Immigrant Rights are Labor Rights – Tech Workers and H-1B Visas
In the weeks preceding Trump’s inauguration, the right-wing coalition supporting him entered into a fractious debate over skilled immigrant workers. On one side stood tech...
Blog
Explore our 135 blog posts
A new Logo for the Tech Workers Coalition
Yeah, that’s right. Tech Workers Coalition is undergoing a restyling and the new logo is just the first step. If you participate in our international...
Highlights of the Labor Notes 2023 Tech Organizing Conference
As the Labor Notes 2023 Tech Organizing Conference came to a close, it became clear that the Tech Workers Movement is bigger and healthier than...
No Tech for Apartheid
No Tech for Apartheid: Call to Action On Wednesday, November 8 2023, the New York Times reported that tech workers are facing retaliation and discrimination...
Writers to the Front, AI to the Back
Tomorrow, the Writers Guild of America is calling for an international day of solidarity for their strike. So today, we hear from L.E. Correia, a...
Chatbots Can’t Care Like We Do: Helpline Workers Speak Out on World Eating Disorders Action Day
Today, World Eating Disorders Action Day, we hear from Abbie and fellow workers of Helpline Associates United about their efforts to provide quality care to...
After the #EtsyStrike, Crafting a Co-op Alternative
Today we hear from Valerie, a leather crafter and Etsy seller based in Oregon. After excitement around the 2022 #EtsyStrike evaporated, she and other artisans...
Research is a Job that Benefits Businesses First, Users Second
Research is not neutral. In the device insurance industry, user research gets used to drive profits – or else it gets ignored. Today, Claire talks...
Why Our Union Contract is Stalled at Code for America
Workers are building a union at Code for America, a nonprofit started in 2009 that now calls itself a company with a CEO. And two...
Beware the Hype: ChatGPT Didn't Replace Human Data Annotators
Last week, data annotation workers around the world woke up to news reports claiming that ChatGPT can label text more accurately than the human annotation...
Abolish Palo Alto
Today, Kristen Sheets interviews Malcolm Harris about “Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World.” The book reveals labor struggles and entrenched militarism...
Blowing the Whistle on TikTok Content Moderation
Today, a content moderator completes their careful analysis of how TikTok misleads workers and the public about its overseas data storage and individual user tracking....
Layoffs? Come to Italy, We'll Teach You How to Fight
Today we hear from Laura, an Italian worker at a factory producing coffee machines, and part of a union that won a 100-day battle against...
Who’s Cleaning Twitter?
Today we hear from Twitter’s former cleaners, a group of unionized workers who are wondering who replaced them. Dozens of workers rallied last month at...
It’s Not Science, Just Surveillance (and it's Under Your Desk)
Today we hear a story of swift collective action in the face of bad science. Last month, the Senior Vice Provost for Research at Northeastern...
Junkware is Elder Abuse and a Menace to Society
The wave of tech workforce layoffs and radicalization continues, including thousands of Twitter content moderation workers and more workers last night who talked back to...
Critiquing Surveillance in San Diego with a Flying Photo Lab
Welcome back to our regular newsletter. Today we hear from working artists beck and Katie, who are launching Floating Photo Studios over San Diego’s Hilltop...
A Layoff Guide for Twitter Workers
Tomorrow, Twitter management will reportedly fire thousands of workers. So, today, a collective of Twitter workers are sharing tips on how to prepare. The Worker’s...
Practical Solidarity: Action for Next Week’s Teach-In
Next week is the start of our first intergenerational teach-in on tech, labor, and organizing. We have 32 presenters hosting 13 workshops and roundtables over...
On Oct. 19-21, Join our First Intergenerational Teach-In
What do workers today need to learn from elders to guide future organizing? Workers in tech are and have always been historical actors, but learning...
Workers Against Project Nimbus are Sharing Stories and Organizing Action this Thursday
In our last issue, we spoke out about Project Nimbus and what it means to us. Now, as we kick off a week of action...
Workers Against Project Nimbus Calling to Community
It’s been months since the last operation by Israeli armed forces caught public attention, but today we hear from members of Workers Against Project Nimbus,...
CWA Tech Unions, Then and Now
Karen Estevenin talks about organizing since the early 2000s, including her experiences with WashTech, a CWA-affiliated campaign at Microsoft, Amazon, and other companies. Despite 20...
Your coworker’s abortion story
Today, a worker you might know shares her story of getting an abortion. We also offer a list of resources for abortion funds and mutual...
Opera Singers and Coworkers Begin Chatbot Union Election
Today is the start of elections for LOU (LISA Operators United), the workers behind AppFolio’s award-winning property management chatbot. While many were recruited from opera...
The NY Times Tech Workforce and its Big, Boring Union
With roughly 600 members, the Times Tech Guild is the country’s largest union with collective bargaining rights in or around tech. With all the flash...
Shutterfly Will Remember My Dead Dog Forever
People use photo printing service Shutterfly to memorialize their loved ones. Today, artist and writer Renée Reizman reflects on her dearly departed pet Maude, the...
Thousands of Drivers Unionizing Uber in Bangladesh
In 2019, three youths in Bangladesh murdered an Uber driver. This spurred ‘app-based’ workers to move from protesting to forming unions in multiple cities and...
From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb
Airbnb brands itself as creating community and fostering belonging. Today, former Airbnb software engineer Sahil describes how “Airfam” ignores internal inequities among different workers and...
The HR Origins of Workplace Trauma
Last month, user researcher Alba Villamil co-authored a study on common corporate responses to workplace dysfunction facing design professionals. Many of these “solutions” are just...
An Ethical Google, and Other Fairy Tales
Last Wednesday, researchers Alex Hanna and Dylan Baker quit Google’s Ethical AI team and wrote letters about how Google maintains white supremacy and inequalities amongst...
An invitation to talk with fellow workers
Our goal in this newsletter is mutual aid, tech workers for tech workers. The most valuable, enjoyable part of our process is talking with fellow...
Abolitionist Cybernetics: Groceries from South Bay Mutual Aid
People need groceries. Mutual aid projects need systems. Today, Erik talks about architecting the South Bay Mutual Aid project and volunteer network, which has helped...
Lessons from Poland: Amazon is international, but so are we
Dear readers, death comes fast and slow at Amazon warehouses. Workers suffered a tornado in Illinois, COVID worldwide, and holiday season production exhaustion. Today, Polish...
Demanding Performance Review Transparency for All Workers
Today, life-long STEM nerd and former Amazon drone engineer Pat McGah shares his experience — from requesting transparency in order to make improvements, to discovering...
Fellow Instacart Office Workers, Listen to Shoppers
Today, Kevin O’Connell shares his journey from pizza delivery to IT program manager at Instacart, where he almost didn’t listen to shoppers. And on December...
Solidarity songs across company lines
Last week, Sharon Goen of Gig Workers Collective in Las Vegas told her story and presented five demands to fix on-demand shopping. This week, a...
Five demands to fix on-demand shopping
Gig work doesn’t have to be so bad. Today, Sharon Goen of Gig Workers Collective tells us why she enjoyed shopping for Instacart over Amazon...
A Club is Not a Movement
The free software movement aims to make technology for everyone, but its growth has been impeded by systemic harassment and gatekeeping – problems that don’t...
My crew and I walked off a set
Today we hear from Andy K-D, assistant cameraperson and IATSE member. The authorized IATSE strike, a historical first for “the union behind entertainment” with some...
How are we doing?
We’re focusing on talking with fellow workers and featuring the worker’s perspective. But to do this effectively and with more care, we’d like to know:...
Yes you too can return the corporate gaze
While #TechWontBuildIt helped energize tech worker organizing, tech accountability journalism is being powered by the very companies we seek to abolish. Jack Poulson argues that...
The Lonely Art of Refusal
Tomás S., a project manager at a digital agency, reflects on the global wage disparities in his industry, and shares his story of pressuring his...
Summoning the Ghost in the Machine
Phoenix Nomi reviews Silent Works, an art exhibition which highlights the role of hidden labor in contemporary capitalism, and reflects on their work transcribing audio...
Against Apartheid: Lessons on Solidarity
In the final piece in our series on worker organizing at IBM, we share edited excerpts from an oral history interview with James Leas, an...
When Big Brother Is Your Boss
Today we share excerpts from an oral history interview conducted with Marceline Donaldson, who worked at IBM in the 1970s and experienced firsthand the oppressive...
The System is Rigged
Today we share excerpts from an oral history with Dr. Richard Hudson of the IBM Black Workers Alliance. The interview explores how exposing a rigged...
In Search of the IBM Black Workers Alliance
Today, ann haeyoung introduces an oral history & research project featuring interviews with workers at IBM who organized in the 60s, 70s, and 80s for...
This new pandemic phase: back to the office with disparate solidarity
As the pandemic enters a new phase, some offices are beginning to open up again and employers are pushing for things to return to normal....
Issue 11: Tech Work Under the Pandemic - Materials Engineer
Today we talk with Isabella R., nanomaterials engineer and a Midwesterner who lives in the Seattle area. Until recently, she worked on VR headsets at...
Issue 10: Civis' pro-labor, pro-union claims should apply to workers
Special feature today: the worker’s perspective from 11 data scientists fired while organizing a union. Their employer? It emerged from the 2012 Obama campaign, and...
Issue 9: Tech Work Under the Pandemic - Cleaner and App Co-Owner
Today, TWC volunteer Ana Ulin interviews Marve Romero, a domestic worker and cleaning app Up & Go co-owner. Marve is a Latina that enjoys working...
Issue 8: Tech Work Under the Pandemic - Software Engineer
Today we get to know Zuyi Chen, a Chinese-Canadian software engineer who works in the Chicago area and recently left one job at legal analytics...
Issue 7: Tech Work Under the Pandemic - Wi-Fi Network Engineer
Today we hear from R. Leonard, a Haitian-American network engineer who, as a part of his contracted work, has spent time in hospitals before and...
Issue 6: Tech Work Under the Pandemic
Yesterday, Turker and AI worker Sherry Stanley wrote about pushing Amazon and task requesters for fair pay and recognition. She and other Turkers are now...
Issue 5: Living in the Hidden Realm of AI
Today we have allied perspectives from workers in AI. Sherry Stanley, a Turker who lives in rural West Virginia, talks about worker-led organizing against poor...
Issue 4: Castes of Technology
Workers of the world wide web, you asked for international perspectives. So, in the news this week, we’re talking about caste in California, farmer protests...
Issue 3: Unions or Busting?
New year, new format! We’re focusing more on news and history, and making the worker’s perspective its own feature. In the news, it’s been a...
Issue 2: Tech Workers Stand With Gig Workers Against Prop 22 Going National
Inspired by worker organizing and Tech Workers for Tech Workers, we’re making commitments. In 2020 we saw Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and other “gig” companies spend...
Issue 1: Googlers Are Forming a Union
Happy 2021 and happy Monday! We usually publish every other Friday, but we wanted to share some breaking news today: 250 workers at Google and...
Issue 16: The Worker's Perspective on 2020
For our last issue of 2020, we collected excerpts from the worker’s perspective throughout the year. Together, these quotes paint a picture of the good,...
The Tech Worker Bill of Rights
Last updated 16 Dec 2020 Technology wields immense power. It fosters connection, creativity, and curiosity across the globe. Alongside the human connections fostered through tech,...
Issue 15: Seasons Greetings from your CEO at TECH COMPANY
Dear COMPANY NAME team: Hello employees — or should I say independent contractors?! (More on that shortly.) I’m writing to you from my second mansion...
Issue 14: Telling The Truth About 'Tech For Good'
Hello, world. This week, organizer and engineer Raksha Muthukumar reflects on the myth of so-called Tech For Good initiatives. She challenges herself and all of...
Issue 13: Don't let Uber get away with it
Welcome back. In this issue, former Uber engineer Eddy Hernandez shares his story about the company’s in-house army pushing Prop 22, and how office workers...
Issue 12: White Supremacy in Silicon Valley
In this issue, Becca Lewis, an academic researcher and former tech worker, describes how far-right radicalization is present in tech companies and how it dominates...
Issue 11: Listen: You Are Not Alone
In this issue, Clarissa Redwine, tech worker and organizer, shares her recollections of the successful unionization effort at Kickstarter, and invites us to learn more...
Climate Strike
There’s a climate crisis and tech workers are walking out On September 20th 2019, millions of people will mobilize across the globe in the largest...
Issue 10: Wages of Short-Lived Startups
After eight grueling years stitching together a design career, Vikram Rojo shares how bonds with friends and family, plus ad-hoc tweets, helped him break into...
Issue 9: Call In Sick
This week, we’re calling in sick — and so should you. The Worker’s Perspective By the newsletter collective This newsletter is run by tech workers...
Issue 8: A future worth planting for
Roger Janus, an organizer with TWC Seattle, offers a hopeful perspective on how organizing may seem insignificant and arduous at times, but can achieve wins...
Issue 7: The Tech Companies Building Weapons for War
Research scientist, former Google employee, and TWC Toronto member Jack Poulson writes about his recent report on tech companies’ military and surveillance contracts. The Worker’s...
Issue 6: Beyond the Bread and Butter
Ari Laurel, an organizer with TWC Seattle, reflects on her experience with the Capitol Hill Organized Protest. She connects it to tech workers’ struggles, and...
Issue 5: Leaving the bubble for Texas
R.K., a controls engineer and yet another Californian to leave the Bay Area, talks about quitting his union tech job to do techno-scientific experiments at...
Issue 4: No Justice, no Peace, no Tech for Police
We are in a powerful Black revolution with sudden widespread support. Weeks of protests against racist policing, sparked by the murder of George Floyd at...
Issue 3: An Invitation to Agonize
In this issue, Kim Tran shares her story of being born and raised in the Bay Area, doing diversity consulting for over a decade, and...
Issue 2: Who calls the shots?
Who calls the shots at Tesla Motors? Is it the workers who collectively build all the products that generate the company’s wealth? No, it’s the...
Issue 1: How do we help each other?
Today is May Day, International Workers Day, and #EssentialWorkersDay. As the coronavirus pandemic continues, it becomes increasingly clear how much our economy depends on the...
Issue 56: Special Edition: Tech Workers Are Walking Out on Friday for the Global Climate Strike. Join them.
We don’t normally send you an email beyond our weekly newsletter but given the climate crisis, we figured you wouldn’t mind us sending this call...
Issue 55: Tech Workers Join The Climate Strike
Workers Perspective This interview, “Hey, Jeff Bezos: I work for Amazon – and I’m protesting against your firm’s climate inaction”, with Amazon tech worker, Rebecca...
Issue 54: NoTechForICE Protests Continue. Palantir Doubles Down.
Workers Perspective This week, the CEO of Walmart announced they’d sell less ammunition. This follows multiple mass shootings with some connection to the retailer; most recently,...
Issue 53: The fight is truly on for gig workers in California. Which side are you on?
Since Uber launched in 2009 they’ve gone out of their way to skirt labor protections and treat workers like mere cogs in their all conquering...
Issue 52: The Tech Won't Build It Movement Has Spread to Palantir
The Washington Post on Thursday revealed workers in Palantir are protesting the companies contracts with ICE. We learned that hundreds of workers have signed two...
Issue 51: Amazon is watching, and we're watching Amazon
Workers Perspective I was assigned to sort packages in a tight space between rows of shelves, called “cells.” I had been in the cell for...
Issue 50: TWC Bangalore: Hello and welcome!
Hello all from the newly emerging TWC Bangalore local! Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India, and it was inevitable that the first...
Issue 49: Stop coding state violence
Scholars tell UC Berkeley to cut ties with Palantir Berkeley Law hosted a top privacy and law conference this week. Since 2011 the conference has...
Issue 48: Desconexión mundial
On Wednesday May 8, hundreds of drivers, workers and other demonstrators shut off Uber for hours in several cities around the world. The action was...
Issue 47: I don't want to bring my full self to work
This week our friends curating and publishing the zine Bug Report! released issue 2. The submissions featured in this issue explore that not-quite-right feeling we...
Issue 46: We go up and we go down together
Retaliatory actions against Google walkout organizers have come to light, including demotion and being threatened that their roles would “change dramatically.” It’s outrageous, even though...
Issue 45: Without worker control we are already at the bottom
The bosses take control of our products, pick and choose whom to sell them to using their warped moral compass, and then turn around and...
Issue 44: This can't be the future of work
“Uber’s billion dollar IPO is built off my labor” This week Mostafa Maklad, an Uber driver from Afghanistan, wrote an opinion piece on NBC Think....
Issue 43: They can no longer buy our complicity with company perks
Inequality: it’s a topic we talk about week after week as a rallying cry to organize our industry. Bosses are well aware that inequality exists,...
Issue 42: Drivers, united, will never be defeated!
As fellow workers in the tech industry, we are acutely aware of the exploitative conditions that so-called “contractor” rideshare drivers are exposed to and their...
Issue 41: Optimize what?
This week, Stanford University announced a new Institute for Human-Centered AI, whose stated goal is to foster “a better future for humanity through AI.” The...
Issue 40: 135 ways to stop the boss
News broke on Monday of a second case of Google’s multi-million dollar payout for a perpetrator of sexual harassment. The next day workers across the industry took...
Issue 39: Workers for workers
Workers across the industry have been floored by the recent light shed on the brutal working conditions and severe mental health consequences of the work of...
Issue 38: Stop wage theft for DoorDash drivers
Workers are holding DoorDash accountable for a dishonest tipping policy that shortchanges drivers and puts more money in management’s pockets. In an open letter published...
Issue 37: Microsoft workers challenge "lethal" Hololens
Microsoft workers have demanded that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith, terminate the $480 million Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) contract...
Issue 36: Amazon is over if you want it
NYC breaks up with Amazon on Valentine’s day. When Amazon announced it was taking $3.1 billion NY tax dollars and public land to build its...
Issue 35: Closing the door to this way of life
Waheed Etimad was working full time as an Uber driver to support his spouse and seven children. He migrated here with his family four years...
Issue 34: Data-sucking apps prey on uninformed consumers
We cherish the reminder this week’s App Store drama affords us: the tech bosses will go to any lengths necessary to exploit all humans’ data and...
Issue 33: A network the boss cannot destroy
Knowledge of Google’s exploitation of workers is officially mainstream. Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live featured contract workers struggling to get by in the tech economy....
Issue 32: California Teachers on Strike, Instacart Workers Uniting
Microsoft’s $500 million “pledge” for affordable housing is a thinly veiled pursuit of profit and a push for deregulated development. $475 million of the “contribution” will...
Issue 31: The tech industry is broken
This excerpt and the image that follows are from Bug Report! Issue 1. The tech industry is broken. For a while, it mostly went unnoticed....
Issue 30: Facebook Contingent Workers Beat Back Threats, Lead The Path Forward
Twenty workers subcontracted with Facebook through a UX contracting firm, Filter, submitted this letter on December 6, in an effort to exercise their legal right to negotiate...
Issue 29: Building power from the ground up
In 2016, Silicon Valley tech company cafeterias employed only 65 unionized workers. Two years and countless hours of organizing effort later, 1,400 of Silicon Valley’s cafeteria...
Issue 28: Take the power out of the tower
Two Tech Workers Coalition volunteers recently sat down with the hosts of the Delete Your Account Podcast to talk worker-to-worker solidarity in the tech industry....
Issue 27: Tech workers against imperialism
The latest resistance by Google workers is a penned letter published on Monday opposing Dragonfly. The letter says it clearly: By building a censored search...
Issue 26: Our contracts on our terms
Two Thursdays ago, 20,000 Googlers walked out, demanding sexual harassment policies that center workers, not bosses and profits. Days later, management conceded to two of...
Issue 25: Google Walkout Ripples Across the Industry
When the boss “reaches out” to ask if we want to help build facial recognition for ICE, we say no. When the boss says shipping...
Issue 24: Over 20,000 Google workers fight back!
20,000 Google workers in 50 different cities walked off the job yesterday to protest the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment claims, among many other issues....
Issue 23: We want to live
Unrest among workers at Amazon continues to boil since last week’s open letter protesting the company’s pursuit of the Pentagon project JEDI. The business practice...
Issue 22: Keep working, keep building, keep fighting
A week after Google dropped out of the running for the Pentagon’s project JEDI, Jeff Bezos double-downed on Amazon’s pursuit of the contract to be...
Issue 21: The Global Struggle to Survive
Over the last week, TWC peeps got to spend time with the author of Striking to Survive: Workers’ Resistance to Factory Relocations in China and...
Issue 20: So Too Shall We
On Wednesday, Tech Workers Coalition was recognized by Working Partnerships USA with a Solidarity Champion Award for organizing a movement inside the tech industry to demand...
Issue 19: Worker, protect your health
Over two hundred Telltale Games workers (all but 25 of the company) were laid off this week with no explanation and no severance. One worker...
Issue 18: The workers are on strike
Thousands of workers on strike this week from East London to the Bay Area is filling us with confidence and optimism as we head into...
Issue 17: 100 women walked 100 miles
100 women marched 100 miles to the California capitol in support of Assembly Bill 2079, the Janitor Survivor Empowerment Act, which would put in place greater protections...
Issue 16: Five locals strong on the West Coast
On Labor Day, we celebrated the milestone of five local chapters building worker power on the West Coast: San Francisco, South Bay, Seattle, San Diego,...
Issue 15: We're at the United Nations!
Hey hey! Tableau! Your ICE contract has got to go! Yesterday we were out at Tableau’s Seattle office with @MobToMeltICE and the IWW, demanding that...
Issue 14: Payin mental rent to corporate presidents
Tech bosses subcontract swaths of labor so they can defer responsibility when workers demand more security and less precarity. For the first time in its history,...
Issue 13: One struggle, one fight
After years of working multiple jobs and putting their lives on the line just to make ends meet, Silicon Valley security guards have finally won...
Issue 12: The boss needs you, you don’t need the boss
The boss is starting to fight back. The usual suspects – Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates, TaskRabbit, Square, and Handy – just cosigned a letter addressed...
Issue 11: Let’s not change bosses, let’s change life
This week we celebrate steps forward in our collective workers’ struggle: On Monday, workers from Google, Facebook, and other tech companies joined security guards at...
Issue 10: Microsoft, #CancelTheContract!
Now is the time when the people who are paid to administer injustice stand up to stop it. The actions of activists at Microsoft offices...
Issue 9: Workers are keeping the heat on high for Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft
Money, it turns out, can’t buy you friends. Besieged by employee calls to #CancelTheContract with CBP, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff offered to donate $250,000 to...
Issue 8: For this Prime Day, BOYCOTT AMAZON
It that’s time of year again! If you’re one of the millions of Americans who “celebrate” Amazon Prime Day (July 16-17) with a shopping spree,...
Issue 7: See you at Salesforce on Monday
Our movement is growing stronger by the day! Over 100,000 people have signed petitions calling on the major tech companies to drop their contracts with...
Issue 6: Why Tech Worker Dissent Is Going Viral
The labor of tech industry workers is essential to ICE’s continuing operations. Any tool, program, or database used in ICE’s workflow directly enables the separation...
Issue 5: Let the workplace roil
This was the week of sea change: when images of children torn from parents and families locked in cages activated the already-agitated worker to mobilize against...
Issue 4: Tech Bosses At The Border
Peter Thiel exploiting handouts from the government, Founders Fund pitch decks shared over Chick-fil-A, a Lord of the Rings collector sword, MythBusters’ final fall from...
Issue 3: Tech Workers Coalition Update 6/8
Jacobin Gets The Inside Scoop on How Google Workers Organized to Stop Project Maven Last Friday, Google announced that it will not renew its contract...
Issue 2: When We Organize We Win
Today, we learned that Google will not renew its AI contract with the Department of Defense, after months of employee-led opposition. Over 4,000 Google workers...
Issue 1: Power to the imagination
Fifty years ago this May, over 10 million French workers joined protesting students in the largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an...
Fair Hotels
Bring Fair Hotels to your company Take the pledge and enlist your organization. Read what others have done to bring a FairHotel policy to their...