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Comment by pretendgeneer | Hacker News Reader

Funny how now is never the right time. It's always just gone or some time soon.

There was a multi-year effort beginning with Trump's election to organize tech workers, and one of the key arguments was that there was a short window of opportunity in which to act, before some combination of automation and changes to the workforce removed the unique leverage tech workers enjoyed. The message was "now is the right time" for maybe three years, and now that ship has sailed. All we're left with is easy message board cynicism.

Speaking as somebody who was there when Tech Solidarity came through town after the Trump election, I saw you give a presentation that focused more on collecting Democratic party donations and fighting Trump than on any actual labor organization.

You had people drive in hours from out of town (this was deep purple Texas, Houston), and you wasted their time rattling a can for a party that sucks. Worse, you never came back.

For anybody interested in real organizing today that isn't just finding handouts for the failed Democratic Machine, check out Communications Workers of America ( https://cwa-union.org/ ). They'll help you form a chapter and learn how to unionize your shop, even if it's small.

I'm sorry that event was a disappointment. I had a terrific speaker lined up who called to cancel as I was walking to the venue. She was an experienced labor organizer and I would have loved to hear what she had to say. But like you, it turned out I came a long way for nothing.

Really love your writing man, keep up the great work.

Labor action is much more about solidarity then leverage. Yes, in modern labor actions leverage is what most organized workplaces use, however, with such low union membership in North America, you really need to build up a movement of solidarity across non-unionized industries.

Seattle actually has a history of this. In 1919 65,000 workers in Seattle went on a general strike to support shipyard workers. I think there are few better cities across America to build up solidarity. Especially now with Starbucks and other service work getting unionized one shop at a time. Class awareness is increasing, we now have labor heroes such as Christian Smalls. We know what is possible.

There might have been leverage back in 2016, but we didn’t have the same labor class awareness and cross industry solidarity. Your ship might have sailed, but there are other ships, and more workers now organizing and taking as we speak.

My good man, you are responding to an actual union organizer who actually spent the recent boom years doing "now is the right time" work at software companies, at the actual right time.

This is really interesting! What motivated you to start? It’s not like SWE are poorly treated on the scale of all professions. Do you predict some really bad times after the boom times?

If we're taking this opportunity to shout out others

Thank you Shawn - in many ways I owe my career to you!

-HR 33

It's easier to make a case to workers when things aren't so good.

This is particularly significant in software, where we have little experience with the benefits of organizing. It's an uphill fight to convince fellow workers. There have been decades of, now internalized, anti-union sentiment from owners.

The problem is that the right time for something is usually a sacrifice in a time of abundance. So nobody wants to think about such a negative during good times and thus no action is taken.

When things are good, “we don’t need collective action, look how good things are.”

When things are bad, “I can’t afford the risks of collective action, look how bad things are.”

When things are borderline, “We shouldn’t make any important decisions about collective action now, look how tenuous things are.”

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