
Can Silicon Valley workers rein in big tech from within? - SmkyMt
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/09/silicon-valley-tech-workers-labor-activism
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bwestergard
I'm quoted in the article as one of the engineers fired for unionizing and as
an advocate of experimenting with a hiring hall model of organization. Happy
to discuss either here.

~~~
pmoriarty
Did you have any problems getting hired at your next job because you made
waves at your last?

Does the company you're currently working for have a union?

~~~
bwestergard
When I and all of my coworkers were fired, and the office we worked in shut
down, it came as an immense shock. I was terrified I'd never do the work I
loved again, particularly after I became the de facto spokesperson for the
group.

As it happens, I did not have any difficulty finding another job.

I had interviews with several companies within four weeks of being fired
(despite spending a great deal of time cooperating with the NLRB investigation
in addition to job hunting). I was sitting at my desk at a new job less than
eight weeks after being fired.

I worked with a recruiter, who was not particularly interested in why my last
employer had terminated me after hearing that all non-supervisory engineers
had been terminated. I don't know whether the recruiter shopped me around to
employers who decided to pass on me for having supported a union.

When asked by prospective employers why I'd left my last job I replied that
the company had characterized the situation as a "lay off" of all engineers
due to a "change in direction". I was never pressed for more information. One
employer brought up unions in an oblique way, presumably because they'd
googled my name and read coverage of the case. They made me an offer anyway.

My former coworkers, none of whom went public the way I did while looking for
a job, didn't seem to have any problems either. I believe all but one have
found new jobs better than or comparable to their old jobs. No employer could
know who did and did not support the union, so everyone but me had plausible
deniability. To my knowledge none were asked about it.

The company I'm working for now is a fairly typical media company and is not
unionized.

~~~
pmoriarty
Are you going to press for the formation of a union at your new job as you did
on your last?

If not, could you talk about why not?

~~~
bwestergard
No. I don't believe in "salting" (taking jobs with an eye to certifying a
union). I think I want what most devs want: a job where I spend most of my
time writing code to solve interesting problems, to have opportunities to
deepen my understanding of mathematics and computer science, etc.

People have problems at work all the time; they usually try to solve them as
individuals. Sometimes that works, more often it doesn't -- they just come to
expect less out of life.

At Lanetix, collective action was well underway by the time I became involved.
The real catalyst of organization was the firing of an excellent engineer who
had become the de facto spokesperson for grievances in one office (see:
[https://gist.github.com/bwestergard/a5ddc5583d37554cc40a0e2b...](https://gist.github.com/bwestergard/a5ddc5583d37554cc40a0e2b86511371)).
It was only after management's effort to suppress a collective response that I
became involved. I was one of several who advocated for the NLRA route; I
would not have done so in any "hot shop" situation.

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aaroninsf
Not without conspiracy or organization.

Those who say yes when asked to engage in profit-generating yet morally
ambiguous or immoral behaviors will rise and be rewardedm; those who say no
will be marginalized and removed.

This is an essentially inevitable outcome for anything other than a nonprofit
or benefit corp. Witness the decay of Google's moral compass, and more
recently, the outright contempt for ethics at darlings like Uber.

------
atomic77
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

This is why we have governments with the power to enact regulations. I'd like
to think no one still believes in any sort of market fundamentalism that
believes firms will self-regulate against their own financial interest.

