On March 22, npm fired several members of the open source and community team for discussing workplace conditions and other labor organizing activities. As a result, core employee contributors to the npm cli were removed from the project, and others have left in solidarity or put their work on hold.
Multiple claims were filed with the NLRB on this matter. The NLRB has investigated and found sufficient evidence of validity to proceed. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 protects US employees' right to engage in discussions of workplace concerns without threat of retaliation -- and awareness of the importance of how we treat each other is something I valued so much in collaborating with the cli team. How can we work together if we aren't free to discuss what we need?
It's disappointing for all of us to find the work we were doing interrupted in this way. Our open source community deserves better. I hope at some point soon npm will choose to repair the damage it caused so that work can move forward again. Please remember this was not a choice the open source team made, but a result of the actions of the company's executives.
@aeschright: So sorry to hear this. Now I know why a once-solidly healthy project seemed to drop off so suddenly. I am pretty furious at the situation…but I don’t want to touch Facebook-infested
yarn
, either.@zkat: Thanks for keeping up in work and community. I’m grateful for the hard work you (and the innumerable other contributors) do. I wish someone like you were in charge of the npm company, instead of asshats who think people have no right to discuss their own working conditions. (’Scuse my language. I’m still very angry, having just read this gist.)
❤️ to the core npm devs, countless contributors, and grateful users.