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 …
-
Show this thread
-
The current tech organizing playbook is to try to do something at work, get your hand swatted by management, then go crying to sympathetic journalists. If someone gets fired, the next step is either taking a payoff with NDA, or writing a strongly-worded letter to the NLRB
2 replies 11 retweets 121 likesShow this thread -
It's a college student mentality, where the way to succeed is performative protest eventually leading to administrative redress of grievances. These employees identify so deeply with their company that an effective, adversarial approach to using their latent power is unimaginable
5 replies 31 retweets 237 likesShow this thread -
I've said it a lot, but it would only take about 100 employees to shut down large parts of Google. How this threat was defused by shunting employee anger into harmless channels, including a cosplay "union" whose sole achievement was a NYT op-ed, is a fascinating object lesson
5 replies 18 retweets 149 likesShow this thread -
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.
6 replies 32 retweets 153 likesShow this thread -
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.
1 reply 9 retweets 78 likesShow this thread -
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
1 reply 7 retweets 67 likesShow this thread -
Pinboard Retweeted Josh Eidelson
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 …
Pinboard added,
Josh EidelsonVerified account @josheidelson"The phrase 'Don’t Be Evil,' it’s a big part of what Google stands for in my mind and–before the recent past couple years–a big part of what I understood Google to be about," ex-employee Wyatt Liang-Ratliff testified. It "meant that it’s not like the rest of corporate America"Show this thread5 replies 10 retweets 86 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @Pinboard
I know this is a tough one for someone who never worked there, but for many years, internally it did not behave like one in many ways. Signed: A guy who raised $4,000 severance for a chef who was about to be fired for baking Free Tibetan gojiberry pie.
4 replies 2 retweets 15 likes -
I think got to watch a founder denounce authoritarianism and the other employees who came up to defend a government currently engaged in locking an entire ethnic group in a city. It wasn't perfect (not even close), but you weren't there either.
3 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
I wasn't there because I thought it was unethical to work there.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.