Circuit Breakers is a gathering for all workers, organizers, and activists in the tech industry to come together and learn, build community, strategize, and recognize our collective power.
New York City | October 17-18, 2026
We consider all workers in the tech sector—from software engineers, to salespeople, to ride-share drivers—as tech workers. This conference is organized by volunteers from across the tech labor movement.
Values
The rank and file workers who organized this gathering aim to create a space where all workers across the tech industry—from office workers, to warehouse workers; from full time workers to contractors—can stand united in these values.
Worker-Led (click to expand)
Workers know how to win. When we put our heads together, no one has a better understanding of how our companies function, including our bosses. We’re the ones who drive these machines, we’re the ones who write the code, and we’re the ones who know every inch of the shop floor. If we want to build leverage that brings management to the bargaining table, our strategy must draw from the wisdom of the rank and file, from us, the workers. This movement must be worker-led to meet the challenges ahead.Courageous (click to expand)
If we want to use our labor power to raise up our communities, workers must be brave. We must reach out to one another to have important and difficult conversations that will move us to action. We must practice working together to challenge the status quo and build resilience that can foster bravery. Workers must realise we have the collective power to change the conditions that shape our lives and win demands that will free us. No one is coming to save us but ourselves.Radical Care (click to expand)
Radical care is necessary for building solidarity that can overcome the arbitrary divisions that undermine our collective power. To forge a strong global movement that reaches across roles, sectors, and borders, we must create transformative spaces of belonging and distributed power. This is how we build a community that is inclusive, compassionate, and places our humanity above the pressures of capital.Program
Circuit Breakers centers rank and file organizing.
The conference will feature workers from across the tech labor movement sharing stories, giving skills trainings, and participating in important debates. Expect our call for talks soon, and sign up to be notified.
Call for Proposals
Circuit Breakers centers rank and file organizing.
We’re encouraging workers from across the tech labor movement to share stories, train skills, and lead important debates. Although we welcome proposals on all subjects related to labor organizing in the tech industry, our organizing committee of rank and file tech workers is particularly interested in these distinct areas:
Labor Organizing Against Imperialism (click to expand)
As capital exhausts existing markets and sources of labor, it enlists the state’s monopoly on violence to capture resources and labor for exploitation. For generations, workers have stood against capital’s tendencies toward genocide, oppression, and expansionist empire. In the past year, we've seen organized labor taking bold stances against Israeli genocide, the militarization of the US border, and the creeping global surveillance state. We want to hear how you have organized and rallied against imperialism!
Has anti-imperialism been a part of your organizing efforts? Some examples:
- Rallying your union to support immigrant workers, and oppose DHS, ICE, NSA and other military contracts
- Rallying your union around anti-genocide and anti-apartheid demands (UAW)
- Refusing direction from bosses to build software to support drone strikes
- Fighting back when the bosses told you to return to the office when you knew ICE was waiting
- Rallying to get coworkers released who were imprisoned and tortured at the border when the bosses did nothing
- Putting out a union statement opposing the tariffs and defending internationalism
- Demonstrating international solidarity and coordination across the tech-supply chain and uplifting platform and data workers from the global south
Tech Workers Taking on Technology: (click to expand)
Technology in the service of capitalism has historically always been wielded against workers’ interests. Labor is the sole source of value and therefore profits, so automation and mechanization actually threaten profitability. Capital responds with layoffs, speedup, and intensification of labor to increase exploitation and buoy the rate of profit. To what extent this takes place depends on the labor movement. The first impulse may be to rage against the machines, but for the long term, labor needs an alternative vision in which progress doesn’t antagonize us. This can start with worker control over the deployment of new technologies--over the products we tech workers produce.
Have you taken on these issues in your organizing work? For Example:
- Mobilizing against layoffs or including contract language preventing or mitigating layoffs
- Including contract language that prevents AI from replacing jobs (SAG-AFTRA)
- Preventing workplace or work device surveillance (Kickstarter)
- Establishing worker control over how AI and automation is deployed (labor, safety, environmental impacts)
- Union control over hiring, apprenticeship programs and retooling (ILA, ILWU)
- Developing connections between tech workers and warehouse/logistics workers
- Opposing speedup & automated/algorithmic supervision
Bold Strategy: (click to expand)
Organizing in the tech industry has changed dramatically over the past few years. To meet the challenges ahead will require bold strategy that can withstand the austerity and labor discipline we’ve experienced in the wake of mass layoffs and the technocrat capture of democracy. If you have learnings to share or a discussion to lead about strategy that will inspire or inform other workers across the tech industry, we highly encourage you to apply to this area of interest. Here are a few examples of the kinds of talks we’re hoping to see for this focus area:
- How to build solidarity and high participation in the face of longer hours and increased atomization
- How our union fought to protect marginalized workers (Alphabet workers global walkout)
- Analyzing membership structures like solidarity unionism or the direct join model
- How to push back against business unionism that undermines labor militancy
- Organizing an action against a Return To Office mandate
- Mobilizing across divisions to expand your bargaining unit and work toward wall-to-wall solidarity (Activision Blizzard, UC IT Union)
- Organizing global worker solidarity across national borders within a singular employer (Wikimedia)
- Exposing Littler Mendelson’s union-busting consulting tactics
If you have a session idea, we encourage you to take 10 minutes to fill out this simple form. We’re very excited to hear what you have to contribute to the tech labor movement and this year’s Circuit Breakers.
FAQ
Where and when is the conference? (click to expand)
Circuit Breakers 2026 will be hosted in New York City. It will be a 2-day event over the weekend of October 17-18. Doors will open at 9:30 am on the 17th, and the conference will end at approximately 6:00 pm on the 18th. The exact location will be provided to attendees upon registration, but expect it to be near Washington Square Park. For further questions, please reach out to conf (at) techworkerscoalition.orgCan I attend this conference remotely? (click to expand)
This conference will be in-person only, both for logistical reasons and to respect the privacy of our attendees and their organizing. We do anticipate holding future virtual events and panels drawing on the topics and speakers of the most attended and best-received workshops.Who is this conference for? (click to expand)
This is a conference for rank-and-file workers in tech who have direct experience organizing, who want to get more involved in organizing, or even have no experience as an organizer. This gathering is not for general observers like journalists or researchers. If you fall into one of these categories, you might be eligible if you have significant ties to tech organizing or the labor movement and consider yourself, broadly speaking, a participant or supporter. If you are unsure, we encourage you to reach out to confirm if this conference is for you.Who is a tech worker? (click to expand)
A tech worker is any worker who works in the tech industry or for a tech company. This includes roles from software engineers to product managers, IT, sales, ride-share drivers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers, to any person who works for a tech company. Workers from all of these roles and more are encouraged to attend Circuit Breakers.Covid Policy (click to expand)
We care about the safety and health of our fellow workers. All attendees will be required to rapid test for Covid within 24 hours of the conference. At registration we will ask to see documentation of your negative test results and all attendees will be expected to mask unless eating or speaking on stage.How do I get in touch? (click to expand)
You can contact the conference organizers at conf (at) techworkerscoalition.orgCircuit Breakers is organized by:
