Today, a content moderator completes their careful analysis of how TikTok misleads workers and the public about its overseas data storage and individual user tracking. This is not about a specific country – “I do not endorse the campaign by the US government to pathologize China” – but about protecting people wherever they are.
Today we hear from Laura, an Italian worker at a factory producing coffee machines, and part of a union that won a 100-day battle against relocation. Recently, Laura and fellow workers made headlines with a invitation: “To the workers of Facebook and Twitter being laid off, come to Gaggio Montano, we can teach you how to form a union like ours.” This story is printed in English and Italian.
Today we hear from Twitter’s former cleaners, a group of unionized workers who are wondering who replaced them. Dozens of workers rallied last month at Twitter offices in San Francisco and New York to demand their jobs back, and they called on allies for support. If you can provide any information about the new (scab) cleaning company that Twitter contracted to replace these workers, email us at twcnewsletter@protonmail.com.
Today we hear a story of swift collective action in the face of bad science. Last month, the Senior Vice Provost for Research at Northeastern University did worse than bad science; he installed heat sensors at groin level under the desks of graduate student workers, without their consent. So, the students, many of them PhD students in the Privacy and Cybersecurity Institute, organized to fight back. Within 24 hours the sensors, Northeastern removed the sensors. As similar interference creeps up at Carnegie Mellon University and other campuses worldwide, it’s a story worth sharing.
The wave of tech workforce layoffs and radicalization continues, including thousands of Twitter content moderation workers and more workers last night who talked back to the boss. So today, we’re re-sharing this Layoff Guide for Twitter Workers, broadly applicable to all workers in and around tech. But to put things in perspective, we’re featuring a story by lifelong software wrangler Danilo Campos about fighting junkware to make computers functional for our elders.
Welcome back to our regular newsletter. Today we hear from working artists beck and Katie, who are launching Floating Photo Studios over San Diego’s Hilltop Community Park over the course of four weekends. This project creates an environment for talking through and learning about the interrelated issues of surveillance, photography, power, and place. Park goers are invited to fly a kite with a camera, take pictures from the sky, and print them as postcards. On the last day of the project, the postcards are dispersed to everyone who has opted in to participate.
Tomorrow, Twitter management will reportedly fire thousands of workers. So, today, a collective of Twitter workers are sharing tips on how to prepare.
Next week is the start of our first intergenerational teach-in on tech, labor, and organizing. We have 32 presenters hosting 13 workshops and roundtables over three days, Oct. 19–21. See the final schedule, register, and donate to our event accessibility fund at twcteachin.org.
What do workers today need to learn from elders to guide future organizing?
Workers in tech are and have always been historical actors, but learning from history in a fast-paced industry is challenging – even the past few years can feel inaccessible. We hope to change that with this first intergenerational teach-in event. On October 19-21, we’re bringing together elder and younger workers in and around tech to share perspectives and learn skills for organizing, solidarity, and healing. By situating worker perspectives and collective actions in history, we’ll all be better equipped to face the demands of today’s workplaces and organize for the future ahead.
In our last issue, we spoke out about Project Nimbus and what it means to us. Now, as we kick off a week of action with demonstrations this Thursday, 15 more voices have joined us. Read more and sign up to join us, too.
It’s been months since the last operation by Israeli armed forces caught public attention, but today we hear from members of Workers Against Project Nimbus, a major military contract for cloud computing. This coalition of workers at Google and Amazon and community members discuss the origin, vision, and impact of their efforts in the face of extreme pushback by management and fellow workers – and how they continue to grow.
Karen Estevenin talks about organizing since the early 2000s, including her experiences with WashTech, a CWA-affiliated campaign at Microsoft, Amazon, and other companies. Despite 20 years of changes in and around tech, the story remains the same: we can only count on worker solidarity to overcome union busting and internalized fears of becoming part of a union.
Today, a worker you might know shares her story of getting an abortion. We also offer a list of resources for abortion funds and mutual aid networks plus tips and toolkits for safe and secure abortion planning.
Today is the start of elections for LOU (LISA Operators United), the workers behind AppFolio’s award-winning property management chatbot. While many were recruited from opera and classical music, a white, middle-class culture that can be more cut-throat than tech, the LOU crew has worked hard to overcome that background – as well as AppFolio’s management. If you have the means, consider supporting LOU’s mutual aid fund.
With roughly 600 members, the Times Tech Guild is the country’s largest union with collective bargaining rights in or around tech. With all the flash and hype around tech, labor, and unions, software engineer Goran Svorcan shares a refreshingly boring account of the hard work that makes the excitement possible. He walks and talks through the journey from the early decision to build worker power with a union to the successful election and explains how the organizing effort sustains itself in the ebbs and flows of campaigning, card signing, filing, voting, and bargaining.
People use photo printing service Shutterfly to memorialize their loved ones. Today, artist and writer Renée Reizman reflects on her dearly departed pet Maude, the blurry line between personal and professional social media, and how content creation often goes against our wishes.
In 2019, three youths in Bangladesh murdered an Uber driver. This spurred ‘app-based’ workers to move from protesting to forming unions in multiple cities and a national organization, The App-Based Drivers Union of Bangladesh. This nascent union demands ride-hail reform for workers’ rights in the face of hostility from app-based companies, abuse by riders, and the indifference of the state. Today, union members share the origins of their struggle and their bold, careful organizing to improve socio-economic conditions.
Airbnb brands itself as creating community and fostering belonging. Today, former Airbnb software engineer Sahil describes how “Airfam” ignores internal inequities among different workers and shuts down those who question its culture of overwork. Despite it all, Sahil and coworkers built a genuine community based on transparency and mutual respect.
Last month, user researcher Alba Villamil co-authored a study on common corporate responses to workplace dysfunction facing design professionals. Many of these “solutions” are just as traumatic as the crises they were meant to address. Today, Alba and anti-oppression consultant and educator Kim Tran talk about their respective work and possible ways forward for better workplaces.
Last Wednesday, researchers Alex Hanna and Dylan Baker quit Google’s Ethical AI team and wrote letters about how Google maintains white supremacy and inequalities amongst their workforce. Both are joining the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, or DAIR, which Timnit Gebru formed after being fired in late 2020. Today, we’re reprinting both of their letters in full.
Our goal in this newsletter is mutual aid, tech workers for tech workers. The most valuable, enjoyable part of our process is talking with fellow workers – the stories we publish are a bonus.
Now, we invite you to talk with fellow workers too. To have a safe and trusting space with people in different workplaces but similar situations. To leverage experience among allies in labor and tech. To get perspective and get organized.
Sign up to give or get peer support.
We’ll reach out to everyone who fills in the form. And there’s more coming this fall, including an intergenerational teach-in that builds on our series about the IBM Black Workers Alliance.
People need groceries. Mutual aid projects need systems. Today, Erik talks about architecting the South Bay Mutual Aid project and volunteer network, which has helped move nearly $80,000 in groceries, diapers, and PPE to San Jose residents. It surfaces the formal and informal structures in any organizing effort, which cybernetics comrade Stafford Beer characterized for Chile’s socialized economy many decades ago. The ongoing effort demonstrates how tech systems work best with autonomy, accountability, and active efforts to counter the corporate nonprofit tendencies we pick up.
Dear readers, death comes fast and slow at Amazon warehouses. Workers suffered a tornado in Illinois, COVID worldwide, and holiday season production exhaustion. Today, Polish warehouse worker Magda Malinowska talks about shop floor organizing and how Amazon failing to properly measure “energy expenditure” led to the fatal overwork of her coworker Darek. But while her union organizes to improve conditions, Amazon avoids accountability by escalating its anti-union campaign. As Amazon expands internationally, shop floor organizing requires international solidarity, too. In light of Magda’s recent firing, we decided to close this year by creating a fundraiser to support Magda’s organizing with her union – donate here.
Today, life-long STEM nerd and former Amazon drone engineer Pat McGah shares his experience — from requesting transparency in order to make improvements, to discovering managerial malice called “unregretted attrition” and other strategies to force out workers, and finally, to organizing and demanding transparency for all workers in Washington state. Although transparency into workplace decisions seems like common sense when it comes to employee performance reviews, promotions, and firings, managers can legally hide almost anything they want.
Today, Kevin O’Connell shares his journey from pizza delivery to IT program manager at Instacart, where he almost didn’t listen to shoppers. And on December 15, shopper-organizers with Gig Workers Collective will be hosting a hybrid listening session to discuss ways to improve their work, live from Instacart HQ. After four years of making demands and winning concessions, GWC invites corporate workers to discuss what all workers can do for one another. Register for the listening session with Instacart shoppers here.
Last week, Sharon Goen of Gig Workers Collective in Las Vegas told her story and presented five demands to fix on-demand shopping. This week, a former Instacart worker on the corporate side of the company wrote a song with their band The Strange Ones in support of GWC. The band is matching all sales in a donation to GWC until the end of today. Buy it on Bandcamp here.
Gig work doesn’t have to be so bad. Today, Sharon Goen of Gig Workers Collective tells us why she enjoyed shopping for Instacart over Amazon Flex, how one thing after another got worse, and what demands she and thousands of other shoppers have for Instacart to fix their job. For workers on the corporate side of gig economy companies, it’s free advice from shoppers who talked it out, did the math, and spelled out their demands.
The free software movement aims to make technology for everyone, but its growth has been impeded by systemic harassment and gatekeeping – problems that don’t have technical solutions. Deb Nicholson, former Membership Coordinator and union co-steward at the Free Software Foundation, did her best to help the nonprofit serve the movement. But even with a strong union contract, toxic masculinity and elitism persisted, resulting in a space that often felt exclusive and uninviting to outsiders. That might be fine for a club, but a movement that is hostile to newcomers is limited in what it can achieve. Deb argues that troubleshooting these issues through ongoing organizing is necessary to liberate the free software movement from the people who are content with it remaining a small, secret club.
Today we hear from Andy K-D, assistant cameraperson and IATSE member. The authorized IATSE strike, a historical first for “the union behind entertainment” with some 150,000 members, is still hanging in the balance between a negotiated arrangement and the membership approving it. Andy details his highly technical, highly stressful labor - but thankfully, with a crew and a union.
We’re focusing on talking with fellow workers and featuring the worker’s perspective. But to do this effectively and with more care, we’d like to know:
How are we doing? And more importantly, how are you doing?
We’re curious what you think we should do more, less, or the same. We’d love to hear about your work situation and other context for your feedback. Email us at twcnewsletter@protonmail.com.
While #TechWontBuildIt helped energize tech worker organizing, tech accountability journalism is being powered by the very companies we seek to abolish. Jack Poulson argues that we must move beyond refusal – and organize around new tools to surveil these companies.
Tomás S., a project manager at a digital agency, reflects on the global wage disparities in his industry, and shares his story of pressuring his employer to drop a dubious client.
Phoenix Nomi reviews Silent Works, an art exhibition which highlights the role of hidden labor in contemporary capitalism, and reflects on their work transcribing audio for machines, knowing that the end result will automate their own job away.
In the final piece in our series on worker organizing at IBM, we share edited excerpts from an oral history interview with James Leas, an engineer and lawyer who began working at IBM in 1977. During his two decades at IBM, Leas used a variety of tactics to pressure IBM to cut ties with South Africa’s apartheid government, organizing shareholders as well as employees in coalition with religious groups and labor unions. Leas’ efforts were innovative and exemplary, and we hope his methods can serve as a useful historical model for modern-day organizing.
Today we share excerpts from an oral history interview conducted with Marceline Donaldson, who worked at IBM in the 1970s and experienced firsthand the oppressive culture that persisted in the face of the company’s integration efforts. Donaldson delves into the mechanisms that IBM used to dilute worker power as well as her steps toward forming a union, which led to IBM’s retaliation against her.
Today we share excerpts from an oral history with Dr. Richard Hudson of the IBM Black Workers Alliance. The interview explores how exposing a rigged system creates space for solidarity; how workers used the IBM BWA-NY Newsletter as an organizing tool; and how an unsuccessful NLRB case nevertheless proved useful for future generations.
Today, ann haeyoung introduces an oral history & research project featuring interviews with workers at IBM who organized in the 60s, 70s, and 80s for decent work conditions for Black employees, and for the company to boycott South Africa’s apartheid government. Their efforts took more determination and commitment than we might appreciate as workers and organizers today.
As the pandemic enters a new phase, some offices are beginning to open up again and employers are pushing for things to return to normal. Tamara Kneese reflects on recent developments in tech worker organizing, and considers how new forms of solidarity forged remotely through digital channels could evolve as “we” “return” to “the” “office” and continue organizing.
Today we talk with Isabella R., nanomaterials engineer and a Midwesterner who lives in the Seattle area. Until recently, she worked on VR headsets at Facebook Reality Labs, but the pandemic and her contracting arrangement created a hierarchy of safety and control. And having previously worked at a legacy ‘tech’ company with excellent compensation and benefits for all employees, Isabella found Facebook’s arrangement less that satisfactory. She believes the path to a better future includes fighting for racial and climate justice, and increasing accessibility and representation in tech and higher education.
Special feature today: the worker’s perspective from 11 data scientists fired while organizing a union. Their employer? It emerged from the 2012 Obama campaign, and some of its best clients are unions. But as fired worker Sunny Rao said in this Intelligencer story also out today, “I’m starting to hate the word progressive, because it feels so meaningless now.” In their statement, seven of the workers say the company’s pro-labor, pro-union claims should start in-house.
Today, TWC volunteer Ana Ulin interviews Marve Romero, a domestic worker and cleaning app Up & Go co-owner. Marve is a Latina that enjoys working in community. She is a member of the East Harlem Cleaning Cooperative, which belongs to the larger Up & Go cooperative. During the pandemic, Marve participates in workshops, meetings, and training online. She and fellow worker-owners also added new cleaning services, recruited more workers, & got featured in the New York Times. She always seeks to deepen her cooperativist spirit.
Hoy, Ana Ulin de TWC entrevista a Marve Romero, una trabajadora doméstica y co-dueña de Up & Go. Marve es una mujer Latina que disfruta del trabajo en comunidad. Es miembra de la Cooperativa East Harlem Cleaning, la cual pertenece a la membresía de Up & Go, que es también una cooperativa. Durante Covid, participa en talleres, reuniones y entrenamientos vía internet. Marve y sus compañerxs expandieron sus servicios y su membresía—y aparecieron en el New York Times. Busca siempre desarrollar su espíritu cooperativista.
Today we get to know Zuyi Chen, a Chinese-Canadian software engineer who works in the Chicago area and recently left one job at legal analytics company to become a full-time engineer at a finance firm in Chicago. This interview is part of our series in collaboration with Data & Society featuring people who build and work with tech, and who are organizing in unique, context-specific ways to build worker power in the tech industry. In conversation with Data & Society Digital Content Associate Natalie Kerby and TWC volunteer Danny Spitzberg, Zuyi describes how the pandemic amplified the precarity around his immigration status.
Today we hear from R. Leonard, a Haitian-American network engineer who, as a part of his contracted work, has spent time in hospitals before and during the pandemic to configure their Wi-Fi networks. This interview is part of our series in collaboration with Data & Society, spotlighting people who build and work with tech, who are organizing in unique, context-specific ways to build worker power in the tech industry. In conversation with Data & Society Labor Futures Program Director Aiha Nguyen, R. Leonard discusses how the pandemic has illuminated stark power imbalances within his workplace and often led him to take his safety into his own hands.
Yesterday, Turker and AI worker Sherry Stanley wrote about pushing Amazon and task requesters for fair pay and recognition. She and other Turkers are now requesting tech worker support for their worker-led organizing. Building on that, today we’re introducing a new series in collaboration with Data & Society. Over the coming weeks, we’ll feature interviews with people who build and work with tech, who are organizing in unique, context-specific ways to build worker power in the tech industry. And if you want to share your story, start here.
Today we have allied perspectives from workers in AI. Sherry Stanley, a Turker who lives in rural West Virginia, talks about worker-led organizing against poor treatment by Amazon Mechanical Turk and requesters who post tasks. She and other Turker-Organizers contribute labor essential to building machine learning systems, but don’t get rewards or credit. They ask fellow tech workers and AI researchers to support their campaigns and infrastructure with recurring donations to Turkopticon, the forum they run. We have a statement by organized Google workers in solidarity with Google’s Ethical AI team co-leads, Dr. Margaret Mitchell and Dr. Timnit Gebru. It includes calls to protect workers and to support them by “walking out” on sponsorships and funding until we see real change for everyone working in tech and AI.
Workers of the world wide web, you asked for international perspectives. So, in the news this week, we’re talking about caste in California, farmer protests in India, Rihanna on Twitter, Russian Yandex drivers on strike, surveillance in libraries,… and, GameStop. Also, events are back – RSVP for a movie night, edit-a-thon, and TWIST (Tech Worker Interview Skills Training) mutual aid. As always, we’re here to help you write your worker’s perspective. Check out our open call here.
New year, new format! We’re focusing more on news and history, and making the worker’s perspective its own feature. In the news, it’s been a hectic few weeks but unions, union busting, and tracking extremism stood out. We revisit Carnegie’s philanthropy legacy, and share a new track about labor struggles by Riderz With Attitude, an Italian bike courier group.
Inspired by worker organizing and Tech Workers for Tech Workers, we’re making commitments. In 2020 we saw Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and other “gig” companies spend over $205 million to deceive voters and remove worker rights in California. These companies are already using the same playbook to push their substandard, “low-rights” worker classification nationwide. Now, volunteers in TWC are preparing to organize our peers in solidarity with our coworkers who do app-based work. Read and sign our solidarity statement.
Happy 2021 and happy Monday! We usually publish every other Friday, but we wanted to share some breaking news today: 250 workers at Google and its parent company Alphabet just announced that they are forming a union, open to all employees and contractors. Software engineer and union member Raksha Muthukumar – who previously wrote about telling the truth about ‘tech for good’ – explains why and how they will try to change Google for the better.
For our last issue of 2020, we collected excerpts from the worker’s perspective throughout the year. Together, these quotes paint a picture of the good, the bad, and the ugly in tech labor organizing, all from the worker’s perspective. We also made a playlist! And to start 2021, we invite you to help us launch a new interview series that will foster relationships between workers building tech, using tech, and being used by tech.
Dear COMPANY NAME team:
Hello employees — or should I say independent contractors?! (More on that shortly.) I’m writing to you from my second mansion located in ECONOMICALLY DESTABILIZED COUNTRY IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH EXPLOITED BY UNITED STATES IMPERIALISM! I see the poor children here, and it just reminds me how privileged all of us are to live in a virtuous place like Silicon Valley (at least when I’m there, lol) where we pretend homeless people simply don’t exist. And if they do, it’s because they didn’t try hard enough to do a startup or they didn’t have enough generational wealth to do financial crimes.
Hello, world. This week, organizer and engineer Raksha Muthukumar reflects on the myth of so-called Tech For Good initiatives. She challenges herself and all of us to be honest with ourselves and each other, so that the truth can strengthen the liberatory, anti-capitalist work we’ve committed to.
Welcome back. In this issue, former Uber engineer Eddy Hernandez shares his story about the company’s in-house army pushing Prop 22, and how office workers are being coerced to support it just like their coworkers, the drivers. We stand with all workers organizing against Prop 22, an attempt by Uber and other gig companies to cut rideshare and delivery drivers out of established labor protections. And beyond Prop 22, we cover new research on tech company tax dodging, racist surveillance and political censorship, music streaming workers demanding fair pay, and an app selling gig workers a place to pee.
In this issue, Becca Lewis, an academic researcher and former tech worker, describes how far-right radicalization is present in tech companies and how it dominates the industry. Also, Californians: vote No on Prop 22, the latest gig company ploy to deny workers their rights.
In this issue, Clarissa Redwine, tech worker and organizer, shares her recollections of the successful unionization effort at Kickstarter, and invites us to learn more in her podcast. In the news, workers continue speaking out against ICE contracts and political manipulation, while new tech and media countermeasures emerge. Also, a history of the Pullman Strike, and a song about train monopolies from 1882.
After eight grueling years stitching together a design career, Vikram Rojo shares how bonds with friends and family, plus ad-hoc tweets, helped him break into and break free from a string of startups and their bureaucratic traps. He considers himself lucky, and demands the real question: how might we as tech workers demand more than pay, but dignity? How can we all get a decent job, a home, and a chance to get by?
Meanwhile, in the news, landlords are using data to enable evictions, but workers are showing how innovation and demands go together. And in history, some lesser-known and politically powerful pages of Black Panther comics.
This week, we’re calling in sick — and so should you.
Roger Janus, an organizer with TWC Seattle, offers a hopeful perspective on how organizing may seem insignificant and arduous at times, but can achieve wins over the course of a multi-generational struggle. Meanwhile, tech worker organizing is on fire.
Research scientist, former Google employee, and TWC Toronto member Jack Poulson writes about his recent report on tech companies’ military and surveillance contracts.
Ari Laurel, an organizer with TWC Seattle, reflects on her experience with the Capitol Hill Organized Protest. She connects it to tech workers’ struggles, and considers the role that organizers can play in it all.
R.K., a controls engineer and yet another Californian to leave the Bay Area, talks about quitting his union tech job to do techno-scientific experiments at a rural Texas electric co-op. Meanwhile, Juneteenth and continued protests pull the façade off of tech companies.
We are in a powerful Black revolution with sudden widespread support. Weeks of protests against racist policing, sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota Police, are leading to calls to defund the police, tear down statues of oppressors, and end the use of technology for racist surveillance. This issue features reflections from several Black tech workers.
In this issue, Kim Tran shares her story of being born and raised in the Bay Area, doing diversity consulting for over a decade, and trying to make sense of what it all means, now that she works in tech.
Who calls the shots at Tesla Motors? Is it the workers who collectively build all the products that generate the company’s wealth? No, it’s the company’s multi-billionaire CEO, who recently threw a fit on Twitter over COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders that would delay resuming production. How does he manage to get away with that?
Today is May Day, International Workers Day, and #EssentialWorkersDay. As the coronavirus pandemic continues, it becomes increasingly clear how much our economy depends on the workers who have been deemed “essential”. Yet these workers are rarely given the protective equipment they need — not to mention decent wages or benefits — proving that “essential” really means “sacrificial”. Chris Smalls, an Amazon warehouse worker and organizer fired last month, shared a video montage with dozens of essential workers protesting for better working conditions at Instacart, Shipt, Amazon warehouses, and your neighborhood Whole Foods. Today, they are on strike with a list of demands.
We don’t normally send you an email beyond our weekly newsletter but given the climate crisis, we figured you wouldn’t mind us sending this call out.
Since Uber launched in 2009 they’ve gone out of their way to skirt labor protections and treat workers like mere cogs in their all conquering algorithm. Earlier this year a bill proposed in California tried to change that, it’s called AB 5. This bill would codify into law a ruling by the Supreme Court of California last year, known as Dynamex, which established a three-part test to determine whether someone would be considered an independent contractor or an employee under California’s labor law. Under this test drivers for Uber and Lyft would be considered employees.
The Washington Post on Thursday revealed workers in Palantir are protesting the companies contracts with ICE. We learned that hundreds of workers have signed two separate letters calling on the company to reconsider it’s relationship with ICE. This story follows news earlier this week that management at Palantir decided to double down on profiting from human rights abuses by renewing one of their ICE contracts.
Hello all from the newly emerging TWC Bangalore local!
Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India, and it was inevitable that the first TWC chapter in India would start here. Unionisation has a long history in India with the first trade union set up in 1918. Recently, there have been multiple unionisation efforts for the IT industry, with unions like F.I.T.E (Forum for IT employees), K.I.T.U (Karnataka State IT Employees Union).
Scholars tell UC Berkeley to cut ties with Palantir
Berkeley Law hosted a top privacy and law conference this week. Since 2011 the conference has received sponsorship from Palantir and this year hundreds of academics decided they have had enough in light of the recent revelation that Palantir’s technology was used to separate families. Over 300 of them signed a letter put out by the Latinx advocacy group Mijente, calling on the event organizers to drop Palantir sponsorship.
On Wednesday May 8, hundreds of drivers, workers and other demonstrators shut off Uber for hours in several cities around the world. The action was coordinated by drivers who have been organizing for livable wages and greater voice and agency in their work. Last night we got to talk to one of the drivers who helped make it happen; the below is a transcript of the stories and reflections he’s wanted to share in the aftermath of last week’s action. Halfway through our conversation when I heard him address a restaurant worker and heard the car blinker resume when he got back in, I realized he had been driving between restaurants for Uber eats deliveries—he said that he mostly drives passengers but has to do some food delivery too to get through the maze of requirements Uber sets for drivers to earn a “bonus”.
This week our friends curating and publishing the zine Bug Report! released issue 2. The submissions featured in this issue explore that not-quite-right feeling we get in our stomach when execs talk about equity and working toward equal representation, and the ways conferences like Lesbians Who Tech hold up the corporate infrastructure of inequality as much as they provoke it.
The bosses take control of our products, pick and choose whom to sell them to using their warped moral compass, and then turn around and tell us that they’re not responsible for the regulation of our products.
“Uber’s billion dollar IPO is built off my labor”
This week Mostafa Maklad, an Uber driver from Afghanistan, wrote an opinion piece on NBC Think. Here’s what he had to say:
Inequality: it’s a topic we talk about week after week as a rallying cry to organize our industry. Bosses are well aware that inequality exists, and use the same tired talking points over and over about getting more underrepresented people into tech.
As fellow workers in the tech industry, we are acutely aware of the exploitative conditions that so-called “contractor” rideshare drivers are exposed to and their struggle to make ends meet. We see Monday’s impressive strike of Uber and Lyft drivers as a necessary step in this struggle for equitable conditions. Therefore we offer total solidarity and support for their cause.
This week, Stanford University announced a new Institute for Human-Centered AI, whose stated goal is to foster “a better future for humanity through AI.” The high-profile launch ceremony was attended by bigwigs in industry, academia, and government, from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to warmongering ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
News broke on Monday of a second case of Google’s multi-million dollar payout for a perpetrator of sexual harassment. The next day workers across the industry took to Twitter under the hashtag #GooglePayoutsForAll to shed light on a system that allocates wealth to abusers at the expense of the workers on the bottom.
Workers across the industry have been floored by the recent light shed on the brutal working conditions and severe mental health consequences of the work of the thousands of content moderators at Facebook and other social media platforms.
Workers are holding DoorDash accountable for a dishonest tipping policy that shortchanges drivers and puts more money in management’s pockets.
In an open letter published today (instructions for signing here), signers demonstrate solidarity with drivers and workers who are bringing attention to DoorDash’s wage theft practices. The letter’s demands include a $15 per hour pay floor for all drivers, plus tips.
Microsoft workers have demanded that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith, terminate the $480 million Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) contract with the US Army, which they describe as a way to “increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage”. Their demand letter, which includes dozens of employee signatures and counting, argues Microsoft has “crossed the line into weapons development,” and that “intent to harm is not an acceptable use of our technology.”
NYC breaks up with Amazon on Valentine’s day.
When Amazon announced it was taking $3.1 billion NY tax dollars and public land to build its HQ2 in Queens, NY, a broad coalition of neighborhood groups came together and organized against the deal. On Feb 14th, in the face of mounting pressure, Amazon said it’s abandoning the plan.
Waheed Etimad was working full time as an Uber driver to support his spouse and seven children. He migrated here with his family four years ago and he was studying to become a computer engineer. He was killed while working on Sunday night. Uber will pay no workers comp death benefits for his family. There will be no life insurance pay out. In life, Waheed was a unit of profit for Uber. In death, he is nothing to them.
We cherish the reminder this week’s App Store drama affords us: the tech bosses will go to any lengths necessary to exploit all humans’ data and advance their domination; and there’s little holding them accountable other than violating the terms of service of likewise domination-minded platforms.
Knowledge of Google’s exploitation of workers is officially mainstream. Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live featured contract workers struggling to get by in the tech economy.
Microsoft’s $500 million “pledge” for affordable housing is a thinly veiled pursuit of profit and a push for deregulated development.
This excerpt and the image that follows are from Bug Report! Issue 1.
The tech industry is broken.
For a while, it mostly went unnoticed. From tech startups to the Frightful Five, venture capital and new markets made the industry willfully blind to the damage inflicted by their products and services. Tech bros dominated workplaces, making offices havens for sexual harassment, assault, and discrimination, as well as just plain old crappy places to work. For a while, most of us bought into the Californian Ideology, that notion—peddled hardest by “thought leaders” and CEOs—that technology is unconditionally good and would mean wealth and opportunity for everyone.
Twenty workers subcontracted with Facebook through a UX contracting firm, Filter, submitted this letter on December 6, in an effort to exercise their legal right to negotiate for better wages and conditions at work. (Read the full letter here.)
In 2016, Silicon Valley tech company cafeterias employed only 65 unionized workers. Two years and countless hours of organizing effort later, 1,400 of Silicon Valley’s cafeteria workers have union representation. On Monday night, we gathered in San Francisco to hear stories of that work from the women who lead the campaigns.
Two Tech Workers Coalition volunteers recently sat down with the hosts of the Delete Your Account Podcast to talk worker-to-worker solidarity in the tech industry. Hear the full conversation here.
The latest resistance by Google workers is a penned letter published on Monday opposing Dragonfly. The letter says it clearly: By building a censored search engine and handing over user data to the Chinese government, Google is complicit in oppression and human rights abuses; and we already know the ways Uyghurs, women’s rights advocates and students have been specifically targeted in those abuses.
Two Thursdays ago, 20,000 Googlers walked out, demanding sexual harassment policies that center workers, not bosses and profits. Days later, management conceded to two of their demands, and since then, Facebook, eBay, Square and AirBnb have followed suit by removing forced arbitration clauses from employment contracts.
When the boss “reaches out” to ask if we want to help build facial recognition for ICE, we say no. When the boss says shipping is “free” when in fact it is a costly, dangerous burden carried on the broken backs of workers, we say no. When the boss squashes workers with surveillance, union-busting and exploitation, we fight back with collective action.
Save this rejection letter to your clipboard for the next time you need to tell the boss NO.
20,000 Google workers in 50 different cities walked off the job yesterday to protest the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment claims, among many other issues.
Unrest among workers at Amazon continues to boil since last week’s open letter protesting the company’s pursuit of the Pentagon project JEDI. The business practice at the center of this week’s dissent is Amazon’s unrelenting deployment of its facial recognition service, Rekognition, and its plans to sell it to ICE. Workers are not having it.
A week after Google dropped out of the running for the Pentagon’s project JEDI, Jeff Bezos double-downed on Amazon’s pursuit of the contract to be the cloud provider for the Department of Defense.
Over the last week, TWC peeps got to spend time with the author of Striking to Survive: Workers’ Resistance to Factory Relocations in China and his partner as part of their U.S. book tour. Before coming to the Bay Area, they did talks throughout the Northeast, then again in the Midwest, before coming out West. Along the way, they did several interviews with seasoned veterans of shopfloor struggles since the 1960s. One of us shares an account of our time together:
On Wednesday, Tech Workers Coalition was recognized by Working Partnerships USA with a Solidarity Champion Award for organizing a movement inside the tech industry to demand transparency and justice for workers, immigrants, and communities affected by tech near and far. Read on for the full remarks from the courageous TWC volunteer who took the stage to accept the award:
Over two hundred Telltale Games workers (all but 25 of the company) were laid off this week with no explanation and no severance. One worker has filed a class action lawsuit against the company for breaking state and federal WARN laws, which requires most businesses to give 60 days notice in advance of mass layoffs.
Thousands of workers on strike this week from East London to the Bay Area is filling us with confidence and optimism as we head into the weekends. More and more workers are standing up and taking action to change their conditions.
100 women marched 100 miles to the California capitol in support of Assembly Bill 2079, the Janitor Survivor Empowerment Act, which would put in place greater protections against sexual assault on the job for janitors. They started yesterday and arrived this morning.
On Labor Day, we celebrated the milestone of five local chapters building worker power on the West Coast: San Francisco, South Bay, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles!
Hey hey! Tableau! Your ICE contract has got to go! Yesterday we were out at Tableau’s Seattle office with @MobToMeltICE and the IWW, demanding that the company end its collaboration with ICE.
Tech bosses subcontract swaths of labor so they can defer responsibility when workers demand more security and less precarity. For the first time in its history, Google now employs more contractors than full time employees.
After years of working multiple jobs and putting their lives on the line just to make ends meet, Silicon Valley security guards have finally won a union contract.
The boss is starting to fight back.
The usual suspects – Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates, TaskRabbit, Square, and Handy – just cosigned a letter addressed to Governor Jerry Brown’s labor secretary, begging him to overturn the CA Supreme Court “Dynamex” ruling, that would require these gig platforms to recognize their “contractors” as full-time employees. That means companies like Uber would have to start following minimum wage and overtime laws, in addition to paying workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and payroll taxes.
This week we celebrate steps forward in our collective workers’ struggle:
On Monday, workers from Google, Facebook, and other tech companies joined security guards at the negotiating table, amplifying their demands for a better contract. While the median salary at Facebook is $240,000 a year, a Silicon Valley security guard typically earns between $13 and $18 per hour, or $27,000 to $37,000 a year
Now is the time when the people who are paid to administer injustice stand up to stop it.
The actions of activists at Microsoft offices around the country this week have shown that the #techwontbuildit movement has grown so much bigger than we could have ever imagined.
Money, it turns out, can’t buy you friends. Besieged by employee calls to #CancelTheContract with CBP, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff offered to donate $250,000 to Texas nonprofit RAICES, to draw attention away from the contract. RAICES refused the donation, sending shockwaves through the industry: “We will not be a beneficiary of your effort to buy your way out of ethical responsibility.”
It that’s time of year again! If you’re one of the millions of Americans who “celebrate” Amazon Prime Day (July 16-17) with a shopping spree, Amazon workers in Spain have a message for you: Shut it down.
Our movement is growing stronger by the day! Over 100,000 people have signed petitions calling on the major tech companies to drop their contracts with ICE and Customs & Border Patrol. We need to keep turning up the pressure internally – the public is beginning to stand up behind us!
The labor of tech industry workers is essential to ICE’s continuing operations. Any tool, program, or database used in ICE’s workflow directly enables the separation of families and the kidnapping of children. When our employers empower ICE, we do not stay silent; we build power to shut ICE down.
This was the week of sea change: when images of children torn from parents and families locked in cages activated the already-agitated worker to mobilize against the status quo.
Peter Thiel exploiting handouts from the government, Founders Fund pitch decks shared over Chick-fil-A, a Lord of the Rings collector sword, MythBusters’ final fall from grace—these details are only the tip of the iceberg of horror behind Oculus founder’s latest venture: a VR forcefield inside “Call of Duty goggles” for detecting and trapping border crossers. Read and wallow in despair—then get moving because y’all, we’ve got work to do.
Jacobin Gets The Inside Scoop on How Google Workers Organized to Stop Project Maven
Last Friday, Google announced that it will not renew its contract with the US military for Project Maven. In a revealing interview, an anonymous Googler shared what went down inside the company as workers organized to halt the project. It’s a riveting read, full of powerful insights as workers elsewhere begin to take up the mantle. From the interview:
Today, we learned that Google will not renew its AI contract with the Department of Defense, after months of employee-led opposition. Over 4,000 Google workers signed an internal petition to cancel the project, and the Tech Workers Coalition launched our own petition on CoWorker.org, followed by an open letter from the academic community with over 1,000 signatures.
Fifty years ago this May, over 10 million French workers joined protesting students in the largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country, and the first wildcat general strike in history. Striking workers occupied 122 factories all across France, crippling the economy and nearly toppling the government. The rebellion wasn’t participated in by a lone demographic, such as workers or students, but was a popular uprising that superseded ethnic, cultural, age and class boundaries.