🔗 It’s time to organize. — Ethan Marcotte:

In short, the world’s on fire. So I want to suggest that — now more than ever — you need a union.

A union is many things: it’s an engine of democracy in your workplace; it’s a path to a contract; it’s a community. A union also provides a critical layer of protection and stability. And that’s something you could use right now.

I have repeatedly had the experience over the years of talking to coworkers in countries that are not the US and finding them flabbergasted when I explain what it means to be an “at-will employee.” It’s like those person-on-the-street videos that went around during the Obamacare debates where interviewers couldn’t get people in countries with real healthcare systems to believe that descriptions of how healthcare works were actually true.

Sometime I wonder what it would take for workers in the US tech sector to actually organize. So many of them are so bought into this notion that it’s all a meritocracy and if you just work hard enough, you’ll get to the top. Start taking about how we need to get together and advocate for ourselves collectively and you tend to get a divide-by-zero sort of response.