Civil Engineers' Compensation—ASCE's Future

Engineers must not only determine the type and amount of compensation they want to receive, they need to sell their employers the proposition that the time for action has arrived, and that the employer protects himself by giving his engineers salaries commensurate with their abilities, responsibilities, education and needs. Also, engineers must formulate a plan of attack which will win them big raises and better working conditions, rapidly and uniformly throughout the nation. The similarity of the teaching profession's conditions and attitudes when they embraced unionism to those of the engineering profession today is striking, and leads to the conclusion that a unionized engineering industry is a possibility. ASCE can and should help its members toward all those benefits which are promised by union orgainzers. Unionism is not a pre-requisite to those benefits. A society of well paid professionally regarded free lance engineers seems to be a happy alternative.