The work culture at rich tech companies (people read something upsetting in the news and want to discuss and 'process' it on company time) is so alien from most people's experience of work that it makes me despair for ever finding common ground with the actual working class
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Replying to @Pinboard
Maciej, I admire your writing and work. But I think you are discounting how often these discussions actually lead to workers organizing for better treatment *at their own workplaces.* Based on the available reporting, this sounds like what was happening at Basecamp.
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Replying to @adamconover @Pinboard
Official channels are not always the best channels for organizing, granted, but they are often all that is available; a common organizing-busting tactic is to remove means for employees to communicate with each other.
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Replying to @adamconover
Okay, but that letter specifically encouraged people to communicate in any other way they chose?
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Replying to @Pinboard
Per Newton's reporting, the CEO letter was an attempt to rewrite what the discussion dispute was actually about: not national politics, but diversity and hiring issues *at their actual workplace.* It unilaterally disbanded a worker-organized DEI committee! That's union-busting!
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Replying to @adamconover
As I understand it, the DEI committee was officially sanctioned by the company. I'd be ecstatic if Basecamp employees responded to its dissolution by engaging in real collective action, up to and including unionizing. But I'd also be surprised.
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Replying to @Pinboard
Per Newton, the committee was worker-organized and grudgingly tolerated by management before they unilaterally ended it. But the 1st rule of organizing is: "Ask the workers what they want." They wanted this committee. That IS collective action.https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basecamp …
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Replying to @adamconover
So then let's hope they keep it going, and set the example that you don't need management permission or cooperation to fix your workplace.
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Replying to @Pinboard
Completely agreed! And I agree that tech workers have a long way to grow in their tactics and demands. But I also think we should end the pattern where their organizing is dismissed as frivolous or ideological when race & gender are the issues being organized around.
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That advocacy (I hesitate to call it organizing because it's in some ways the opposite of organizing) is not frivolous, but it *has* become highly ideological. And unfortunately it rewards escalation and drama.
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Replying to @Pinboard
Just saying: "Ideological" is what labor activists have been called for a century (whether Marxists, or socialists, or etc.) and escalation is a central organizing tactic! Call me crazy but I really do think there is less daylight here than many think.
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