State of the Union

Yashad Kulkarni30min

Speaker 1

00:04

All right, welcome and good morning. We're very excited to be kicking off TC justice today with this is I think, for me, at least the panel that, you know, I've been thinking about the most, and I think is probably one of the if not the most timely panels that we're, we have on the show today, we'll be discussing unionizing and tech, obviously, we've seen a major uptick in labor activity with tech companies over the past couple of years. Certainly, within the past 12 months, this marks a really big change for the industry, tech, as anyone who follows it knows it's basically famously anti union. So I'd like to just kick off everything by opening up to the panel and asking, why is this all happening right now? How did we get here and why? So hi, corsia, let's, let's start with you.

Speaker 2

01:05

I can jump in. Yeah. I mean, I, from my perspective, it seems like, it seems like tech workers are reacting to some of the maturity of tech and the expansion of the platforms that we all work on. And also more worker instability in general in the US, especially. So I think it's sort of a response that workers are becoming more formal in their organizing efforts. But I'm sure Grayson ferrule could give a little bit more on that.

Speaker 3

01:39

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a question that we've been hearing a lot over the past few years as Why are we starting to see this? Now? Why didn't we see this in the past. And I want to push back on that a little bit. Because I do want to say that people have been organizing in the tech industry for decades. And this, although we've seen recent wins at full time tech companies over the past few years. And that's been groundbreaking and historic. I do want to recognize the fact that workers have been organizing and have been union organizing for decades. Back in the Silicon Valley. In the early days, there were engineers and also product people in sales who were organizing for union rights. And while we've only started the recent, actual, like recognition of those union rights within the past few years, I want to make sure that there's like recognition of the the labor movement has been intrinsic to tech for a while. That being said, I agree with what Clarissa was saying about the fact that like, I think we're reaching a Nexus where the industry of tech has been growing to a degree that we haven't seen before, the sorts of impacts that tech as an industry has had on people, not just the workers themselves in the immediate opposite, but also across the country. And across the world. Those sorts of impacts are to the scale that we haven't seen, and many other industries. And I think the workers themselves are starting to realize that and understand that. Not only do they have the ability to change their immediate working conditions, but also influence some of those large scale effects that they're seeing across the world. I

Speaker 4

03:09

think there's also something to be said about the maturity of the worker organizing movement. Because, like Clarissa and grace mentioned, it's been happening for many, many years now. But a variety of tactics and strategies have been tried. And, you know, we've been able to analyze the successes and failures of past movements and arrive at a point where we've developed enough sort of institutional or organizational knowledge to try something new and in some ways, more complex. I think there's also something to be said about the fact that the labor movement has also developed that experience. The code CWA campaign, for example, is still a relatively new thing, and in some ways, is the amalgamation of like years of experience in the tech telecom and games industry that's built up to a point where organizers and like labor unions themselves feel a level of confidence going into what is, you know, relatively new territory for them?

Speaker 1

04:10

Would you push back on the notion that, that that tech in general has been more anti labor than then other industries? Historically? I mean, obviously, all three of you have different experiences, but do you have experiences organizing companies? You know, do you get the sense that it is and has been more difficult in tech companies and startups to unionize?

Speaker 3

04:36

So it's interesting point, I think that the tactics that we're seeing from employers from bosses, the sort of rhetoric, talking points against the ends that we've started to see in tech are honestly not that different from what we've seen in other industries. I've worked in, like with service workers with janitors and security officers who've been organizing I've worked nurses who have organized unions. I've worked with nonprofit employees who have organized unions, I've seen some really egregious actions taken by those employers. And I've seen some similar stuff taken by employers within the tech. And I think where the challenge lies is that tech already has such an ethos that promotes innovation and moving quickly and breaking things and disrupting different structures. And while that can be all well and good, and actually creating progress, in many ways, I think it does run up against the types of cultures that we're trying to promote with organizing in terms of collective action, in terms of solidarity with your co workers, like those sorts of values can sometimes run counter to the dominant narrative coming out of the Silicon Valley. And that's not to say that the people who work at tech companies run counter to those values. But I do think that that's where we see.

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