WORKFORCE

How Workers in Big Tech Went All-Digital on Activism

In recent years, tech workers have united across regions, job titles, and industry sectors to shape the end uses of the tech they create. 

The movement gained steam in 2018 when Google employees protested Project Maven, a Pentagon contract that provided automated imagery analysis for military drones. Google canceled the contract months later, and the movement spread to Microsoft, Amazon, and the entire tech industry. 

Now, tech workers are organizing against facial recognition, workplace monitoring software, and predictive policing algorithms. But, like everything else, organizing looks very different nowadays. 

I spoke with Grace Reckers—who is on staff at the Office and Professional Employees International Union and on the steering committee of the NYC Tech Workers Coalition—about the shift to all-digital action. 

The struggles 

“Zoom fatigue”: Workers used to talk about and plan organizing efforts in person. While virtual organizing meetings retain their sense of purpose, Reckers says, they can feel “more like an extension of the work day.” 

• Sam Kern, an engineer at Google until recently, says adapting was tough. “The unity that we’re seeing now is not because we’re remote, it’s despite us being remote,” she says. 

Security: In-person conversations outside the workplace are generally the most secure way to talk about organizing. Privacy concerns have been a hurdle—digital platforms must be distinct from work platforms while also being accessible. Some committees Reckers works with avoid Google Drive because the contents are so easy to share; plus, she says, “they don’t trust Google.” 

The benefits 

Inclusivity: Now that someone can hop on a Zoom call while taking care of kids or being in a different state or city, says Reckers, campaigns are getting crucial perspectives they missed before. 

Intentionality: A scheduled conversation can stand out more than a casual run-in. And there are still organic moments—Reckers says responding to coworkers’ Instagram Stories about related topics has been effective. 

Scope: Reckers is currently helping tech workers in California and New York organize their workplaces. 

• “We’ve built a lot more solidarity between tech workers who are organizing over the past few months because some of those geographic barriers are broken down,” says Reckers. 

Bottom line: All-digital tech action is a struggle, but, in some ways, it’s made uniting tech workers more possible than ever. With that unity comes more power to shape the technology that’s created and who can use it—and to what end. 

“It’s not only about the immediate workplace conditions, but also about the larger communities that the industry affects,” says Reckers. “It’s having a little more control over the usage of their products that they create—because they’re the ones who built them.” 

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AUTOMATION

Meet Your New Coworker

Andrew Yang told us last year that machines are coming for “the most common jobs in the economy,” from retail to truck driving. A 2019 Brookings report found that in the U.S., better-paid, better-educated workers face the most exposure to automation. 

Coming for, exposure...what does it actually mean? For some, unemployment. But plenty of workers will interact with machines as collaborators, not competition. 

The complementarity is nigh 

Cobots, or robots that can work safely and directly with humans, are becoming a reality: Robotics startup Dexterity says its cobots have helped ship half-a-million units of packaged food, for instance. Even before the pandemic accelerated demand for automation, the global cobot market was projected to approach $1 billion in 2020. 

Knowledge workers will increasingly have to embrace AI-based coworkers, too:

• University of Pennsylvania professor Benjamin Shestakofsky studied a software firm and found that managers would continuously find new ways to combine people + machines rather than put people out of work as algorithms improved. 
• A 2018 HBR survey found that ~70% of knowledge workers say they’ll need reskilling due to the requirement of working with AI. 

Bottom line: Automation poses a real threat, particularly for older and lower-income workers for whom reskilling presents a bigger hurdle. But the idea that “robots will replace us all” is an oversimplification. 

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TIMELINE

Year in Review: A timeline of tech worker action

Here’s a look back at how tech workers have organized over the past 12 months. 

September 2019: 

• Employees of HCL Technologies, a Google contractor, vote to unionize; Employees at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and more participate in a nationwide climate walkout. 

October 2019: 

• Mark Zuckerberg publicly states that Facebook won’t fact-check political ads, spurring an open letter by employees; Amazon warehouse workers stage a walkout for better pay and working conditions.

November 2019: 

• Google terminates four employees known for labor organizing and hires a consulting firm known for union-busting. 

December 2019: 

• Thousands of Google’s contract cafeteria workers unionize. 

February 2020: 

• Kickstarter staff votes to unionize, making headlines as the first well-known tech company to do so. 

March 2020: 

• Amazon warehouse workers walk off the job to protest pandemic working conditions; Amazon tech workers protest in solidarity.

June 2020: 

• Hundreds of Facebook employees organize a virtual “walkout,” protesting against the platform’s handling of President Trump’s posts; Y Combinator alum publishes Medium essay on white supremacy in tech. 

FIVE READS

For the roots of tech organizing: In 1969, a group called Computer People for Peace organized against the Vietnam War and hiring discrimination, as well as for data privacy. Logic Magazine spoke with Joan Greenbaum, professor emerita at CUNY, about the CPP and the early tech labor movement. 

For meeting your new boss: In her 2018 book Uberland—and in op-ed form here—Data & Society senior researcher Alex Rosenblat charted out what it’s like to answer to an algorithm and not a human. While algorithmic management was born in the gig economy, it’s expanding to more traditional workplaces like logistics and retail. 

For COVID + automation: By now you all know that the pandemic has spurred more interest in automation. This Wired piece specifies that “simple-yet-effective automation” will receive much of that attention, largely because this wave of automation is born out of immediate necessity, vs. more futuristic, pie-in-the sky ambitions. 

For automation skeptics: Researcher Aaron Benanav’s two-part essay poses the question, “Is talk of automation overdone?” Benanav concludes that global economic stagnation—not tech advancement—is the true cause of declining employment prospects. And that tech-driven underemployment (versus unemployment) deserves more attention. 

For Amazon’s panopticon: Last Tuesday, reporters revealed that Amazon 1) was hiring people to “track labor organizing threats” and 2) has a program to spy on its Flex drivers in closed Facebook groups. The day before, the Open Markets Institute issued a comprehensive report on the company’s surveillance apparatus.