Tech Workers Need to Keep Organizing
Despite their often-high salaries, tech workers are workers. And like any other kind of worker, to advocate for their interests on the job, they need to get organized.
Google employees walk off the job to protest the company’s handling of sexual misconduct claims, on November 1, 2018, in Mountain View, California.Mason Trinca / Getty
Tens of thousands of Google workers in over forty offices around the world recently walked off the job to protest their employer’s handling of sexual harassment claims. Collectively, they are demanding an end to Google’s culture that has fostered sexual harassment and abuse. Their demands not only include more transparency around harassment incidents but also a commitment to end gender inequities in pay and opportunity, among other issues in the company.
This protest against leadership in tech and others in recent years, signals a realization among tech workers that their interests and values differ vastly from those of their bosses, and that the only way to fight for their demands is to organize.
Today, the fight centers on the rampant sexism within these tech giants. But tech workers can and should fight the oppression and exploitation both within their companies and inflicted by their companies with the technology they build.
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