The lowest organizational hurdle to clear in workplace organizing is using communication channels not visible to management, yet it's amazing how almost no tech workers bother with this step. Reminds me of when Googlers tried to book a conference room to listen to a union rep.https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1432769058823282688 …
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The chief obstacle to effective workplace organizing in tech is the psychological threat it poses to employees, whose sense of identity is so intimately rooted in their work that they are unable to make the smallest use of their latent power. Steelworkers wouldn't be so neurotic.
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The best imaginable outcome in many tech organizers' eyes is a favorable NLRB ruling, or in other words, finding an ever-higher manager to file a grievance with. The world the NLRB originated in—workers advancing goals independent of what their bosses want—is conceptually alien.
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The most likely outcome of tech workers at Apple being too inert to even create their own Slack instance (it's free!) is that it will doom the dad jokes and fun dogs slack channels at the company, while affecting pay disparities not a whit.pic.twitter.com/IlBvPjLmnx
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Like, this dude is a Stanford grad and worked in Google's mobile advertising division (!) for two years, but in an NLRB hearing today explained how he was shocked, shocked when the third largest company in the world behaved like a corporationhttps://twitter.com/josheidelson/status/1432754521592061953 …
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There were even people like this at Yahoo, back in the day when it was run by a tanned Hollywood CEO who I'm not sure had ever used a computer. They would tell you in full sincerity they "bled purple" and were committed to changing the world through whatever it was Yahoo did
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This is what I mean by "there's no IQ limit on stupid". The most frightfully intelligent people can be dumb as rocks about the broader implications of their work, and via selection effect that is the kind of employee who mainly fills the ranks of Big Tech. Good luck organizing!
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Greatest minds on the planet, making sure their employer knows exactly which Googlers met with a union representative by signing them in to the corporate tracking system.pic.twitter.com/I5eUNP948c
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Complaining that a large corporation retaliated against your efforts to organize is like being upset that an undercover cop attended your political meeting. You're complaining about a metric of *success* that it was your job to plan ahead for, unless you lacked any seriousness.
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To be clear,
@crschmidt's example here is different from my own example upthread (we made fun of the Googlers and forced them to leave campus to talk to the union rep). I'd be very interested to hear how many other examples there are of this kind of high-surveillance union drive.Show this thread
End of conversation
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The greatest tricks the devil ever pulled were convincing knowledge workers that "unions" are only for manual/skilled labor and that worker culture is a top-down phenomenon.
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