this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
91 points (100.0% liked)

Labour

7759 readers
4 users here now

One big comm for one big union! Post union / labour related news, memes, questions, guides, etc.

Here Are Some Resources to help with organizing and direct action

:red-fist:

And More to Come!

If you want to speak to a union organizer, reach out here.

:iww: :big-bill: :sabo:

Rules:

  1. Follow The Hexbear Code of Conduct.

  2. No anti-union content, especially from the right. Critiques and discussions of different organizing strategies is fine.

  3. Don’t dox yourself or others.

  4. Labour Party content goes in !electoralism@www.hexbear.net, !politics@www.hexbear.net, or a :dumpster-fire:.

When we fight we win!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

They're still in Kurian's office, still streaming, and starting to get major media coverage: WaPo Wired

In my opinion this is one of the most important labor developments in the US in a while. Internationally politicized worker organization in the belly of the beast by traditionally un-unionizable PMCs.

e: finally arrested after 10 hours

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] bloubz@lemmygrad.ml 24 points 8 months ago (1 children)

First time I see something good from anything Google. People are still good, even when working for the devil

[–] macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

they also were able to cancel Project Maven, which was going to help the US use machine learning to analyze drone footage. There's hope - slim but real. https://logicmag.io/the-making-of-the-tech-worker-movement/full-text/

[–] AcidLeaves@hexbear.net 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Me stalking your profile rn to figure out if you're a fellow NOTA organizer or not 👀

You know too much about this action and Google organizing to not be lmao

jk I'm not actually doing that, dw

[–] macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

just a fellow traveler, I don't work at google but I have a friend in NOTA. you guys are doing great work

[–] AcidLeaves@hexbear.net 4 points 8 months ago

ty <3 I don't do too much and I wasn't there today for a bunch of reasons but I really respect the more active organizers too

[–] AcidLeaves@hexbear.net 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not to be a pessimist but if you also work in tech, I highly suggest this article since you've linked that one

https://organizing.work/2020/12/there-is-something-missing-from-tech-worker-organizing/

[–] macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Yeah there's real challenges and not much has happened since Maven. I think that tech worker organizing is eventually going to get easier as we get proletarianized, but for now it's largely an uphill battle.

To me, the most interesting part is the framing of this almost as worker control over the direction and organization of work. That's something that unions largely were forced to cede in the 20th century. Sure the pay and hours are good but they're saying that you know, I don't want to work on genocide, it's a mental health problem, a workplace dignity issue, etc. We're highly-skilled, highly-paid professionals: why should we do the stupid, awful shit Product wants us to do and not say anything about what we want to build? Hard to do this without downplaying Palestinian experience, but to some level they're emphasizing the individual worker demands and not just running on sympathy for other people.

I do agree it's tricky to calibrate demands and so far workplaces have largely been shooting for the moon instead of building momentum with small wins. Need to make demands that are achievable but still meaningful, not so small as to be reformist. Transitional program can be a guide for that.

[–] AcidLeaves@hexbear.net 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Hard to do this without downplaying Palestinian experience, but to some level they're emphasizing the individual worker demands and not just running on sympathy for other people.

Yea, I think where it falls a bit short is that it's hard to get people on your side without also supporting and caring for the workers' other grievances like layoffs, benefits being cut, performance pressures, etc.

It's very similar to the PSL style of organizing where they hold big protests largely on social issues but they don't actually try to connect with the local communities and help them out materially. So they're capturing the support and attention of a lot of the advanced but do nothing for the moderate

Mhm. I'm not sure what the Alphabet union's line was, but they don't seem to have gotten very far. A lot of this is bootstrapping - can't make real material gains until you have enough workers on board, can't get enough workers on board without real material gains. So I'm sympathetic to the arguments for unit level organization.

[–] AcidLeaves@hexbear.net 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

We're highly-skilled, highly-paid professionals: why should we do the stupid, awful shit Product wants us to do and not say anything about what we want to build?

Having talked to a lot of co-workers about Google's tech being used to cause harm, the huge majority sentiment I've gotten is that workers don't actually care what they build. They just wanna get the money and climb the career ladder unfortunately

They've also displayed a lot of libertarian free market sentiment of they don't actually hold any social responsibility for what they've built, and that it's only the fault of the people using Google's tech to do bad things

[–] macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I might work with weirdos but my (non-Google) tech coworkers have been generally receptive and don't want to build actively harmful/misleading/buggy stuff. It's kind of a natural outgrowth of quality-focused work. When I talk to blue-collar union members I'm struck by how proud they are of their jobs. I think that everyone wants to be doing meaningful things for the 8 hours a day we spend working, it must just be buried real deep in some of the Valley ideology people.

[–] AcidLeaves@hexbear.net 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Having worked at a large variety of tech companies, I think it's just largely a self-selection type of stuff. People who work at the most highly paid and most "prestigious" workplaces self-select themselves to be people who only care about the money and social status, especially since these companies require the most studying to get into

I've shared your experiences with other "non-prestigious" companies where people do care a lot more about their work and really just anything other than material goods/money

My current co-workers are the most devoid of interest in the arts, sociology, psychology, really anything related to human expression and condition I've ever seen

[–] TheDoctor@hexbear.net 1 points 8 months ago

I think that tech worker organizing is eventually going to get easier as we get proletarianized

inshallah