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According to Collective Action in Tech, a project that tracks industry organizing efforts, every year since the strike He saw more workers raise their voices. The image of the big tech companies as friendly giants had been shattered. Part of the strike’s legacy, Stapleton says, is “to help people see the gap between how companies present themselves and how they run a business, and what the capitalist machine is and does.”

In 2021, the number of collective actions decreased. But that’s because the nature of these actions has changed, say JS Tan and Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, who helped run the Collective Action in Technology archive.

“Compared to 2018, I think there’s a lot more realism in what it means to organize workers and what comes with that,” says Nedzhvetskaya, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. “One theory for why we’re seeing this base building is that people understand it’s a difficult thing to do individually.”

Last year, instead of writing open letters (which can be a pretty quick process), workers began pushing for unionisation, a notoriously long ordeal. But forming unions – even if they are “solidarity unions” with less legal protection – is an investment in the future. Twelve more tech worker unions were formed in 2021 than in previous years, according to analysis by Collective Action in Tech. Tan, who originally designed the archive, says many of these unions are in smaller outlets where there are fewer barriers to organizing. But workers from larger firms are also taking action.

“If the goal is to hold these big tech companies accountable,” says Tan, a former technology worker at Microsoft who helped organize, “it’s not just one of these groups of workers who can do it. It’s their combined strength.”

The fight against “digital slavery”

Nader Awaad knows where to find free time Uber drivers. He approaches them as they wait for customers in parking lots outside London’s crowded airports. Awaad hands them a brochure and talks about joining a union, patiently hearing them make the same complaints that he’s heard echoing in the industry.

Concert drivers aren’t the white-collar software developers you might think of when you think of a tech worker, but they do make up a large and growing group of tech workers. Over the past year, they’ve started talking more and more loudly about a few key demands: better pay, more security, a way to seek redress if they’re unfairly kicked out of a company’s app. In United Kingdom and South Africa, drivers sued Uber. in the USA, DoorDash drivers went on an unprecedented nationwide strike after wages fell. In Hong Kong and chinese territoryFood delivery workers staged strikes for better wages and security. In CroatiaUber drivers held a press conference and strike, saying their payments were delayed. “We feel like digital slaves,” one union member said.

WIKTOR SZYMANOWICZ/NURPHOTO VIA AP

Awaad started driving for Uber in 2019 after being fired from his previous job as a senior executive. He immediately felt the problems of the industry. “It reminded me of reading Charles Dickens,” she says. “Exploitation level. deprivation level. I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ He realized at the same time that he was not alone. Another driver he met at Heathrow sympathized. He sought a union to join and became a member by April 2019. United Private Hire DriversA branch of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain. He is now the elected president.

Its local membership of nearly 900 motorists reflects these global issues and has helped organize strikes and strikes, but says companies refuse to engage in open dialogue. Awaad says drivers need to be on the road 12 or 14 hours a day to earn enough to live on.

In important point Last February, the UK Supreme Court ruled that drivers are entitled to holidays, a pension and a minimum wage. A few unions say Uber is avoiding these new obligations, but the European Commission has noticed the problem as well. It issued a directive in December to “improve working conditions in platform work,” meaning new rules are to come.

PERMISSION PHOTO

Then there is the problem of algorithmic discrimination. Companies use algorithms to verify that drivers are who they say they are, but facial recognition technology is worse at recognizing non-white faces than white ones. The vast majority of drivers in London are people of color and some are being removed from platforms because of this gap.

With no chance of appeal, the termination was the main reason for a strike that Awaad helped organize in October. About 100 riders gathered in the bustling atmosphere of London. holding a big black flag with “End wrongful terminations, stop ruining lives” written in white. In the background, protesters carried banners with pictures of drivers. “Restore Deborah,” one of them said. “Restore Amadou,” said another.

During that rally, United Private Hire Drivers announced a discrimination complaint based on facial recognition errors. “We expect the court to weigh heavily on Uber because it’s not just happening in our country, it’s happening in other countries as well,” Awaad says.

“I don’t think I realized at first how big the moment was going to be,” Field says. In the afternoon, celebrities were voicing their support.

Drivers who can find work face other dangers. Covid exposure is an ongoing concern. So was the attack—Awaad spoke to the drivers who were attacked and robbed their cars. He plans to stage a protest in front of the UK parliament to demand safety measures and is reaching out to other unions representing drivers, hoping to form a coalition and get companies moving.

“We have two drivers. killed in Nigeria. we have A driver killed in London on February 17. “We are carrying out attacks against drivers every day,” Awaad says. “This is not just about London. This is a global problem.”

catching union thieves

Workers who voted to unionize at Imperfect Foods in September was ready to play union disrupting role. Same thing Happened on HelloFresh in NovemberAnother grocery delivery service in Aurora, Colorado, whose employees reported bullying and intimidation from management. When workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama voted whether to unionize or work in April, the company intervened so intensely that the US The National Labor Relations Board ordered a do-over. (In a separate settlement, the agency said Amazon should allow its workers to organize unions freely.)

Such tactics are spreading, according to Yonatan Miller, a volunteer at the Tech Workers Coalition’s Berlin division. “Germany has a strong tradition of social consensus and social partnership, where companies are neither hostile nor hostile,” Miller says. “This is something you see imported from the US – the industry that crashes these kind of US-style unions.”

ULI KAUFMANN

The Tech Workers Coalition is a grassroots, volunteer-led organization with 21 chapters around the world. Miller got involved in 2019 and still remembers the first meeting attended by around 40 tech workers in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. “Most of us were newcomers, as they say in Germany. And some of us were of Arab or Muslim descent,” he says. But most were from Latin America, Eastern Europe, or elsewhere in Europe.

The idea behind the coalition is to help find a global answer to a global problem, and in the two years of operation of the Berlin division, it has achieved many tangible results. he Gorillas helped organizers on the grocery app, Germany’s first unicorn company fought bitterly against a workers’ council, a union-like organization within a company that negotiated workers’ rights. also helped raise funds For an Amazon warehouse worker in Poland, whom the coalition says is retaliation for his union activity. As HelloFresh workers tried to unionize, the coalition branch in Berlin held a protest outside the company’s headquarters in solidarity. Whenever there is a need or a desire, the coalition steps in to provide training, advice or support, and much of this “happens behind the scenes in a more covert way,” Miller says.

In his eyes, these efforts are bringing the tech industry closer to the standards of other industries. Labor organizing draws inspiration from the activities of teachers and health workers as well as from the Google strike. This inability to mingle with other workers is one reason why the pandemic has been so frustrating – it cut off access to bars and meetings where complaints turned into ideas, and ultimately to actions at a time when the industry was just beginning to recognize the need. for labor organisation. “We won the moral argument,” says Miller, “but we failed to bend it.”

Technology with honesty

The dust of Frances Haugen’s statement last October had yet to settle, even though two former Facebook employees fired her. made an announcement. Sahar Massachi and Jeff Allen honesty institute is a nonprofit that aims to publish independent research and help set standards for integrity professionals working to prevent social platforms from doing harm. Both Massachi and Allen had been pondering the idea for some time. them tried to clear platforms As part of Facebook’s integrity team; Some of Allen’s research was among the documents Haugen leaked. Now they wanted to answer the big questions: What does the study of integrity look like as a discipline? What does it mean to responsibly build an internet platform?