. For decades, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has held that anyone who exercises control over the terms and conditions of employment is an employer. All of my work was directed and controlled by SUNY professors Qin and/or Sachs, on SUNY premises, so I was clearly a direct employee of SUNY. Under longstanding union contracts, SUNY employees (and other State employees) are union members with job security.

However, SUNY employs a subterfuge. They use foundations such as "The Research Foundation for SUNY" (RF) to launder their grants. Defying clear language in the NY constitution forbidding financial transfers from NY State to private entities, they have defined the RF as a nominally "private" company, and assigned the faculty's grant money to its budget. In 2011, this ledgerdemain went before the NY State Court of Appeals. The court ignored this plain constitutional language: "The money of the state shall not be given or loaned to or in aid of any private corporation or association, or private undertaking," ratified in 1874 and again in 1938, on the grounds that "enactments of the Legislature enjoy a strong presumption of constitutionality," and that a public benefit corporation is an "agency of the State."

Do you see the contradiction? Either the RF is acting on behalf of the State, and I should have been covered by the union contracts, or the RF is a private interest which was ineligible to receive the grant money. Pretty obvious, right?

Not to the UUP. Actually, they enshrined the opposite (mis-)understanding in Article 36 of their contract. When I tried to contact them directly, they did not return my emails or calls. We all expect the employer to work against the employees' interests, but when a so-called "labor union" takes the boss's side, it has lost its reason to exist. It is inexcusable that "my union" should be my most direct class enemy.

So, with the union's complicity, I was laid off after almost two decades of service.

Even with a corrupt and evil union, it didn't have to be this way. If UB were serious about research, they could have set up longer-term funding mechanisms. They could have provided long-term hosting, support, and maintenance for software derived from UB research. Instead, they put it all on me, then deprived me of my livelihood.

Initially, I wanted to found a non-profit corporation to collect donations and continue development and maintenance of QUB software. Unfortunately, there was a catch: you can't found a non-profit while collecting unemployment. It doesn't matter how hard you're searching for a job, or how beneficial the non-profit would be — each day you put any effort into it is a day you can't collect benefits. And I couldn't go without; not after two years of part-time underemployment, while I was assured, "We have more grants in the pipeline."

Some underappreciated software developers have found a more certain way to get paid: they sold their domains to hackers. The next time people loaded it, the software auto-updated and installed a virus! I haven't done that. You're welcome.

So now I have a new job. It's full time, leaving no time for QUB. I've already given too much to this project. I answered urgent research questions at night and on weekends, and stuck around despite repeated pay cuts. Now you're on your own. And DECERTIFY THE UUP!