At my work just all me and my fellow techs in a meeting we basically expressed shared frustration at wages not increasing at all in last couple years despite the company making billions.
It appears we were all individually expressing this and it boiled over cause nothing was being done.
So are there any organizations collecting signatures or potential members with the goal of forming one later?
It’s so amazing to see a comment like this. For years and years, the tech industry workers were heavily anti-union. I’m glad to see the sentiment turning around.
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No, it still is. Most of the people I work with are boomers that tried to kill unions or upper middle class genx or millennials that think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The tech bros have definitely not gone away.
Were anti-union? How is that possible? Why would anyone other than the CEO of the company be anti-union? So many things I don’t understand about America, but this union stuff has to be somewhere in the top 10.
Wouldn’t it be more democratic if the voice of the people would be heard in these matters? Americans say they love democracy, but somehow I’m not seeing much democracy being applied here.
You are correct but many workers in the US (tech and otherwise) are only aware of unions as historical tools of organized crime/corruption, or are libertarian (which gets higher representation in tech circles) and believe the free market will provide for them and/or that unions excessively harm companies. There are likely other reasons but these are what I’ve heard from people I know.
These views are reinforced by corporate and libertarian (which is of course funded by corporate) propaganda.
Advertising? Imagine if the source code for every open source project included an ad for unions.
Management probably doesn’t look at the source code, so it’s a good place to hide messages for fellow workers
Easy way to be identified, I wouldn’t recommend that at this early a stage, especially in company code.
OP I suggest looking at other existing unions near your discipline and other countries that have unions for tech workers. If you look at how they have operated and achieved success, it may help you to navigate that in your world.
These are all long-fought battles with lots of lessons already learnt, find the people who have already fought them and you have a good starting point.
The IWW accepts all workers and can work to guide you from a local branch, pretty grassroots organization you can get in contact at https://www.iww.org/organize/ but of course unionizing any way is always good. Good luck!
Also wanna add that IWW can explain not all organizing is unionizing. In knowing your labor rights, you can find tactics that can protect you from your boss, and potentially get better protections and pay even before needing to form a new union chapter.
Here’s what I’ve done when attempting at my workplace via the postal workers union.
Get in contact with an organizer, they are there to help guide you or who ever wants to be the main leader of this effort. I will say, as the lead organizer in my attempt, it’s just talking a lot, and getting people to a meeting, it kinda sucks but isn’t a huge ordeal to do, and takes maybe 2 hours in a busy week.
I went through the AFL-CIO website aflcio.org/formaunion and filled out my information, during my major attempt it took half a week to get in contact with an organizer, though it could take a bit longer.
You’ll get in contact with an organizer and they’ll get a rundown of your workplace and what it looks like.
After that there’s about an hour’s worth of training to know your rights and what works for your union.
Then you’ll be pretty much ready to go to start talking with coworkers to try and get an organizing committee (10% of your workplace) which will be your main coworkers who should be all about the idea, after that 10% then you’ll start convincing everyone in your workplace and soon after that collect signatures.
Then you’ll go to an election, sadly I do not have much information to get beyond here as the movement fell apart in my workplace during signatures due to a weak organizing committee.
Hope this helps ya out and if you want any additional information I’m happy to share, we need more unions especially in IT!
Yup, try the #UnionizeTech tag on Twitter or Mastodon. I’m trying to raise interest.
So far there’s a call, but nobody’s taking action.
On my part, still trying to find work to afford groceries, so I don’t have much energy to spend on anything else.
I’ve wondered the same and I think the most direct way to form something useful is to form a Union at the company where you work. That way you have a chance at getting to 15 or 20% membership, which would form a big enough bloc to have actual influence over real issues at your current job. That Union would matter.
I don’t think a broad “tech workers Union” can come about until we have more of those company unions. Eventually they will band together to enable solidarity. But joining an abstract “tech workers Union” right now seems meaningless to me. Are they going to help with current issue XYZ at my job? I don’t see how.
A union is a good idea but this is also something you can and should take into your own hands too. If your wage hasn’t gone up at all in a couple years you should be complaining about that very loudly to your bosses individually. It helps even more if you can get some other job offers to be able to compare your current wage to
