In the past year, tech worker mobilization has reached unprecedented levels. Kickstarter employees sought union recognition from their company. Amazon workers led a cross tech-industry walkout to support the global climate strike. Googlers grappled with unionization, fought against increasing corporate hostility, and challenged their company’s unethical partnerships. Even Chinese tech workers have joined in, with the viral 996.icu campaign that demanded more reasonable working hours.
We documented all the collective actions in the tech industry in a publicly accessible online database and analyzed the results. What we learned challenges many mainstream media narratives about the tech workers’ movement. Here are our eight most important insights.
1. Tech worker actions are growing exponentially
There were more than a hundred publicly reported actions in 2019, some involving thousands of people. This is almost triple the number of actions we saw in 2018 and nine times the number in 2017.
2. Precarious workers are leading the fight ...
Mainstream media coverage of the tech workers’ movement has often focused on white-collar professionals – software engineers, data scientists, designers, program managers and other workers with high-paying desk jobs – such as the “Thanksgiving Four”, who were allegedly fired by Google as retaliation for their organizing efforts.
In reality, however, the majority of tech worker actions – many only reported by local news outlets – are led by less privileged tech workers, such as warehouse pickers, rideshare drivers, and service employees. From 2006 to 2019, our database shows, 57% of actions reported in the press were led by this group.
This year, Amazon warehouse workers in Sacramento circulated a petition to reinstate two fired workers – and succeeded. Whole Foods workers denounced their parent company’s ties to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). A protest caravan of rideshare employees drove roughly 600 miles across California to drum up support for the AB5 bill, which entitles gig workers to greater employee benefits.
Thousands of Instacart workers in the US went on strike to protest reduced earnings. Delivery workers across the Atlantic, including Deliveroo workers in the UK and Foodora workers in Norway, found creative ways to make their voices heard. Uber Eats delivery staff even managed to unionize in Japan.
3. … but full-time and white-collar tech workers are becoming more active
Before 2019, our data shows, the number of actions led by either blue-collar or contract workers was 74%. The past year saw something new, however: the number of actions from full-time/white-collar workers overtook the number of actions from less privileged tech workers.
4. Full-time/white-collar workers and more precarious workers are fighting for different things ...
It’s been argued that the tech worker movement has been fueled by employee concern for moral or ethical issues as opposed to more “traditional” organizing concerns, such as higher wages and improved working conditions. But this characterization of the movement is a result of focusing on only the most privileged group. The data for less privileged tech workers tells a different story.
The largest number of actions organized by full-time/white-collar workers (36%) were related to what we call “external concerns” – in other words, issues not directly applicable to a worker’s ability to earn a livelihood. This category includes actions against climate change, partnerships with Ice and other controversial government agencies, and policies towards political advertising. Working conditions (18%) and discrimination (16%) came in a distant second and third.
Blue-collar and contract workers, on the other hand, overwhelmingly organized around issues related to pay and benefits (53%) and working conditions (35%).
5. … and are fighting in different ways …
The methods of protest used by the two groups also differed. Full-time/white-collar workers sent open letters to management as their core strategy, while more precarious groups went on strike or walked off the job.
6. ... but their struggles are connected
Ultimately, concerns about exploitation of vulnerable populations underlie actions by both groups. In the case of many less privileged tech workers, whether they are blue-collar or contract workers, they happen to be the subject of this exploitation. Movements such as the Fight for 15 have argued that the struggle for living wages, decent working conditions, and basic benefits such as health insurance is an ethical dilemma for our society.
Contractors have faced similar challenges within companies. When Google contract workers in Pittsburgh voted to unionize this year, they drew attention to the inequalities that exist even within white-collar roles.
Failing to include gig workers, such as rideshare workers, delivery workers, or contract workers, as part of the tech worker movement reinforces stereotypes of who counts as an employee and undermines the potential for worker solidarity across the industry.
7. Amazon and Google are the main targets of tech activism
The companies with the greatest number of reported actions from 2006 to 2019 were Amazon and Google. When grouped together, the rideshare companies Uber, Lyft, and Bolt followed, with 20 actions total.
Whereas Amazon and the rideshare companies were mainly targets of actions by less privileged workers, Google and Microsoft were targeted by full-time/white-collar employees.
8. Solidarity among different groups of tech workers is crucial for the movement
It’s a common tactic for bosses to pit workers against each other in order to maintain control. Privileged tech workers must help to dismantle such divisions. Tech workers across the industry must learn to recognize the precariousness of contractors compared with full-time company employees, blue-collar compared with white-collar workers, and undocumented workers and visa holders compared with citizens.
We began to see solidarity among different types of tech workers this year. In July, engineers from Amazon HQ flew out to Shakopee, Minnesota, to support their warehouse co-workers on their Prime Day strike. Earlier in the year, nearly a thousand Google workers signed a letter objecting to the tech company’s treatment of temporary contractors, in what organizers are calling a “historical coalition” between the company’s full-time employees and temps, vendors and contractors.
Unions and activist networks such as Tech Workers Coalition and Silicon Valley Rising have helped lead the charge in bringing some of these groups together. Other actions have simply been the result of individuals looking critically at the working conditions of those employed in the same workspace.
When we expand our definition of who counts as a tech worker, we get a true sense of the scale of this movement and its potential to incite real change – if tech workers can band together.
Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya is a graduate student in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley
JS Tan is a volunteer with the Tech Workers Coalition. He writes about tech and China
