The argument isn’t that tech workers are oppressed more than any other laborer, the issue is that the balance of power between laborers and capitalists is flawed.
Tech workers can be oppressed even if other laborers are more oppressed; believe this is where the idea of class solidarity originates.
Tech workers are in the same class as all other laborers; not capitalists.
Tech Leaders / Managers are the ones that hold the power; they are not given a free-pass to lead because they pay living wages for Engineers (that speaks to the fact that other careers should be paying better wages, not that tech workers should accept their position and not argue for better treatment).
Expressing for 2.5 years that we’re able to work from anywhere, then immediately saying “well actually come back in for a day… or 2… now come back in everyday” is a misuse of power because the workers have no say in the conversation, the only option is to express your discontent and leave.
Abuse doesn’t have to mean they’re hitting us, but it can mean a misuse of power which is one of the main points of the article.
“If working in the warehouse is really that bad, why don’t the warehouse workers unionize?”
I wouldn’t really say it’s a cloak of victimhood as much as a disillusionment of those that aren’t acknowledging they’re labor is being exploited combined with the fact that attempting to organize can be met with a loss of work.
But warehouse workers did unionize. It was the programmers, who back then could get a new job whenever they wanted, who lacked the foresight and self-discipline to exercise their latent power while it was at its peak.
Some of the warehouses have organized, is there a union that represents all of these workers as a whole against leadership?
Could it be an issue of scale? The Facebook cafeteria workers were able to organize, and that was about 500 workers. Engineers are in the tens of thousands at these big tech companies and without substantial laborer support from the beginning, any potential organizer is taking a huge risk by attempting to organize.
Yes, and some of the Facebook cafeteria workers were getting up before 3 AM to make the commute in to Palo Alto, which meant that they had much more time in the mornings to think about organizing than the unfortunate techies who slept in.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at here, I’m simply trying to understand what has previously stopped tech laborers from organizing. As a relatively new tech laborer, I would like to learn from these mistakes in order to actually organize and get our rights recognized.
Sounds like they had a great need to organize, and they were able to— I’m trying to extract patterns that could be applied to other organizations. Do you have any insights on that, or would you simply like to dunk on the out of touch techies that have it oh-so-good?
Proxmox was a good start but I don’t need it (I think)