Compiled by Shauna Gordon-McKeon, with contributions from Amanda Jaret, Marley Pulido-Vargas and Lauren Burke.
The National Labor Relations Act gives most tech workers the right to organize and join a union. It also protects your right to take other collective actions to protect you and your coworkers on the job. Here are a few examples of actions that may be protected by the National Labor Relations Act:
- Talking to your coworkers about your salary, benefits, or other working conditions.
- Writing a petition on behalf of a group of coworkers to your boss to ask for a raise.
- Publicizing a workplace issue that you and your coworkers share on social media.
- Organizing a union with your coworkers and asking the company to recognize and bargain with the union.
To learn more about your legal rights, you can visit the National Labor Relations Board’s website.
Organizing a union is just one type of protected concerted activity. If you are interested particularly in forming a union, check out this guide. If you're thinking of whistleblowing, try whistleblowers.gov, or see this guide by Tate & Renner.
Unions which organize tech workers
- Communication Workers for America (CWA) (C.O.D.E. Initiative)
- United Steel Workers (USW) (Federation of Tech Workers program)
- Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU)
Tech chapters/locals
- Kickstarter United (organized with OPEIU)
- HCL union (Google contractor) (organized with USW)
- Glitch union (organized with CODE-CWA)
- Blue State Digital union (organized with CODE-CWA)
- Alphabet Workers Union (organized with CODE-CWA)
Industry-Wide Orgs
Company-Specific Orgs
- Googlers for Climate Action
- Google Walkout for Real Change
- Googlers for Human Rights
- Alphabet Workers Alliance
- Workers for Workers (Facebook)
- Facebook Employees for Climate Action
- Square Workers for Good
- Microsoft Workers for Good
- Tableau Employees Ethics Alliance
- Amazonians: We Won't Build It
- Githubbers
Labor organizing by tech users
- Rideshare Drivers United
- Gig Workers Rising
- Turkopticon (Amazon Mechanical Turk users)
- Bargaining for the Common Good
- What Tech Workers Can Learn from Harry Bridges by Kelsey Gilmore-Innis
- What Productive Conflict Can Offer a Workplace by Jess Kutch
- Game Workers Unite by Emma Kinema
- A searchable archive of the history of collective actions in tech
- The Kickstarter Union - An Oral History
- Organizing To Improve Your Workplace: Know Your Rights (Talk at PyCon 2020)
- Kickstarter
- Glitch
- HCL
- Amazonians United
- Googlers Against Forced Arbitration
- Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act
- Organizing of Amazon’s warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota
- Amazon workers push for union in Bessemer, Alabama (happening right now!)
- Bargaining for the Common Good
- Chicago teachers strike
- Bank worker activism
- Activism of General Electric workers
- Employer anti-union efforts
- Retaliation against Kickstarter organizers
- Retaliation against Google Walkout organizers
- Amazon tech workers fired for criticizing warehouse conditions
- Labor board backs startup engineers fired for unionizing
Problems in tech workplaces
- Pay gaps
- Harrassment
- Under-representation
- Racial Discrimination
- Overtime (same battle as the Lowell mill workers)
- Non-disclosure Agreements
- Forced arbitration
- Misclassification of contractors
- Facebook's contract content moderators
- Overtime in the Game industry
Problems technonology causes (a very small sampling)
- Amazon's Ring & police surveillance
- Palantir & ICE/CBP
- Deaths of immigrants in ICE/CBP custody
- Facebook & the Myanmar genocide
- Facebook & ad revenue
- Facebook & false metrics
Labor exploitation in US history:
Modern day labor exploitation: