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In a potentially more ominous development, SpaceX, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, and the University of Southern California have in separate legal actions challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB
Nuts, didn’t realize Trader Joe’s was on the evil list.
Lots of useful examples in the article though, thanks for sharing.
My tech department is unionized
Hell yeah ✊
Do you work in the public sector?
yes
Checks out.
I tried to get my highschool leftist group to do a guerilla union rights leafleting campaign, specifically targeting Walmart, teaching all workers of how to unionize, what their rights are, and what anti-union lies to look out for.
They said “unions aren’t leftist” and kicked me out.
that’s why you do union organizing with organizers and not with edgy teenagers.
Jesus Christ.
Workers skeptical of unions in a survey of 1,900 tech professionals conducted by the career site Blind cited specific concerns: that unions are “not meritocratic,” “prevent innovation,” and “hold back earnings of top performers.”
Looking at my non union job where idiots make millions and it has taken years to get even the basics of ci/cd implemented.
10/10 article. For folks that want more directed guidance, I recommend the CODE-CWA Organizer Training
Tech unionization is something that kind of makes me want to start another company.
It would be interesting to go union by default from the get go. Yes I’d be setting up conflict, but I expect everyone that would join would be very into the experiment and we’d all want to make it work well.
are you thinking of a cooperative?
That is absolutely one model, but I think it might be better to have an explicit union setup to avoid the co op elements being perverted into old school capitalism over time and nobody wants to unionize there because it is nominally a co op.
It might be more interesting to setup an explicit capitalist vs union structure where the capitalist side has strict bylaws in place to enforce union negotiation and support. That would probably be more honest over time as I think systems tend towards power for those that are running things one way or another.
A co op could work really well though if the company stayed smaller and had strict guidelines for membership and clear processes for removal of bad actors.
Definitely worth a lot more thought.
both coops and unionized companies operate within a capitalist structure and on the market (usually). Neither model can emancipate itself from its context. So I’m not sure about what aspect you expect to be different. And coops can be run with good governance where power structures are explicit, managed and democratically altered to reflect the values of the members. The case where you have few people controlling everything is a dysfunction, it’s not part of the model (and also can happen with unions).
I’m a 4th year computer science student, what can I do to support tech Unions?
you can volunteer in some alt-albor organization that supports unions externally, like Tech Workers Coalition: https://techworkerscoalition.org/
Looks promising! Glad to see there’s a group active in Canada!
yep, it’s one of the new chapters and it’s pretty active and growing fast. You should join.
Serious question from an idiot: I work in tech but I’m the only guy in the company doing so (solo IT) so there’s no chance of a Union, right, because I’m all alone and no one to unionize with? Or are unions able to cover multiple companies, like The IBEW or something? I guess I’ve never really looked much into it. I do actually like my job and have successfully negotiated better pay on my own behalf, so maybe it’s not necessary? Minus I am in an at-will state so might be not worth it?
you can unionize with the rest of the workers. They are called “wall to wall unions” when you do not organize by department/profession but by company. In some countries they are the norm.
OK than you, I just realize I responded to someone else asking this very same thing.
You can find unions that you can join as an individual in circumstances like yours. The one that comes to my mind is the IWW.
Ah, thank you! I’ll check that out!
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Nice! Looks like I’ve got some work to do to get people on board. So, it doesn’t seen to matter the position then, is not like a Union needs all 1 group, it could be anyone from that job it sounds like?
Edit: nvm, I just realize another comment answered this question.
