Essential workers are striking left and right. Workers are quitting en masse. Amazon workers are rising up. President Biden is even singing the praises of collective bargaining. The trend is clear: collective action in the workplace is making a comeback.
Now, the momentum has moved even the most unexpected to action: venture capitalists have started funding a number of tech startups designed to help workers form unions — through apps.
These apps promise to help you do everything from “improve one small issue” at work to “overhaul your workplace,” all from the comfort of your smartphone.
In some ways, this is an encouraging sign. Investors are betting that demand for unions will surge — and there’s potential for educating people who are newer to the labor movement.
Organizing is already happening online
Labor organizing requires having difficult conversations, discovering workers’ collective power, building solidarity in and outside of the workplace, and countering employer resistance. This means banding together to win demands or a fair contract, but also building political power in the long-term.
It’s important to note that unions and worker organizations across the country already use organizing software to aid with many of these tasks — including software like Broadstripes and Action Builder.
Additionally, the fight for pay equity at Apple grew out of discussions on the co-working app, Slack, and it’s one of the latest demonstrations of how technology can help workers discover shared concerns and mobilize to address them.
But the process of uniting into a boss-fighting force cannot be automated, outsourced, or monetized — which are the typical mandates of tech startups.
Can apps replace the personal touch of organizing?
So, are capitalist enterprises the best sources for getting your boss to treat you better? We think you have better options — like joining the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) or a militant union such as United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).
At EWOC, we’ve established an organizing model that leverages technology and 21st century organizing tactics. Our organizers also bring decades of experience winning workplace campaigns and a commitment to helping others do the same. These are qualities that tech startups can’t match, regardless of how well-intentioned their founders might be.
Reimagining union organizing
Profit-making and social justice have never mixed well. When push comes to shove, businesses must prioritize profits. That is particularly true of Silicon Valley startups that are required to post returns for their investors — such as venture capitalists or private equity firms.
One of the latest bids by entrepreneurs to resist profit pressure from their investors is to categorize their firms as so-called “benefit corporations.” Some labor-oriented startups have taken this tack, signaling the good intentions of their creators, while leaving the plans for execution opaque.
But this approach has serious limitations. Look no further than the no-holds-barred (and thankfully failed) union-busting campaign that was waged by Silicon Valley’s most high-profile “public benefit corporation”: Kickstarter.
The Kickstarter workers won their union drive against anti-union management through tried-and-true organizing tactics: hours on the phone with their fellow workers and experienced labor organizers, and careful, collaborative strategizing that no app alone can provide.
The entrepreneurial mindset
Indeed, the most prominent organization that certifies firms with “public benefit” status — B Lab — has decided that union-busting evidently need not violate the “highest standards of verified social … performance.” Firms can bust unions and still retain their “public benefit” certification as long as they state their opposition to unionization on a profile page. They only run the risk of losing their status if they are found to have violated labor law by the National Labor Relations Board and if a council — composed mostly of former corporate executives — decides that they have not “sufficiently remediated” any violations.
B Lab has also allegedly certified tax-dodging firms, for-profit education companies, and corporations profiting from the prison industry. This is not to say that all “benefit corporations” are disingenuous, but many have failed to live up to their social missions.
Why does this happen? Because CEOs, as a rule, do not want to share power with rank-and-file workers — and because businesses are subject to pressure from both shareholders and market competition to prioritize profit over people.
Organizing can’t be automated
Labor organizing is very different from the sort of services that startups typically seek to streamline and monetize.
Workers don’t win union campaigns because they have a frictionless user experience with their organizing software; they win because of the skills, resources, and emotional bonds that they develop together. These allow them to face down intimidation tactics used by employers and make sure that solidarity — not division — wins the day.
Such unity may arise organically in communities where fighting unions already exist. But for the most part, in the United States in 2021, unity requires support, coaching, and training from union organizers with experience, who were themselves supported, coached, and trained by the same.
This is part of why labor organizers warn that there are no shortcuts to winning a union campaign — so, claims about simplifying campaigns largely through technical fixes should be treated with caution.
Organizing perseverance
The result of winning a workplace campaign — and the material benefits that come with it — is extraordinary. You’d also be hard-pressed to find a more personally and politically transformative experience. The intense, personal conversations needed to achieve these wins cannot be automated without undermining their effectiveness.
Some of these labor startups, because of their tech-first orientation, are light on the organizing experience and instincts that can give a big boost to workers. They lack the detailed knowledge of how to prepare workers to respond to union-busting tactics by management, or what those tactics might be in the first place.
The time-intensive training and practice necessary to prepare for employer counter-organizing is inconsistent with the profit-oriented, corner-cutting ethos of Silicon Valley. While startup founders geared towards labor organizing may seek to depart from such a mindset, can we expect their investors to do the same? That is asking a lot.
The reality of late-stage capitalism
Ultimately, organizing is about gaining voice and being antagonistic — something that risks being eclipsed by an app alone. This does not mean workers can’t enjoy their work, or have cordial relationships with their managers and others they disagree with. But it does mean that in a capitalist system, those who live to own have structural incentives to squeeze those who live to work.
Strong, militant worker organizing is incongruent with the logic of a for-profit tech platform, because it curtails the Silicon Valley prerogative to concentrate wealth among fewer and fewer while exploiting the working class.
So, if those investing in labor app start-ups believe their model of worker organizing will build a movement that poses a genuine threat to capital, why would they invest in them at all?
EWOC supports workers, not capitalists
The good news is that other organizations that are not beholden to investors and shareholders are also building platforms that leverage new technologies and organizing methods to help workers unite and win.
That’s what we’re doing here at EWOC.
We are hundreds of volunteer labor organizers and activists with backgrounds in communications, training, data administration, political education, and fundraising. We are supported by staff who are funded exclusively by donations and small grants, and we don’t answer to the authority of investors. We have the backing of militant unions and mass political organizations, including UE and DSA.
The EWOC model
At EWOC, we provide resources and training that workers can use to make their employers “say yes, even when they want to say no,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. said.
We’ve created an innovative distributed digital organizing model that has helped us reach thousands of workers in need, nurture a new generation of worker-leaders, and spread awareness of the value of collective action.
We also provide a training series that has taught hundreds of workers the ins and outs of organizing, all while developing a worker-activist network of mutual support. And we do all this while maintaining a strong track-record of winning worker campaigns.
The model at EWOC will always be worker-first. We invite you to get connected to our resources and learn from our labor organizers about how you can win power and respect for you and your co-workers.
