Lots of people asking "Why?". They say so right on their site: There are big changes happening in the technology industry and they are acting pro-actively to ensure the workers have a strong collective voice in the ways the foundation chooses to respond to those changes.
"The Wikimedia Foundation and the broader technology and nonprofit sectors are navigating a period of significant change. From rapid advances in artificial intelligence to evolving organizational priorities and external pressures, and changing patterns of readership and discovery, the decisions being made today will shape our workplace for years to come. Our union members believe this is the right moment to establish a lasting, legally recognized voice in those conversations. Rather than waiting until difficult decisions are made, we are organizing now to help build a stronger Foundation that can meet future challenges through collaboration, transparency, and shared stewardship."
This is the right move. Unionise when things are good enough that labor can take a hit and keep standing, or when they’re so bad that people might actually die. Either way labor has a strong BATNA.
Right now a lost of software work is kinda in the middle; it’s not very secure and labor isn’t confident and doesn’t have a lot of great, easy alternatives, but by and large getting food on the table tomorrow isn’t an open question.
> or when they’re so bad that people might actually die
Care to elaborate? Am I understanding correctly that the implication here is that there is some condition for which a software engineer having a union agreement could prevent that worker from dying?
Yes, certainly: the ability to say “no” to abusive labor conditions without risk of irreversibly losing any source of income while living in a society that treats lack of income as deserving of whatever pains and suffering come with it.
The word “any” is doing a lot of work here—I’m implying a denylist or “social credit score” or other way of persisting punishment against an individual beyond mere job loss.
You’re right that we’re not there right now. We’re in the wide middle and still closer to the “we have lots of bargaining power because we’re in demand” end of the continuum—_directionally_ it does not feel that way, but we don’t have a ton of folks dying of Boolean lung in the code mines. But I’d not rule out the possibility. The range of possible human experiences is vast.
I’m not even sure that’s a useful question. It almost points at “what’s the other end of the continuum so we can discuss points on the axis”, which _is_ useful, but I’m not even convinced that “merely” treating those without income as deserving pain is at an end of a continuum itself. It’s a point upon it; things could be worse yet.
Instead let’s break away from opposites and into pieces. What would be _different_ in a society that doesn’t judge harshly the less fortunate?
I’d suggest that would include ensuring that nobody starves or sleeps on the street for want of work.
Richard Rorty describes liberalism as the idea that cruelty is the worst thing that exists. Cruelty, of course, has just as many forms as suffering.
Universal income protects only basic needs and it does so in part. Even if you have income, you need to have housing, clean water, food that isn't poisened and some form of healthy environment to live a good life: income doesn't guarantee it.
On the other end of the income spectrum is the unlimited amassing of wealth. After some point, wealth turns into power. For example, Musk is able to buy twitter influencing public opinion, and Starlink can make or break the battlefield.
If we are talking only about income, I think we would need both a minimum (universal) income and a maximum (a cap on wealth). If we do not, then we will eventually lose democracy.
>It looks like a healthy extended family where resources are shared towards a common goal of health and liberty.
In the Europe, like several rich western countries, we mostly replaced the extended family with the government welfare state, for better but mostly for worse.
So current young workers are contributing to a failing state ponzi pension system that will leave them in poverty by the time they retire in several decades, and they will also lack the care of the extended family unit that was the norm decades ago thanks to collapsed birth rates. Double whammy.
Unfortunately this does not work at nation scale. We are not insects. Tribes fail at levels over a few hundred and that scale only works because of blood ties. Communism has failed to produce good outcomes every time it's been tried. Even coops aren't competitive with traditional corporations.
What if health and liberty to someone looks like them not providing any net positive to society? What compels someone to work 12 hours a day to share those resources with such a person?
You’re making a point about loafers but non-wage earners are always going to outnumber wage earners, and able bodied loafers are a minute fraction of who we must provide for (the young, the elderly, students, the disabled, etc)
It mostly just feels like basic maths, not really a world model. Productivity is a finite resource. If there's a deficit in productivity, people will necessarily suffer and, in the worst case, die. The problem is world views that suggest giving everyone a free choice that enough people will choose productivity while everyone else chooses leisure. I'd be more apt to believe it if we had evidence of it being a natural outcome.
It doesn't have to be so extreme though. Basic scenario: 20% of everyone's income is taxed and then distributed equally to everyone (no matter what, and without setting any fixed dollar amount), another 10% pays for administrative functions and government stuff except welfare, and the remaining 70% is theirs to do with as they please. What would happen? Would everyone quit their job? I don't think so, because 70% is a lot. Some people with jobs that pay so poorly their 70% is less than everyone's average 20% would quit, but that's good, because those were zombie jobs.
I'd be fine with this so long as people who didn't contribute any taxes couldn't vote. Otherwise you're just signing up for those who choose to work to get exploited by the leisurely.
Are there historical examples of this ever happening in any significant numbers? This idea that people en masse just won't work and live off of the state where opportunities for work are reasonably available seems more like a boogeyman than a real thing. (obviously, if work is not really available, I can see this happening, but I wouldn't describe the people unable to find work as "leisurely" in that case)
Can someone explain why do they need a union when they work for a non-profit? Aren't they mostly volunteers?
From my experience in my youth volunteering at animal shelters and environmental protection groups, you never volunteer for a non-profit for the money or the job stability, but you do it for the mission and the satisfaction of being the change you want to be in the world, even if that means living off ramen and beans and couch surfing. Especially given these are cushy jobs done from the PC via the internet without needing to physically get your hands dirty or break your back in poor working conditions, which a lot of other young well intended and ambitious people in the world would like to do, even for free.
Everything I've been reading in the last few years about wikipedia's management, article moderation decisions, political side-taking, and how they spend their donations has been very fish smelling and off-putting. It's like there's a malicious Hydra in the basement, wearing the Wikipedia name I grew up with as a skin suit, to advance their goals and agendas. Very fishy. But it does feel like this is the inevitable faith of a lot of old and famous non-profits over time, as the gray-beard founding staff leave and get replaced by people who don't share the same values and mission, but have their own agendas and wish to co-opt the established name brand and influence that comes with it to push it. IDK if this unionisation push is for good or for bad since I'm not a fly on the wall at the internal meetings to know the internal drama and gossip, but I do remain skeptical about what's going on at the WMF.
Like maybe the union is well intended today, but will it be the same in 10-20 years with that power? What protection are in place they don't misuse it? For a global repository of knowledge like Wikipedia, I'd much prefer the staff be constantly changing with new ambitious innocent blood, rather than have an entrenched gerontocracy protected by a powerful union, since from my historical knowledge I've never seen that end well long term since long reign and absolute power corrupts.
Nonprofit doesn't mean you don't pay your employees. Nonprofits earn and spend money like any other corporation, including paying permanent fulltime staff. Not everything can be done by volunteers. What they don't do is reward their investors with a cut of earnings above expenses.
Then why should we treat Wikipedia any differently than we treat Meta, OpenAI, Google, Apple etc? When they're just in the business of making money and the "mission" can always just be another facade similar to OpenAI?
"The Wikimedia Foundation and the broader technology and nonprofit sectors are navigating a period of significant change. From rapid advances in artificial intelligence to evolving organizational priorities and external pressures, and changing patterns of readership and discovery, the decisions being made today will shape our workplace for years to come. Our union members believe this is the right moment to establish a lasting, legally recognized voice in those conversations. Rather than waiting until difficult decisions are made, we are organizing now to help build a stronger Foundation that can meet future challenges through collaboration, transparency, and shared stewardship."
https://wikiworkersunited.org/faq/