The Tech Workers Coalition is a
labor rights group seeking to organize the
tech industry.
History
The group was founded between cafeteria worker and labor organizer Rachel Melendes and engineer Matt Schaefer. Their first meetings began in 2014 in its members' apartments. The group set out to create an alternative to the
Californian Ideology
"The Californian Ideology" is a 1995 essay by English media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron of the University of Westminster. Barbrook describes it as a "critique of dotcom neoliberalism".Barbrook 2007Imaginary Futures: Other Works In ...
that emphasized worker labor. The group's name emphasizes the ideas that white-collar employees are workers and that the lower-wage jobs created to support those white-collar jobs are part of the same industry. These ideas are in contrast to industry norms that ameliorate engineer working conditions, including food and perk luxuries on campus, horizontal reporting structures, and casual dress codes. Engineers at big tech companies are also often separated from the blue-collar independent contractors who provide the campus services. The group also responds to the disillusionment of workers who entered the industry to bring societal value through the Internet but instead found other company objectives to be paramount. In 2015, the Tech Workers Coalition focused its efforts on organizing
Hyatt hotel workers in
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...
.
The
presidential election of Donald Trump accelerated membership in the Tech Workers Coalition. Many workers at major tech companies saw themselves as responsible for creating platforms that let
fake news
Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue.Schlesinger, Robert (April 14, 2017)"Fake news in reality ...
propagate, the
alt-right find an audience, and the Trump presidency potentially surveil its critics. Photos from a December 2016
Trump Tower
Trump Tower is a 58-story, mixed-use skyscraper at 721–725 Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, between East 56th and 57th Streets. The building contains the headquarters for the Trump Organization, as well ...
meeting between United States President-elect
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
and senior leaders of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook renewed interest in counter-activism. The Tech Workers Coalition began to focus on organizing engineers. In January 2017, the group led a protest of 70 people, including employees from major tech companies, at the data analytics company
Palantir in opposition to the company's surveillance work for
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...
. The Tech Workers Coalition started a petition for
Stanford University alumni, a popular recruiting spot, to pledge not to join Palantir. This Palantir protest work continued into 2019. The Tech Workers Coalition prominently participated in
Bay Area May Day
May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Festivities may also be held the night before, known as May Eve. Tr ...
demonstrations.
In early 2017, several Tech Workers Coalition members assisted the labor union
Unite Here
UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with roughly 300,000 active members. The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by ...
in organizing cafeteria staff at their companies, particularly at Facebook. The members pledged their support, made public gestures of solidarity at the company, and collected union cards. By July, the Facebook cafeteria workers had unionized.
The Tech Workers Coalition joined other organizations for a workshop series, "Tech Won't Build It", in which tech workers shared lessons in convincing their companies to cease work on controversial government projects. In 2019, the Tech Workers Coalition advised
NPM employees behind a failed unionization attempt and helped to organize tech worker presence at the
September 2019 climate strikes
The September 2019 climate strikes, also known as the Global Week for Future, were a series of international strikes and protests to demand action be taken to address climate change, which took place from 20–27 September 2019. The strikes' k ...
.
Within the movement of
tech industry activists seeking to change the industry's practices through their employees, the Tech Workers Coalition is the most radical group. They train gig, contract, and full time workers to organize for better pay, conditions, and treatment in the tech sector. Their workshops include introductions to labor law and spaces to share workplace experiences. As of late 2017, the group had about 500 users on its instant messaging tool and had small chapters in cities including Boston, New York, and Seattle. The group is all-volunteer and horizontal, unlike most labor union hierarchies, and is premised on solidarity between higher-wage engineers and lower-wage workers.
See also
*
Game Workers Unite
Game Workers Unite is a worker-run, labor rights group seeking to organize the video game industry. Founded during events surrounding the March 2018 Game Developers Conference, the flat organization has grown to over a thousand members across ...
*
Google worker organization
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{authority control
Labor rights groups
Internet in the United States
Labor movement in the United States
Organizations established in 2014
2014 establishments in the United States