No Stupid Questions

Many tech unions have formed under/with the support of CODE-CWA (Campaign to Organize Digital Employees - Communication Workers of America). With their solidarity and guidance, some companies have started unions: Alphabet/Google, Change.org, Medium, NYT, ActivisionBlizzard, etc.

However, a union doesn't have to be industry-wide or even company-wide. An official union can be as small as a couple people -- what matters is that you have a sufficient density in whatever job title or shared responsibilities you are bargaining on behalf of. For example, within the Alphabet/Google here are some examples of small groups which organized, won their union elections, and now have official bargaining rights per the NLRB:

In a blowout victory, the YouTube Music Content Operations Team, subcontracted by Alphabet through Cognizant, won their union election with a unanimous 41-0 vote. The unit consists of workers responsible for music content on YouTube. Despite contributing to the platform's success, workers face low wages and minimal benefits. In response to the workers' unionization efforts, Cognizant issued a retaliatory Return-To-Office mandate, leading to the first ever Google strike by workers. The election victory paves the way for negotiations with Alphabet to improve working conditions and pay.

Or, Google Fiber workers in Kansas City: www.wired.com/story/google-fiber-union/

If I were you I would reach out to CODE-CWA and ask if they can extend you resources about organizing in a tech workplace. Organizing can be as unofficial as creating a petition and collecting signatures within your workplace to express shared disagreement to leadership about certain working conditions (and hoping that a unified front sways them), or as official as holding a union vote and forming what's called a "Bargaining Unit", which is granted certain protections under NLRA law and that your employer is required to bargain with. Either way, you have the right idea by starting from within -- pockets of density highly familiar with your working conditions, i.e. your coworkers.

Oh, and for an example of unionized tech workers that kick ass -- check out Kickstarter's union and the list of things they bargained for and won.

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.

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

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!

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!

At a glance, the Teamsters and IWW might have some resources for tech worker unions.

I think, if you wanted to push for a union in your workplace, someone who actually works there would have to lead the charge with signature collection etc.

You Deserve A Tech Union

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.

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.