This one’s for the Tech Workers: Part One
0:40 Updates
- Walton’s updates: Climbing Buachaille Etive Mòr in the rain
- Stephen complains to his boss with unfortunate consequences
3:00 Unions For the Win
- We’re discussing Cory Doctorow’s book For the Win, and it’s implications for trade unions
4:30 This one’s for the tech workers
- This time, we turn the show around, and talk about organising tech workers
- Programmers, digital artisans, tech support workers, network engineers, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your ennui
- Stephen has a background in tech support – no luck getting his boss to recognise a union
8:30 Labor 101
- Some trade union basics for tech workers
- Collective action works – especially if you have strategy
- Even the IMF recognises (pdf) that income inequality was one of the reasons for the financial crisis – people didn’t have enough money to spend
- Collective bargaining drives up wages and improves terms and conditions – true fact!
- We want work to be fairer, more democratic and more cooperative
- Those of us doing all the work are the real wealth creators in society
- We are the economy – we can shut it down, and rebuild it in a way that is fair
11:13 The importance of Key Sectors
- Workers in key sectors have disproportionate power
- Powerful unions in key sectors include the RMT (UK), the ILWU (US) and SATAWU (South Africa)
- Key sectors include transport, energy – and tech workers!
- The workers who maintain the world’s information architecture would be immensely powerful if they organised
- The current model of capitalism is unsustainable
19:30 The tech sector can be as exploitative as the dark Satanic mills
- Blue collar versus white collar is a false dichotomy
- Tech workers often work very long hours, on very insecure contracts
- Tech workers are often on call – no down time
- The industry is deliberately designed this way – and unions can change it
21:00 Building a fairer and more sustainable economy
- The current system is unsustainable – even from a capitalist perspective
- The current model is short termist – intelligent capitalists would support unions because they correct market failure
- Sustainable capitalism is preferable to economic collapse, but we want to build a fairer, more democratic, peer to peer economy
- We think capitalism is broken – the economy is not going to bounce back unless it is fundamentally reconfigured
- Work has become less secure, we are all expected to be infinitely flexible, and to provide added emotional labour for free
- Working people are being made to pay for the economic crisis – globally
Join us next week for Part Two – and remember to read For the Win in the meantime.
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