This repository documents all collective actions from workers in the tech industry.
For the purposes of this project, the tech industry is defined to include any companies whose core business is information technology. We are excluding adjacent industries such as gaming and digital media.
The goal of this archive is to provide data and insights on organizing in the tech industry, to find the connections between different efforts, and to build worker power in tech.
This repository is meant to be a live document. We need your help to ensure its accuracy and completeness! Add new actions by filling out this form.
Journalists. Please include a link to the repository (collectiveaction.tech) in your article if this data has informed your work.
Academics. Please include a citation to the repository if you have used this data in your project. Tan, JS and Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya. (2020). Collective Action In Tech. https://github.com/collective-action/tech
| Last Updated | 12/08/2020 10:21PM |
| Number of documented actions | 292 |
| YYYYMMDD | description | link |
| 2020-08-09 | Several dozen Former Amazon workers held a protest outside of Jeff Bezos' New York City penthouse to call for greater protections for warehouse workers during the pandemic, along with the right to unionize and a national wealth tax on the top 3 percent of earners. The protest was organized by Christian Smalls, a former Amazon employee who was fired after organizing a walkout to protest the company's handling of coronavirus. Since then, Smalls has founded an organizedcalled the Congress of Essential Workers, dedicated to protecting workers during the pandemic. | 🔗 |
| 2020-08-01 | A caravan of protestors demanding increased pay and COVID-19 protections disrupted business at an Amazon Distribution Center in the San Francisco Bay Area. The caravan was organized by Bay Area Amazonians. | 🔗 |
| 2020-07-20 | Employees at Google's Zurich office voted to recognize the Syndicom union as their employee representative. Employees first reached out to Syndicom after management failed to address their concerns over "Project Dragonfly", a search engine that would enable the Chinese government to censor certain results. Employee representatives function as consultants and do not engage in collective bargaining. | 🔗 |
| 2020-07-20 | Github users have launched a campaign to pressure the company to drop its contracts with ICE. Users have changed their profile pictures to the company's mascot, Octocat, with a message reading "Drop ICE". | 🔗 |
| 2020-07-01 | Thousands of delivery workers have engaged in a strike on Wednesday demanding better working conditions in more than 10 Brazilian capitals, as well as in cities in Argentina and Mexico. This was spurred by lack of health benefits in light of the covid-19 pandemic. The workers organized themselves outside the unions with broad popular support as they spread their movement through the internet using the hashtags #BrequeDosApps (brake the apps) and #YoNoReparto (I won’t deliver). Besides the risk of being exposed to the virus, workers report long working hours—often more than 14 hours a day—for increasingly low pay, without health insurance or labor rights. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-23 | Two former Pinterest employees, both Black women, spoke out on Twitter about the racism they experienced in the workplace. One of the employees, Ifeoma Ozoma, said she was not being fairly paid according to company data. She also said she had to come up with a list of pros to defend promoting former slave plantations for wedding venues. After speaking out, a white employee of the company doxxed her, placing her personal contact information online. He was fired soon after. Another former employee, Aerica Shimizu Ban, said her expenses with Black organizations had been repeatedly questioned. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-23 | Hundreds of expert researchers and practitioners across a variety of technical, scientific, and humanistic fields (including statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, law, sociology, history, communication studies and anthropology) sign a letter calling for a forthcoming publication entitled “A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing”, to be rescinded from publication. The letter also urges for such research topics to not be published in the future. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-22 | Over 1, 650 Google employees have signed an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding the company stop selling its technology to police forces across the US. “The past weeks have shown us that addressing racism is not merely an issue of words, but of actions taken to dismantle the actual structures that perpetuate it, ” the letter, written by the employee group Googlers Against Racism, reads. “While we as individuals hold difficult but necessary conversations with our family, friends and peers, we are also incredibly disappointed by our company’s response.” | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-18 | Gig Workers Rising organized an open letter from workers calling for economic justice from their employees, many of whom are Black and Brown, as a means of responding meaningfully to anti-racist protests. The letter calls out companies for releasing statements that "have included various platitudes about your commitment to Racial Justice and the Black community" without promising "real change". Among the demands are: (1) "meaningful representation at work", (2) "benefits to take care of ourselves and our families", (3) "a living wage", (4) and dropping the AB5 ballot measure. To date, the letter has received over 330 signatures. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-15 | Over 90 individuals and organizations affiliated with MIT have signed a letter to the MIT College of Computing Leadership calling for the college to make a public statement condemning the death of George Floyd, developing a plan to address "the legacy of anti-blackness and the relationship between technology and policing", and breaking ties with companies that sell to police departments and ICE. Long-term asks include hiring more Black faculty and recruiting and accepting more Black undergraduate and graduate students. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-12 | Foodora couriers overwhelmingly voted to join the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). 88% of workers who voted supported joining the union. In April 2020, Foodora announced it was leaving the country after the Ontario Labor Board voted to recognize the couriers as company employees. While this makes the vote largely symbolic, it nevertheless makes Foodora's union the first certified gig workers' union in Canada. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-09 | Loggi delivery workers in Brazil went on strike starting June 9th to protest poor working conditions, including lack of protections against coronavirus, and low pay. Protestors also commemorated the death of a fellow worker, Thiago Coelho, who was killed in a motorcycle accident. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-08 | Hundreds of Microsoft employees have signed a letter to the company’s top executives asking for Microsoft to take action in the wake of national protests. The initiative came out of a Facebook group called "Young Microsoft FTEs". The email to the Microsoft executives includes a list of requests, including increased leniency for Microsoft workers in performance reviews due to the coronavirus pandemic and protests; the company formally condemning the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and flashbangs; increasing Microsoft’s employee donation matches; the cancellation of contracts with SPD and other law enforcement agencies; support for defunding the SPD; signing a petition for the resignation of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan; and support for a list of demands from BLM Seattle. Employees volunteered to be CC’d on the email in a show of solidarity, though their inclusion was not intended to show explicit support for every request, according to the email. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-08 | Nine current and former Facebook content moderators posted a message of solidarity with the Black community in the wake of the George Floyd protests and in support of the virtual walkout. The authors noted that they would have attended the walkout "if Facebook would allow it. As outsourced contractors, non-disclosure agreements deter us from speaking openly about what we do and witness for most of our waking hours." The workers also remarked on the lack of protections they receive from their employer. "We would walk out with you — if we could afford it. At the moment, content moderators have no possibility, no network or platform or financial security — especially when we are atomized in pandemic and remotely micromanaged — to stage an effective walkout without risking fines, our income and even our right to stay in the countries where we live and work." | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-06 | Contract workers for Facebook in Austin, Texas, say they have been retaliated against for union organizing, resulting in two workers’ departure in recent weeks. The workers, who help Facebook find and triage internal bugs, are unhappy with their employer, the India-based firm WiPro, and have been organizing in the workplace to pressure both companies for improvements. Recently, two people involved in the organizing campaign who were vocal about these issues departed the company. Both had posted heated messages on an internal message board about the need to improve conditions for the contingent workers and encouraging remaining staff to support a union drive, and say their departures followed retaliation from WiPro. Since January, the Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union has been promoting its Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE). The organization is especially interested in organizing workers who, like the Austin-based contingent Facebook workers, perform work for major tech firms but aren’t directly employed by them. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-06 | Scientists funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative addressed a letter to Mark Zuckerberg critiquing Facebook's role in diffusing inaccurate information, in particular Donald Trump's "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" comment in relation to the George Floyd protests. The authors argued that the letter promotes violence. | 🔗 |
| 2020-06-01 | Facebook employees hosted a virtual walkout, refusing to work for the time of the event, in protest of the company's failure to take a tougher stance on Trump's posts in reaction to the George Floyd protests. Many employees also expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. The New York Times reports that employees have also circulated petitions internally and threatened to resign in response to the event. The previous week Twitter added fact-check and warning labels to two tweets from the president that broke Twitter’s rules around voter suppression and glorification of violence. | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-28 | Jana Jumpp, an Amazon employee in Indiana, has been tracking cases and logged at least 500 cases in 125 Amazon facilities as of late April. Jumpp has a counterpart at Amazon-owned Whole Foods, Katie Doan, who has been collecting cases since April 2. The two women have never spoken, but they describe nearly identical work fielding a torrent of private messages, searching Facebook groups, Reddit, Twitter and news outlets for reports of infections, and meticulously updating Google documents with the numbers. | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-23 | Deliveroo workers went on strike for multiple days in Hong Kong over the company's new payment structure. | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-11 | Around 100 Uber and Lyft drivers are staging a caravan protest at Uber's San Francisco headquarters to demand Uber comply with gig worker protections law AB 5, pay into the state's unemployment insurance fund and drop the ballot initiative it proposed along with Lyft and DoorDash that aims to keep gig workers classified as independent contractors. 'Uber, Lyft and other gig companies are continuing in the same path of abusing and completely taking advantage of workers while putting them at risk,' rideshare driver and organizer with Gig Workers Rising Edan Alva told TechCrunch. This protest comes shortly after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with city attorneys from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, filed a lawsuit asserting Uber and Lyft gain an unfair and unlawful competitive advantage by misclassifying workers as independent contractors. | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-07 | Amazon warehouse workers plan to deliver thousands signed petitions to the residences of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and lead Amazon spokesperson Jay Carney on Thursday, demanding the reinstatement of its recently terminated unlimited paid leave policy. In late April, Amazon announced that it would end its unlimited unpaid leave policy on May 1. The policy, which was introduced in response to COVID-19, allowed workers to call out sick without penalty. As of Wednesday, more than 5,300 workers from 350 locations, including Amazon warehouses, delivery pick-up stations, and Whole Foods stores, had signed onto petitions. The action was organized by a number of labor groups including the Athena coalition. | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-05 | Hundreds of thousands of writers signed to China Literature (subsidiary of Tencent), the country's biggest online publisher, went on an online strike, protesting against exploitative contracts and the company's regular infringement of their intellectual property rights. The strike's organizers were demonstrating against proposed changes to China Literature’s business model and contracts with its writers. Writers stopped publishing new content on the website on the day of the strike. This change would negatively affect writers' income, which primarily comes from subscription fees and tips from their readers. 'Financially speaking, we were already drowning in quicksand before the rumors. Now they are trying to give us a death blow' a China Literature writer | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-05 | Amazon has been sued by workers at two different locations, New York City and Salem, Oregon, for its failure to protect its employees during the coronavirus pandemic. Three Amazon employees from the New York fulfillment center sued the company for failing to follow local public health guidance, claiming the company purposefully miscommunicated with workers. The employees are not seeking compensation, only an order that Amazon comply with guidance. A former employee from Salem alleged that she was fired after taking a medical leave for a coronavirus infection and speaking out publicly about safety issues. | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-01 | Workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Target, and Shipt walked off the job on May 1st (International Workers' Day) to call for better working conditions under the covid-19 pandemic. The Washington Post reports that "a small crowd" outside of an Amazon Staten Island warehouse was made up of Amazon workers and also healthcare professionals who appeared out of solidarity with their cause. The scale of the action is difficult to measure, given its broad geography. Walkouts and protests were reported in Atlanta, New York, and the Bay Area. | 🔗 |
| 2020-05-01 | Foodora couriers announced their intention to join a union of Canadian post workers and held a union drive. If successful, this would make Foodora workers the first app-based employees to unionize in Canada. In April 2020 the company announced its intention to leave the Canadian market and initiated bankruptcy proceedings, making the future of the business and the unionizing effort uncertain. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-30 | Amazon Workers International, speaking on behalf of Amazon workers across the U.S. and Europe, sent an open letter to Jeff Bezos and Stefano Perego, VP of European Fulfillment. The letter called for making covid-era wage increases and breaks permanent and suspending productivity feedback. In addition, AWI demanded more transparency around covid cases at Amazon, improved sick leave, and good faith bargaining with unions. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-26 | Amazon employees went on strike after the company allegedly fired a worker who chose to stay at home with her two children during the pandemic. Workers also protested the company's announcement that it would phase out their new paid-leave policy on May 1st. The company announced that two more employees had tested positive for the virus the night before the protest. Reporting from Vice and a tweet from a local community center suggest that this also served as impetus for the strike. Organizers claimed that more than 50 employees were involved in the strike, while management claimed it was 25. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-24 | Two former Huawei employees are suing the company alleging that it used its local connections to the police to detain employees who posed problems for the company. One of the employees had started a chat group where there was open discussion of Huawei breaking US sanctions with Iran. That same employee claims two other members from the chat group were detained and later released as well. The Financial Times quoted Shenzhen-based labour rights lawyer, Pang Kun, who estimated that there were more than 10 others currently detained at a local jail as a result of company disputes. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-21 | Over 300 Amazon workers across the country signed a pledge to call out of work to protest the company's reaction to the coronavirus pandemic. Participants claim the company continues to fall short in providing personal protective equipment and are calling for a more flexible paid leave policy that would allow them to take care of sick family members. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-20 | Over 300 academics from 26 countries signed a letter calling for contact-tracing apps to respect user privacy and to limit large-scale, centralized surveillance in favor of decentralized systems. The signatories favored the DP-3T protocol and systems like Apple and Google’s cross-platform solution over the PEPP-T system designed by a set of European countries. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-17 | Over the past few days, food delivery workers have carried out strikes in several countries demanding safe working conditions in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and an increase in delivery rates to ensure the workers a livable income. The countries include Brazil, Spain, Argentina, and Ecuador. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-13 | As a gesture of solidarity, tech workers have started tweeting with the hashtags #TechSolidarity, #AmazonStrike, #HuelgaAmazon to indicate support for striking Amazon workers. The Twitter page, @TechSpeaksOut, was reportedly designed to exert public pressure tech corporations. In addition to taking to Twitter, activists have started GoFundMes and mutual aid campaigns to benefit workers. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-10 | Rideshare drivers, partnered with the Mobile Workers Alliance, sent a letter to the Los Angeles City Attorney calling for the city to mandate that Lyft and Uber provide personal protective equipment to their employees, including masks and hand sanitizer, as well as access to handwashing stations in certain locations such as the airport. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-08 | Workers at Amazon’s Eastvale fulfillment center in Riverside County filed complaints with state and county regulators alleging that the company failed to properly shutdown and disinfect facilities after receiving its first reported case of coronavirus. The company also delayed telling employees of third case of coronavirus for over five days, putting employees at risk. The filings were compiled by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center on behalf of LGB3 employees. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-06 | For the second week in a row, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island held a walkout to protest the company's handling of the coronavirus crisis. Organizers state that they have heard of over 25 cases of coronavirus at the facility. In response, workers are calling for an extension of paid time off and improved sanitation in the facility. Last week, the company fired one of the organizers of the previous week's walkout. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-04 | Amazon workers, organized by DCH1 Amazonians United, staged a walkout at a facility in Chicago calling on the company to temporarily close and sanitize the facility following two positive coronavirus tests among employees. Additionally, the workers are calling for the company to cover any health bills accrued by employees and family members that have contracted coronavirus at the facility, plus more time on-the-job to incorporate safety practices such as regular hand sanitizing. This is the fourth such action organized by DCH1 Amazonians in response to the coronavirus outbreak. | 🔗 |
| 2020-04-01 | Amazon's French SUD-Commerce union launched a lawsuit against the company alleging that they had failed to uphold coronavirus safety measures at six different warehouses in the country. French courts ruled in favor of the union. The company was forced to stop its operations for five days, while continuing to pay workers, in order to improve safety. Delivery was also restricted to food, hygiene, and medical products at this time. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-31 | Whole Foods employees went on strike to call for guaranteed pay during sick leave, reinstatement of health insurance for part-time and seasonal employees, coverage of coronavirus testing and treatment, improved sanitation at worksites, and immediate shutdown of any locations where employees test positive. The strike came amid a surge of activism from grocery and delivery workers at several companies. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-31 | Amazon warehouse workers near Detroit staged a demonstration to call for more stringent cleaning practices in their facility and reimbursement for any health bills incurred by employees (and their families) who had contracted coronavirus on the job. Management reports that fewer than 15 employees joined in, while organizers say there were 40 participants. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-30 | Instacart workers, organized by Instacart Shoppers and Gig Workers Collective, went on strike on Monday in protest of lack of protections offered by the company during the coronavirus epidemic. Strikers are calling for the company to provide hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, hazard pay, and easier qualification standards for the 14 days of sick leave currently offered by the company (a policy set to expire on April 8th). Update: Instacart has said it will give all workers a health kit including a reusable cloth mask, hand sanitizer, and a thermometer. The size of the strike has not been reported. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-30 | Amazon workers in Staten Island walked off the job to call for the company to temporarily close and sanitize the facilities following several positive tests for coronavirus among employees. The NY Post reported than more than 100 workers participated in the action. Vice has reported 62. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-22 | Amazonians United, a group of Amazon employee advocates around the US, won paid time off for part-time logistics workers in the midst the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon has also said it will raise pay for warehouse workers and delivery drivers by $2 per hour through April. For several weeks, the Amazonians United group has been calling for improved working conditions and paid time off using petitions and walkouts, including actions by groups in the Sacramento, Chicago, and New York areas. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-19 | A group of 153 Google employees from 11 European offices wrote to the company’s management requesting the establishment of the council. Google’s management agreed to take the first steps toward creating the council and will soon begin negotiating with employees about its scope. (The creation of such works councils-- which aim to give employees the right to be consulted by management about issues such as organizational changes or job cuts -- is required by the European Union if enough of a company’s employees in at least two countries file a written request). The works council is likely to include employee representatives from more than 35 Google offices across Europe, according to the people familiar with the matte | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-19 | Ride-hail drivers in California gathered outside Uber headquarters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego to demand that gig platforms provide immediate relief to their cash-strapped, at-risk workers, including by adhering to California’s new labor law known as AB5. Drivers are calling on California to enforce its new employment law as illness, confusion, and hardship from COVID-19 sweep their industries. They are also calling for the $110 million set aside by Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Postmates, and Instacart for fighting that law to instead be used to give workers some relief. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-19 | As the novel coronavirus spreads around the world, Uber and Lyft drivers in California are asking both companies to do more to protect them. A coalition of drivers released a list of demands, signed by thousands, asking the ride-hailing services to take immediate steps to help ensure their safety. The demands include providing free COVID-19 screenings to all drivers, along with 14 days paid leave for all affected drivers. The drivers are organized with advocacy group Mobile Workers Alliance. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-19 | Food delivery drivers carried out a series of strikes in several major cities across China in protest of lowered wages from the dominant food delivery platform, Meituan Dianping. Workers lined up delivery scooters and bikes displaying signs that read, "stop taking orders.” The work stoppage created tension between delivery drivers and food vendors, sometimes leading to physical confrontation. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-19 | Mijente, an immigrant rights group is calling on ICE to stop hunting down undocumented immigrants amid the coronavirus crisis. In an open letter published on Github, Microsoft workers backed mijente's campaign, calling on tech companies not to share their technologies with ICE. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-18 | French Amazon employees at six warehouses protested and threatened walkouts over lax covid-19 protections, calling for the company to adhere to social distancing, provide personal protective equipment, and initiate employee temperature checks. A spokesperson for Amazon's French CFDT union estimated that between 30-40% of Amazon employees in the country were no longer showing up to work over safety concerns or because of childcare obligations. A French law requires workplaces to keep paying workers who refuse to work over safety concerns. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-18 | At an Amazon warehouse and shipping center at Saran just outside Orleans, a city south of Paris, 250-300 workers staged a strike, gathering outside and calling for its closure. It normally employs some 1,800 full-time staff. They are calling on the online retailer to cease operations or make it easier for employees not wanting to work during the coronavirus outbreak to stay away. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-17 | As the coronavirus continues to spread, Amazon logistics workers circulated a petition calling for the company to put in place more “protective measures,” in which they demanded that the company provide paid sick leave to all its employees, even those who do not have a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, given the scarcity of coronavirus tests. They also requested child-care funds for workers with children, increased hazard pay, an end to penalties for working too slowly, and an immediate closure of any facility where a worker tests positive. “While Amazon has made some limited coronavirus accommodations, it needs a comprehensive plan to ensure the safety of all of its workers and the larger public, including giving workers paid leave and not simply extending our unpaid leave, as was announced recently,” the petition states. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-17 | Over 5000 Amazon employees signed an open letter to Jeff Bezos calling for improved working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic, including paid sick leave regardless of diagnosis, child care, and 1.5x hazard pay. Since then, on March 22nd, the letter has been updated to include a call for transparency on any diagnosed covid-19 cases at the facilities, a halt on the shipping of non-essential items, and medical coverage to part-time employees. On March 27th, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice emailed its constituents (mostly corporate employees) to encourage them to sign the open letter, which purportedly lead to an additional 580 signatures. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-17 | A group of Google employees has sent a memo to company leadership demanding stronger commitments to protect the more vulnerable members of Google’s workforce, primarily its contract workers, during the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The memo notes that some Google contractors, like those in the company’s Pittsburgh office employed by an independent company called HCL Technologies, have been forced to come into the office, even as full-time Google employees were first allowed and then instructed to stay home. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-17 | Pittsburgh's office Google contractors employed by an independent company called HCL Technologies, have been forced to come into the office, even as full-time Google employees were first allowed and then instructed to stay home. Some HCL contractors wore black in a protest at the Pittsburgh office’s cafeteria on Monday. This action is linked to the memo that Googlers sent out on the same day. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-13 | Employees of online software collaboration tool Glitch won their union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The move comes after 90% of the workers indicated their support for joining CWA and authorized CWA to be their bargaining representative. Glitch will join the CWA Local 1101, as part of the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA) initiative, which was launched back in January. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-12 | A group of five baristas who operate the espresso machines at Slack’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco learned on March 6 that they were losing their contracted positions just prior to a decision by the company to move to remote operations to curb the spread of COVID-19. The baristas claim that Slack caught wind of their intention to criticize the company publicly—and in what they claim to be an organizing victory, they learned that their severance would be extended to 90 days. | 🔗 |
| 2020-03-06 | Gig Workers Rising launched a petition calling on the heads of the biggest gig economy platforms to give workers paid sick leave amid the coronavirus outbreak. That petition garnered more than 900 signatures. In the petition, the workers say they are often on the “front lines of exposure,” given that every day they come in contact with various people, including those arriving at airports or heading to the hospital. Without paid sick leave, the gig workers say they are often forced to choose between making ends meet and taking care of their health, and therefore the health of the company's customers. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-29 | Over the past few months, Amazon workers across the country have called on the company to provide part-time employees with paid sick leave. Amazon workers in New York City have started an online petition on coworker.org to advocate for paid time off, paid sick leave, and a process to appeal final warnings. Over 1,200 people have signed the petition. Workers at the Skokie, Illinois facility have written a letter to management and are circulating a petition demanding backdated paid time off. Though many workers log more than 20 hours a week, they are still recognized as part-time employees of the company. These events follow similar actions taken by Amazon workers in Sacramento late in 2019. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-20 | People left their desks at Oracle offices around the world to protest Chairman Larry Ellison’s fundraiser a day earlier for President Donald Trump. The protest, called No Ethics/No Work, involved about 300 employees walking out of their offices or stopping work at remote locations at noon local time and devoting the rest of the day to volunteering or civic engagement. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-18 | Employees at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter voted to unionize. The decision, which was formalized by a vote count at the National Labor Relations Board, came down to a narrow margin, with 46 employees voting in favor of the move and 37 opposing it. The debate over a union — and whether such representation was appropriate for highly paid tech workers — had been a source of tension at the company for many months. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-14 | Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison‘s decision to throw a fundraiser for President Donald Trump has angered Oracle employees, who have set up a Change.org petition demanding he cancel the fundraiser. “As Oracle employees, we must hold our leaders accountable for upholding their ethical responsibilities,” the petition, which anyone can sign, continues. “Ellison’s financial support of Donald Trump endangers the well-being of women, immigrants, communities of color, the environment, LGBTQ and trans communities, disabled people and workers everywhere.” | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-12 | Rideshare workers have signed a petition calling on the LAX (Los Angeles) airport to provide them with better bathrooms. Currently all workers are forced to use six port-a-potties and one external handwashing station located on airport grounds. LAX management responded by saying they will install three additional port-a-potties and two more external handwashing stations. Drivers, organized through the Mobile Workers Alliance, continue to call for more. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-09 | AI researchers and engineers from around the world signed an online open letter calling for the tech industry to refrain from using AI technologies to 'exacerbate the climate crisis'. The letter, authored by Tech Won't Drill It, has been signed by over 100 AI researchers. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-05 | Rideshare workers organized under Rideshare Drivers United filed wage claims with the California Labor Commissioner's Office seeking to be reimbursed for unpaid wages under AB5. AB5 took effect on Jan. 1 in California but is being disputed by rideshare companies who seek to keep drivers classified as contractors as opposed to employees. Under AB5, many drivers would be entitled to higher wages, pay for overtime, and compensation for work-related expenses. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-03 | Members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice submitted comments to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against a new regulation that would prevent smaller shareholders from proposing shareholder resolutions (i.e. proposals to change how a company is run). Under the new rules, shareholders would have to presently hold at least $25,000 worth of shares or have held $2,000 worth of shares continuously for the last three years. The group has argued that this prevents smaller shareholders from voicing their opinion. Included in this group are many recently hired tech employees with small caches of employer stock. While shareholder resolutions are not binding, they have had some success in pushing corporations towards taking a stance on social issues such as gender equity. | 🔗 |
| 2020-02-03 | A group of Instacart employees in the Chicago suburb Skokie voted to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546—a historic win for the grocery delivery platform. The vote was 10-to-4 in favor of the union, according to workers. 'The overwhelming majority of the employees made history by becoming the first Instacart employees to win a certified union election in the United States,' UFCW Local 1546 wrote in a press statement. | 🔗 |
| 2020-01-26 | Amazon Employees for Climate Action published a Medium post with quotations from 364 employees criticizing the company for its continued involvement with the fossil fuel industry. Notably, all quotes included employee name and company title. Some quotes touched on other ethical issues in addition to climate change, such as the company's contracts with ICE. The action violates a company policy that prohibits employees from publicly speaking about the business without prior company approval. The employee group is currently calling for Amazon to go carbon neutral by 2030, to cut ties with fossil fuel companies, and to stop funding politicians and lobbyists who deny climate change. This action is a response to Amazon's previous threats to fire internal critics. | 🔗 |
| 2020-01-13 | Many of the app's 130,000 workers claim to have seen their pay drop by more than 50 percent in 2019 alone, as the company has sought to lower costs and appease its investors. Workers are now calling for a national boycott. They’re asking customers and the general public to tweet under the hashtag #DeleteInstacart on January 19, and to email Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta on January 20, asking him to restore the 10 percent default tip—which workers lost back in 2016. (The default tip sits at five percent.) | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-23 | More than 30 Amazon workers at a Sacramento warehouse walked off the job, demanding they receive paid time off. 36 workers — out of around 100 in total on the shift— left work two hours early after they read a letter to management out loud stating their demands to be granted paid time off (PTO) and meet with management to discuss their concerns, according to a worker at the site. These workers — who say they lift hundreds of packages a day in “back-breaking” labor —currently receive zero PTO days a year. The walkout comes weeks after workers say management has ignored their requests to meet with leaders of a group organizing around the issue. So far, workers have circulated an internal and public petition gaining over 4,000 signatures in total. | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-23 | One-third of the night shift at one of Amazon's Sacramento warehouse walked off the job in the wee hours of December 23. Workers went together on a break to deliver their demands to management, then clocked out. Night-shift workers delivered a petition with 4,015 signatures to management during their 2:30 a.m. break on December 23. After reading out loud their demands for a meeting with management and paid time off, 36 of the 100 night-shift workers clocked out at 2:45 a.m. and walked off the job mid-shift. | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-19 | In an open letter, several engineers, researchers, analysts, and designers working with global companies such as Google and Facebook have condemned the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in India. The letter, issued 'in solidarity with the Indian democracy', was posted through the 'TechAgainstFascism' handle on Medium. It called upon technology leaders to take a stance and publicly denounce the 'fascist acts by the Indian government'. 'We call upon the leaders to use technology as a force for good, to refuse to share user details with the government, refuse to shut off the Internet at the government's whim, provide tools for citizen mobilization, and ensure that content moderation is not skewing pro-government,' it said. | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-13 | A group of Googlers unhappy with the company's expanding 'need to know' restrictions on internal documents have come up with a clever form of protest: A new tool that sends auto alerts to Google's top lawyer every time an employee opens a company document. The deluge of notifications was meant as a protest to what they saw as Walker’s insistence on controlling the minutiae of their professional lives. | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-12 | E-scooter workers in San Francisco at the Ford-owned start-up Spin joined a union on Wednesday—a first in the fledgling industry. Roughly 40 Spin workers—who collect, repair, deploy, and charge Spin’s fleet of more than 500 electric scooters on the streets of San Francisco—are now part of Teamsters Local 665, as first reported by the San Francisco Examiner. The union says workers want to negotiate for better pay, health care, and retirement security in their first contract. | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-10 | Injured former Amazon warehouse workers and labor organizers in Chicago are protesting dangerous work speed and high injury rates today outside one of the company’s brick-and-mortar stores in downtown Chicago. The action coincides with the release of a new report on injury rates in one of the region’s largest and most dangerous warehouses, MDW7, the first in Illinois with automated robots. The report and protest in Chicago coincides with the launch of a national coalition, known as Athena, of three dozen grassroots labor, antitrust, and digital rights organizations—the first unified resistance effort in the United States against the delivery giant. | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-04 | In an open letter published Wednesday on GitHub, software developers representing the open source community joined the call for GitHub to immediately cancel the $200,000 contract with ICE. 'Open source is about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for everyone,' the letter, signed by 167 developers at the time of publication, reads. 'We, the undersigned, cannot see how to reconcile our ethics with GitHub’s continued support of ICE. Moreover, your lack of transparency around the ethical standards you use for conducting business is also concerning to a community that is focused around doing everything out in the open.' | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-03 | Amazon delivery station employees in Sacramento are demanding fair treatment and benefits equal to those of other Amazon workers. By Sunday, more than 200 workers had signed a petition requesting an explanation for why they receive fewer paid days off per year than typical Amazon warehouse workers. The workers, who call themselves Amazonians United Sacramento, say that unlike other Amazon employees, they receive no paid time off. These workers, who sort and prepare packages for final-mile delivery in a station called DSM1, said they were told by Amazon managers that they get less paid time off (PTO) because they are classified by the company as Class Q workers. The Sacramento employees said they were previously unaware of any such classification. | 🔗 |
| 2019-12-03 | Four recently fired Google engineers who were active in organizing within the company say they will push for a federal investigation into the search and advertising giant for unfair labor practices. In a medium post, the four former employees announced their intent to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board for what they allege was retaliation from the company against their roles in organizing workers. In the letter, they write: 'Last week, Google fired us for engaging in protected labor organizing.' Update: Complaint was officially filed with the NLRB. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-29 | Amazon was targeted by a UK-wide protest organised to coincide with Black Friday and Cyber Monday demanding an end to ‘appalling’ working conditions. Trade union GMB co-ordinated the British demonstrations to take place across two of the busiest shopping days of the year. 'Workers are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in ambulances,' GMB national officer Mick Rix said in a statement. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn visited protesters outside an Amazon depot in Sheffield. The union cited figures suggesting there had been more than 600 ambulance call-outs to Amazon warehouses over a three-year period and just as many serious incidents reported to the Health and Safety Executive for various injuries. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-29 | Hundreds of Amazon workers in Germany walked off the job as the online retailer kicked off its 'Black Friday' sales bonanza, escalating a long-simmering battle for better pay and working conditions. The strike called by the powerful Verdi union is set to last until Tuesday morning and will also cover 'Cyber Monday', another extravaganza of online discounts in what is a crucial sales period for Amazon. Verdi members are demanding a collective agreement for a living wage. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-25 | Over a hundred Amazon workers and their supporters gathered outside the facility to protest working conditions that they say only worsen as the e-tailing giant gears up to deliver a rush of packages ahead of Christmas and Hanukkah. 600 workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in New York signed a letter and protested working conditions. Amazon workers face injury rates over three times the industry average, and are asking for increased break time and better transit benefits. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-22 | A group of roughly 200 Googler and other protesters rallied outside of the search giant’s offices in San Francisco on Friday, demanding the company reinstate two colleagues who they say were unjustly punished for workplace organizing at the company — calling it an attack on accountability and transparency in tech. Google has said the employees were placed on administrative leave for violating company policies about accessing sensitive internal documents and monitoring employees’ calendar events. They accuse management of targeting Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland, because of their involvement in worker activism at the company. Rivers helped put together a petition against Google’s work for US immigration enforcement agency Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and Berland was involved with employee protests about hate speech policies on YouTube. Protesters are demanding that Rivers and Berland be reinstated at work immediately. Organizers called their suspension an “attempt to silence workers,” in an email about the rally. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-20 | Approximately 2,300 contract workers employed in food service at Google have voted to unionize under a local chapter of Unite Here. Workers expressed dissatisfaction with their low wages, which start at $35,000 in the Bay Area, and lack of benefits compared to full-time Google employees. Some reported incidents of discrimination and bullying. The workers are officially employed by Compass Group, a third party contractor. The vote followed a two year effort. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-19 | Google employees held a protest in San Francisco days before the company ended its long-held TGIF meetings, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC. Some 20 people organized at Google's office in downtown San Francisco to protest the company placing Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland on sudden and indefinite administrative leave the prior week, the memo states. Authors of the memo, which was circulated internally at Google on Monday, claimed the actions were an act of retaliation against the workers. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-13 | Before Github’s CEO Nat Friedman delivered his keynote address at Github Universe, an annual Github-hosted conference, dozens of tech workers and immigrant rights activists protested outside with a replica of the cages ICE uses to detain migrant families and children. “The demonstration [is in response to] GitHub's contract with ICE and is intended to show support for the GitHub workers who are organizing internally to get the contract cancelled,” said a representative of Tech Workers Coalition, the group organizing the protest. Just before the annual conference, 5 Githubbers left the company, citing Github's involvement with ICE. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-12 | Tech activists, artists, and creators who helped organize Google, Facebook, WeWork, Kickstarter, and more annotated an assemblage of common anti-union statements. The zine's organizer-driven content is an inoculation tool for tech workers that exposes them to union busting rhetoric and arms them with pro union rebuttals. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-08 | WeWork employees have formed a group to campaign for better severance pay, employment conditions and an end to 'deception, exclusion and selfishness at the company's highest levels' following the turmoil of its failed IPO process. The WeWorkers Coalition announced its existence on Friday with a letter to management setting out demands including for sexual assault claims to be 'taken seriously' and for thousands of employees about to lose their jobs to receive 'fair and reasonable separation terms'. 'Thousands of us will be laid off in the upcoming weeks. But we want our time here to have meant something' the group said in its letter. A software engineer at WeWork who is helping to organise the WeWorkers Coalition, said 185 people had signed the letter to management, while at least 600 expressed an interest in joining ahead of the group publicising its launch this week. The coalition wants cleaners and maintenance staff to receive full benefits and fair pay. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-06 | Shutterstock engineers were tasked with the creation of a search blacklist that would wipe from query results images associated with keywords forbidden by the Chinese government, including images of the Hong Kong protests. The company's decision to silently aid China's censorship agenda comes at a time of heightened scrutiny into the relationship between corporate America and President Xi Jinping's authoritarian regime. More than 180 Shutterstock workers to sign a petition against the search blacklist and accuse the company of trading its values for access to the lucrative Chinese market. They write that by 'complying, we are enabling injustices, including the discrimination of the people of Hong Kong, the suppression of Chinese political dissent, and undermining the sovereignty of Taiwanese people.' | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-06 | Uber and Lyft employees protested outside the homes of three company investors to highlight the inequality between them and their workforce in a campaign called 'Deactivate Uber Billionaires'. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that protests occured at 'the San Francisco office of GV, the venture capital arm of Google parent Alphabet that was an early Uber investor; the Atherton mansion of Bill Gurley, an Uber board member and venture capitalist; and the Beverly Hills home of Uber co-founder Garrett Camp'. The protests coincide with the end of Uber's stock lockup period six months after their IPO. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-04 | Over 1000 Google employees have signed a letter calling for their employer to take action on the issues of climate change and immigration. The letter called on Google to commit to zero carbon emissions by 2030, end all contracts with fossil fuel companies and climate change denying or delaying 'think tanks, lobbyists, and politicians', and end all collaboration with organizations or individuals 'enabling the incarceration, surveillance, displacement, or oppression of refugees or frontline communities'. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-03 | Thousands' of Instacart shoppers went on strike from Nov. 3rd to Nov. 5th to protest the company's new tipping policy, which returns a portion of tips to the corporation rather than the workers. Participating shoppers refused to answer requests on the app. Instacart workers are considered contractors currently but this will change on January 1st in the state of California under AB5 legislation. | 🔗 |
| 2019-11-01 | Instacart workers circulated an open letter on Medium prior to a walkout scheduled for Nov. 3rd to Nov. 5th. Employees are protesting the company's history of systematically devaluing labor, using algorithms to reduce pay to employees and changing tipping structures to return profit to the company. Over 200 workers have signed the letter. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-29 | Over 200 employees of the data visualization company Tableau protested their company's contracts with the federal government. They called on their company to drop these contracts in oppositio to the actions of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) throughout the US and at the US-Mexico border. An open letter was also published on Medium. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-28 | More than 250 Facebook employees signed a letter to management protesting the company's decision to keep political ads, including those making false claims, on the social network during the 2020 US Presidential election. The letter was posted on Facebook Workplace, an internal communication service within the company. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-21 | Approximately 40 Google employees in Zurich held a meeting at the office to discuss unions and labor rights with representatives from Syndicom, a Swiss labor union. Employees had invited Syndicom to speak earlier in June but the event was cancelled at the request of management. Management later announced they would be holding a series of talk on labor rights and would allow Syndicom to join. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-04 | Microsoft employees are circulating a letter supporting an effort to get its GitHub subsidiary to cancel a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the latest effort among tech-company staff to influence corporate policy on government work. The letter reflects concerns that Microsoft’s sales to the agency implicate the software maker in the government’s detention of immigrants. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-03 | Staff in Japan of ride-hailing company Uber's food delivery service formed a labor union Thursday to negotiate contract terms and seek improved working conditions. The union, formed by 17 platformers, also plans to request the Japanese unit of the U.S. company to ensure fair treatment among delivery riders and review how distance-based wages are set. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-03 | After GitHub CEO Nat Friedman wrote in an internal letter on Tuesday that the company plans to renew a contract worth $200,000 with ICE to license its GitHub Enterprise Server, GitHub's employees began publicly pressuring their company's leadership to stop working with the immigration agency over human rights concerns. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-03 | Approximately 60 Amazon workers walked out of a delivery center in Eagan, Minnesota to demand increased wages, weight restrictions on boxes, and abolishing a cap on 30 hour workweeks. The strike lasted two and half hours until a manager promised to address concerns the following morning. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-02 | A coalition of students protested Palantir & other ICE-friendly recruitment on the Carnegie Mellon University campus. They disrupted a Palantir recruitment event, held 500 in-person conversations with passing colleagues, & collected 150 promises from fellow students to not work or engage with Palantir. | 🔗 |
| 2019-10-02 | Kickstarter workers have sent a letter to management asking them to voluntarily recognize their union. If management refuses to recognize the union, workers have the option to go to the NLRB to authorize a union election. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-30 | Amazon workers at a delivery center in Sacramento circulated a petition to reinstate two workers believed to have been unfairly fired and to give part-time workers paid time off. Management reinstated the two fired workers but did not acquiese to the request for paid time off. The action led workers to form a new group: Amazonians United Sacramento. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-28 | Deliveroo workers held wildcat strikes in 16 different UK cities in September in response to lowered wages. Strikers have blocked access to delivery-only kitchens that specifically cater to Deliveroo and other services and have publicly picketed. The Independent Workers of Great Britain Couriers and Logistics Branch (IWGB CLB) has been involved in organizing protests and reports that membership has grown 25% in recent months. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-26 | Over 400 Facebook employees protested publicly against the company's treatment of foreign workers on H1B visas days after a Chinese employee committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a company building. Workers at the company have started publicly posting and speaking out about the mistreatment of international workers, who are only allowed to stay in the US if they are sponsored by their employer and thus face greater pressures not to speak out against working conditions. Two separate GoFundMe pages have been started to raise money for a memorial and a protest event (over $6,000) and for Chen's family (over $122,000). Facebook has since fired one of the employees who organized the protest, Yi Yin. Yin also spoke to the press about the suicide after the company instructed him not to speak about the suicide. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-26 | Students at UC Berkeley have led protests and circulated petitions to stop Palantir from attending campus events due to their standing contracts with ICE. 50 students attended a protest and over 700 students and faculty signed a petition to stop an upcoming informational session. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-25 | Contract workers at Google in Pittsburgh have voted to unionize, joining the United Steel Workers Union. News outlets report that this is the first successful unionization of white-collar tech contractors. Workers intend to use their position to bargain for compensation, benefits, and job security comparable to Google employees. Google currently employs more contract workers (135,000) than direct Google employees (115,000) according to the Guardian. A group of Google employees have signed a letter of support and others have published a petition calling for the company to sign a neutrality agreement and abstain from union-busting tactics. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-25 | Students at Brown demonstrated against four companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir, and Ernst & Young) at an on-campus career fair. All four companies have done business with ICE. The students have also started an online petition to protest Brown's connections to these four companies. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-23 | Google employees created an internal document describing cases of discrimination and retaliation by the company. 45 cases were reported. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-19 | Hopkins Coalition Against ICE (HCAI), a student organization, organized three protests over the course of the 2018-19 school year against contracts between Johns Hopkins University Center for Law Enforcement Medicine and ICE (U.S. Dept. of Immigrations Customs and Enforcement). In response, the Center announced that they would not be renewing their contract. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-18 | Mere days before Microsoft workers are set to walk out of their jobs and publicly call on their employer to reduce carbon emissions and sever its ties with fossil fuel companies, the tech giant has announced a major partnership with two of the biggest corporations in the oil industry. Microsoft employees have responded with a fiery statement condemning the partnership and calling on fellow employees to join them in walking out on September 20th. The protest is part of a global general strike on September 20th 2019. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-17 | Google employees have announced they are joining their big tech counterparts at Amazon and Microsoft in walking off the job on Sept. 20 to participate in the global climate strike. Over 2,000 Google workers have signed a pledge supporting climate action at Google. They will be sharing their reasons for signing on their Twitter page. The protest is part of a global general strike on September 20th 2019. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-16 | Over 2000 students from at least two dozen universities have signed a petition calling for universities to cut their ties with Palantir and vowing not to work for the company due to their connections with ICE. The petition was organized by Mijente and has concided with multiple protests on college campuses in recent weeks, coinciding with recruiting season. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-13 | Microsoft employees are using a shared Google spreadsheet to compile data on salary and bonuses. The spreadsheet also makes note of employee level, or rank, within the company in an attempt to encourage greater transparency on compensation. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-12 | Uber drivers filed an injunction to classify workers as employees and to compensate them for overtime pay, paid sick leave and reimbursement for business expenses. On September 17, Lyft drivers filed a similar injunction. Update: New motions have been added to the injunction in March 2020 in light of the coronavirus outbreak. On March 20, 2020, a Massachusetts federal judge ruled that the companies would not be required to classify their drivers as employees. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-09 | Over 1700 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition pledging to walk out over their employer's lack of action on climate change. The demonstration, scheduled to start at 11:30 am Pacific time on September 20, will mark the first time in Amazon’s 25-year history that workers at its Seattle headquarters have walked off the job, though many are taking paid vacation to do so. Most of the workers who have signed on so far work in Seattle, but employees in other offices, including in Europe, have indicated an interest in the event as well. The protest is part of a global general strike on September 20th 2019. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-07 | A group of Facebook employees published an anonymous memo saying the culture at the company has only gotten worse for nonwhite workers. Published on Medium, the letter documents a variety of micro- and full-blown aggressions employees say they have endured over the last year from managers, HR, and their white colleagues. The memo was co-written by 12 current employees, including black, Latinx, and Asian women workers. One program manager describes being told by two white employees to 'clean up after their mess' at breakfast. When the program manager flagged the incident for their supervisor, they were told to 'dress more professionally.' | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-05 | Employees from Instacart, Doordash, and Postmates rallied outside of company headquarters to protest low wages. Doordash is rolling out a new pay model at the end of September which, it claims, will offer better pay for shoppers. | 🔗 |
| 2019-09-04 | In Oslo, hundreds of striking riders are cycling around to gather support for their demand for a collective agreement. The striking riders are organised in what used to be the Norwegian Transport Workers' Union, which is now part of Fellesforbundet. The strike has already had consequences for Foodora. The employees demand higher salaries and compensation for expenses incurred using their own private bikes at work. The striking riders cycle around Oslo every day in what they call Critical Mass, something that demonstrates the strike is ongoing and that it is growing day by day. The strike lasted 5 weeks. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-30 | Google contract workers in Pittsburgh voted to unionize and petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to set up a representation election. Two-thirds of the workers, formally employed by HCL America, were in favor of the action. United Steelworkers helped to organize the union drive through their Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals (PATP) project. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-22 | Gig Workers Rising and Mobile Workers Alliance have organized a protest caravan of rideshare workers to advocate for AB5, a bill in the California State Legislature that would require rideshare companies to recognize their drivers as employees. The caravan plans to drive roughly 600 miles, from Southern California to San Francisco to Sacramento, as part of their action. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-22 | More than 60' Palantir employees have signed a petition to management calling for the company to send profits from ICE contracts to charity. This comes after the company renewed its second contract with ICE on Aug. 19. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-14 | A group of Caviar employees has banded together to request a good faith renegotiation from DoorDash and Square, claiming mistreatment in the job transition process as DoorDash finalizes its plans to acquire Caviar from the payment company. It is unclear how many people this letter represents, though an anonymous Caviar member claims that the group is made up of the 'majority' of non-management employees. (According to Crunchbase, Caviar employs between 100 and 250 people.)t | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-14 | Google employees are demanding an end to the company’s work with agencies like CBP and ICE. Employees are circulating a petition asking the company not to bid on contracts with government agencies that enforce controversial immigration policies such as child detention. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-13 | After the El Paso and Gilroy shootings, A collective of prominent tech leaders that calls itself Build Tech We Trust signed a letter demanding that the tech industry stop the spread of hate and terrorism on digital platforms. 'We are a collective of tech CEOs, activists, changemakers, and workers who believe the time to act to counter the hate and terrorism is now,' stated the letter, which was signed by over 20 notable figures in the tech industry, including Ellen Pao, ReadySet CEO Y-Vonne Hutchinson, and Code2040 CEO Karla Monterroso. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-12 | A group of anonymous Whole Foods workers denounced their parent company Amazon's ties to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an open letter. The letter from Whole Foods workers is the latest push from within Amazon, where workers have been protesting their employer's opaque relationship with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for more than a year. Whole Worker — the protest group of Whole Foods employees — is calling for Amazon to 'cease all business with Palantir and any other company involved in the continued oppression of marginalized groups. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-08 | A group of Amazon employees protested outside the Eagan, Minnesota, warehouse Thursday morning. While past protests have focused on allegedly poor workplace conditions, the Eagan protest was to raise concerns about a lack of parking at the warehouse. This is an issue because these workers' cars can be towed and fined at a cost of hundreds of dollars for being double-parked. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-07 | Dozens of WalMart tech workers rallied in San Bruno to protest gun violence and continued sale of weapons by WalMart which is the largest distributor of guns in the United States. They also had a moment of silence for the victims and families murdered and injured in the violent racist attacks. There are over 1,000 workers at the largest tech center of WalMart in the world. This was the first collective action of WalMart tech workers in the United States. They were also joined by a delegation of Youtube workers in solidarity. Youtube workers have also faced violent attacks at their work location in San Bruno. | 🔗 |
| 2019-08-01 | Foodora couriers in Toronto are preparing to vote on union certification in what could create Canada's first unionized workforce of app-based workers. An application by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers was filed last week with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, months after a campaign was launched that addressed working conditions. The union says couriers intend to negotiate a better compensation model, health and safety protections when workers are injured and recognition of basic rights of workers that aren't recognized by Foodora, which classifies them as independent contractors. Update: In February 2020, the Ontario Labour Relations Board rules that Foodora workers are dependent contractors and have the right to unionize. In April 2020, Foodora announced it was pulling out of the Canadian market. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-26 | YouTubers Union joined with German trade union, IG Metall, to launch the FairTube campaign. The campaign is calling for greater transparency into YouTube's monetization policy, individual responses to queries about videos that have been taken down by the site, creation of an independent mediation board, and formal representation from content creators in the company's decision-making process. In addition, FairTube has argued that YouTube's data collection policy for uploaded videos violates the GDPR. Leadership has given YouTube until Aug. 23rd to respond, threatening legal action if they fail to do so. YouTubers Union is designed to serve as a union for YouTube content creators and has over 20,000 Facebook members as of August 9th, 2019 but it is not clear how many are actively involved in the campaign. It does not require dues from its members. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-26 | GitHub users have created a repository to protest the company's decision to ban Iranians from accessing the site due to US sanctions. The repository combines multiple types of actions, serving as an open letter to the company and collecting known incidences of Iranian users being denied access, in addition to highlighting the contributions of Iranian developers. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-23 | Google settled a class action lawsuit launched by several hundred older workers who claimed they were not hired by the company on the basis of their age. The company paid out $11 million to the plaintiffs. Between 2007 to 2013, they argued, the median age in the tech industry was 41, while the median age at Google was 29. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-19 | Uber and Lyft drivers chanted and cheered outside the Uber headquarters building in San Francisco on Friday as they delivered a letter demanding negotiations for better working conditions. In an open letter, published to coincide with the protest, drivers called on Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer for changes in treatment. Drivers tried to present the letter at the protest, but weren't able to enter Uber's headquarters. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-19 | As Assembly Bill 5 makes its way through the California state legislature, Uber and Lyft drivers are voicing their demands for better pay, basic workplace protections and the right to organize through unions. Drivers chanted and cheered outside the Uber headquarters building in San Francisco as they delivered a letter demanding negotiations for better working conditions. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-16 | Cafeteria workers from Facebook's downtown San Francisco office picketed for higher wages, shorter working days, and improved healthcare coverage. The actions followed months of negotiation with the group's union Unite Here Local 2. The employees, who are contracted by Facebook through Flagship Facility Services, cited the high cost of living in the Bay Area and their need to work multiple jobs as motivations for the protest. Full-time employees from Google and Facebook joined the protest in support. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-16 | Rideshare drivers in Nairobi have gone on strike because of what they describe as low wages and poor working conditions. They are protesting unfair commissions from US-based Uber, Estonian firm Bold (formerly Taxify) and locally owned Little Cab. The strike entered its second week, continuing the protest over pitiable rates for the drivers. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-15 | Amazon employees, many who are Somali-American workers, at a fulfillment center outside Minneapolis are calling on the company to improve safety and benefits on one of the top sales days of the year. 100 fulfillment workers and labor groups outside the cavernous warehouse are protesting the company's working conditions, benefits and corporate culture. The demonstration is planned for the first day of Prime Day, one of Amazon's flagship shopping events that generates billions of dollars in sales for the retail giant. White collar employees from Amazon HQ (of the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice) in Seattle are flying out to support the protesters. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-15 | Amazon employees of DCH1 Amazonians United sign a petition to demand that their site leader meet with them to discuss providing the appropriate measures for days of excessive heat, among other issues. The top 3 are: 1) Prime Pay for Prime Days. 2) Health Insurance. 3) Getting A/C | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-13 | After increasing concerns about accident and death rates for delivery drivers, delivery workers across Mexico rallied under the hashtag #NiUnRepartidorMenos (translation: Not One Deliveryperson More). The workers have demanded better working conditions, and advocate that labor law better considers gig apps. They look to companies for improved insurance coverage, company protection from theft, and look to governments for fairer delivery driver licensing. Workers in the movement have succeeded in meeting with several companies. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-13 | A group of Glovo delivery drivers went on strike for one day, citing the loss of guaranteed hours without proper notice and lower pay rates than comparable cities. They also cited Glovo's failure to fulfill promises on worker conditions, including that the company failed to provide promised protective clothing for cold and rain. They gathered at Plaza Chile in Mendoza, Argentina. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-11 | Amazon employees sent out an internal email calling on Amazon to stop working with the big data company Palantir, which works with federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This email, sent to employee mailing lists within Amazon Web Services, demanded that Palantir be removed from Amazon's cloud for violating its terms of service. It also called on Amazon to take a stand against ICE by making a statement establishing its position against immigration raids, deportations, and camps for migrants at the border. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-11 | Hundreds of protestors, including those from the Tech Workers Coalition, demonstrated outside of the annual Amazon Web Services summit in New York, demanding the tech giant cut ties with government agencies that take part in immigrant deportations. The demonstrators, including Amazon warehouse workers, other tech employees, and immigrants outside the tech world, are calling on Amazon to cease its relationships with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security. | 🔗 |
| 2019-07-10 | Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers from the Bay Area traveled to Sacramento to persuade legislators to vote in favor of Assembly Bill 5. This piece of legislation would require rideshare companies to extend employee benefits to their drivers, who are currently classified as independent contractors. Workers protested outside the Capitol building, spoke at a public comment session, and met with individual legislators to argue for the passing the bill. A separate coalition of drivers was organized to protest the bill on the grounds of maintaining flexible working hours. Uber encouraged drivers to attend an opposition rally via in-app notification, and both Uber and Lyft offered funding to cover certain fees associated with attending the rally. The Senate Labor Committee ultimately voted to pass the bill, sending it to the Senate floor. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-30 | Google workers, under the name “Ban Google From Pride,” protest their employer at Pride Parade amid controversy in the LGBTQ community over the company's harassment policies on YouTube videos. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-26 | Hundreds of workers at the online retailer Wayfair walked out of their jobs yesterday to protest the comapny's sale of $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture to a government contractor that operates a network of shelters for migrant children near the southwestern border. More than 500 employees signed a petition to the CEO calling for him to cease all business with the contractor and establish a code of ethics for their sales. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-26 | About 100 Google employees urged the organizer of this weekend's San Francisco Pride parade to kick the company out of the celebration, escalating pressure on the internet giant to overhaul its handling of hate speech online. The employees wrote a letter to the board of directors of San Francisco Pride, asking that Google be dropped as a sponsor of the parade as well as excluded from having a presence at the event. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-24 | A group of more than 30 Microsoft employees is lobbying coworkers to stop donating to the company's political action committee in an effort to starve the PAC of funds. While Microsoft pitches itself as an inclusive and progressive company — especially during Pride Month, with tweets and donations to LGBTQ+ causes — employees who have donated to the PAC say they have no control over which candidates are being supported, meaning that they have no say when the PAC financially supports bigoted candidates. On July 2019, Microsoft has temporarily halted political donations through its political action committee after facing this backlash from employees. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-19 | Google employees protest at Alphabet's shareholder meeting, joining community activists in demanding change from Google on how it handles sexual harassment in the workplace and its plans to build a censored search engine for China. Around 100 Google employees and community activists also protested as a united group outside Alphabet headquarters during the meeting. Google employees; labor and activist coalition Silicon Valley Rising; SEIU-USWW (a union representing janitorial staff and security officers); and local community groups helped organize the rally outside the meeting. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-15 | Thousands' of Postmates employees activated a Blitz Up app on June 15. The app prevented them from taking any delivery jobs without a 'Blitz bonus' of 1.5x the typical rate. The action was taken to protest pay cuts that went into effect May 2019. Blitz Up was created by the Pay Up Campaign, a group of Instacart workers that organized to protest pay cuts in January 2019. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-13 | Food delivery staff working in Japan for ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc. said Wednesday they plan to form a labor union in a bid to improve what they see as disadvantageous treatment for being classified as independent contractors rather than employees. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-12 | Workers for workers, a group of Facebook employees who organize to support the company's contract workers, started a gofundme campaign to materially support 9 contingent workers who were fired for violating non-existant company policy. Workers for Workers is drawing on its network of mostly tech workers to provide support for the 9 contingent workers who were suddenly let go. The campaign will support these folks in their hour of greatest need, aiming to raise $40,000 to cover their basic living expenses for the next two months as they seek to clear their name within Facebook and find a new job on short notice. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-07 | Bikes Make Life Better (BMLB) contract staff working at Facebook started organizing with the Transport Workers Union, seeking to improve their pay and their safety. The union claims BMLB management has responded with intimidation tactics, including holding mandatory anti-union meetings in which they tell workers that they can’t talk about organizing at work, and if they become unionized, they could lose their contract with Facebook and therefore their jobs. | 🔗 |
| 2019-06-06 | Students for the Liberation of All People (SLAP), a student organization at Stanford, places a banner across the street from Palantir's entrance reading “OUR SOFTWARE IS SO POWERFUL IT SEPARATES FAMILIES.” in protest of the company's involvement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-27 | Spanish on-demand delivery startup Glovo is facing angry protests from couriers on its platform following the death of a 22-year-old rider in Barcelona where the business is headquartered. The victim was a Nepalese national called Pujan Koirala, who had been substituting for a registered Glovo courier at the time he was struck and killed by a garbage truck. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-22 | More than 50 Amazon employees from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice attended the shareholder meeting, where Emily Cunningham delivered an impassioned speech to shareholders urging them to support the resolution for Amazon to adopt a strong climate plan. Jeff Bezos did not come on stage when asked by Cunningham to make an appearance. Shareholders voted no. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-11 | Tech workers organized by the Tech Workers Coalition are protesting the Palantir's contract with ICE on the company's GitHub projects. The plan calls for organized waves of digital protesters to post a prepared message to their GitHub boards. The protest appeals to workers to consider their role, even if indirectly, in Palantir’s work with ICE. It also encourages people to add their own personal sentiments. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-09 | Staff at US-owned tech giant Oracle's China Development Centre in Beijing have staged protests after the company fired 900 staff from its China team, making up 60 per cent of its research and development effort there. Employees blamed tensions between the US and China for the cuts which came in the same week as the US announced additional tariffs on Chinese goods. An employee referred to the Oracle co-founder's interview with Fox Business last October, in which Larry Ellison said that 'we [the US] have a serious competition going with China, I’m on Team USA', and 'if we let China produce more engineers than we do, if we let China's technology companies beat our technology companies, it won't be long that our military is behind technologically also'. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-08 | Google employees publish an open letter demanding that Alphabet CEO Larry Page 'immediately and publicly address the Walkout’s demands, and recommit Google to meeting them.' The list of demands also asks for the company to allow Meredith to continue her work, fully funded, as before and to allow Claire to change teams without further retaliation. The letter calls out the broken nature of the HR department at Google, and demands for an open and transparent investigation on the department. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-08 | But for the past seven months, roughly a dozen moderators in the United States have been spearheading a quiet campaign inside the social media giant to air their grievances about unsatisfactory working conditions and their status as second-class citizens. The contractors, who have not previously spoken publicly about their efforts, are using their access to Facebook Workplace, the social network’s internal communication system, to wage their battle. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-08 | Three Muslim Somali Workers at Amazon File Federal Discrimination Complaint, accusing the company of creating a hostile environment for Muslim workers and of retaliating against them for protesting their work conditions. These are the same workers who in December of 2018 protested against Amazon. | 🔗 |
| 2019-05-01 | Google workers stage a sit-in on May Day, following allegations of retaliation from the company against employees who participated in walkouts last year. 'Googlers from around the world gathered at 11am local time to sit together and show retaliation is #NotOkGoogle. The stories we've been collecting will be shared, demands will be read, and all will be in solidarity with those withstanding this chilling practice. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-26 | Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton held a town hall for Google workers to discuss the retaliation they have faced from management for engaging in organizing, and to share more than a dozen other stories of retaliation they have gathered. The meeting was held in New York but live-streamed to Google offices elsewhere. This action involved hundreds of workers. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-25 | A GitHub user called on those who condemn 996 to respond to Jack Ma's endorsement of the widely criticized work schedule by sending an official copy of China's labor law on May 4 to the Alibaba headquarters. Ma, founder of Alibaba and the richest man in China, dismissed outcry on social media over the grueling working hours in China's tech industry in a blog post on April 12. 'To be able to work 996 is a huge blessing,' he said. The GitHub post estimates 1,000 participants will participate. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-22 | Microsoft and GitHub workers have published an open letter of solidarity with the 996 movement on GitHub at https://github.com/MSWorkers/support.996.ICU, and have called on Microsoft to resist all pressure from the Chinese government to block or censor the 996 repo. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-19 | Deliveroo riders took to Nottingham city centre again to protest for improved working and pay conditions. Protesters are growing frustrated with a 'lack of communication' and an 'unwillingness to have their demands listened to' by the food delivery company. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-17 | Instagram memers have had enough. They generate the engagement that helps keep Instagram growing—but, they argue, the multibillion-dollar platform doesn't pay them for their work, or give them any control. So they're fighting back. And before you write off IG Meme Union Local 69-420 as a joke, the organizers of the collective would like you to know that they are very serious. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-10 | The company's corporate employees signed their names to a letter published on Wednesday that urged Jeff Bezos to create a comprehensive climate-change plan for the company. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-04 | A group of Microsoft employees appeared at an employee meeting with CEO Satya Nadella Thursday to protest the companies's treatment of women. It's not clear how many were part of the protest, but some female and male employees at the event wore all white, inspired by the congresswomen who wore suffragette white to the State of the Union in February. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-02 | More than 900 Google workers have signed a letter objecting to the tech giant's treatment of temporary contractors, in what organizers are calling a 'historical coalition' between Google's full-time employees (FTEs) and temps, vendors and contractors (TVCs). | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-01 | A group of Google employees have called for the removal of a rightwing thinktank leader from the companies's new artificial intelligence council, citing her anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant record. Academic, civil society, and industry supporters have also signed the petition in mass. | 🔗 |
| 2019-04-01 | Recently fired NPM employees claim they were punished for trying to form a union. Four complaints have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging labor law violations by management. | 🔗 |
| 2019-03-28 | A campaign against long working hours by professionals in China's technology sector has become one of the fastest growing Github repository in Github's history. The 'anti-996' campaign opposes employees working shifts of 9am-9pm, six days a week, which are commonly required by the country's tech giants. | 🔗 |
| 2019-03-26 | Researchers are calling on Amazon to stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement. This letter follows similar calls by Amazon workers and civil rights organizations. 'We call on Amazon to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement as legislation and safeguards to prevent misuse are not in place. | 🔗 |
| 2019-03-25 | Uber and Lyft drivers in Los Angeles are refusing to pick up customers today — part of a one-day strike to protest Uber's recent decision to slash pay rates for drivers in the area. | 🔗 |
| 2019-03-19 | Employees at Brooklyn's crowdfunding giant Kickstarter are forming a labor union called Kickstarter United, which will aim to secure more rights for the companies's workers. If recognized by the companies, Kickstarter would become the first major tech companies in the US to have union representation. | 🔗 |
| 2019-03-06 | At least 16 Mexican app delivery drivers met to form the Sindicato Independiente de Repartidores en Aplicaciones (SIRA APPS, rough translation: Independent Union of App Deliverypeople). The union seeks legal recognition, and demands worker accident insurance, worker-led onboarding for new delivery drivers, and assistance with social benefits registration. | 🔗 |
| 2019-03-04 | A group of employees at Amazon have called for the company to provide a backup daycare benefit. The group collected accounts of employees who have been negatively impacted by a lack of daycare to present to senior managers. They have also called for management to collect more data on child care among employees. | 🔗 |
| 2019-02-27 | Ten Stanford students with a group called Students for the Liberation of All People (SLAP) protested a guest lecture by Salesforce executive Richard Socher. The students, who held signs — 'Salesforcing families apart,' 'Richard are you getting rich from deportation?' and 'Salesfart' — oppose the company’s contract with Customs and Borders Protection (CBP). | 🔗 |
| 2019-02-22 | Microsoft employees circulated a letter among the companies' over 130,000-person staff demanding that executives cancel a $479 million contract with the US Army, IVAS, that will provide weapons technology to the U.S. Military to 'increase lethality' to army soldiers. 'We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used. | 🔗 |
| 2019-02-18 | Food delivery workers in at least five cities across China have staged a series of strikes protesting arbitrary reductions in pay rates introduced after the Lunar New Year Holiday. Workers for both major food delivery platforms, Meituan and Ele.me, stopped taking orders starting in February. | 🔗 |
| 2019-02-01 | Deliveroo riders took to Nottingham's Speakers' Corner to strike in a pay dispute. Riders were striking over the fees paid for long and short distance deliveries in the Nottingham area. Riders receive no pension, holiday or sickness pay, and must cover their own equipment costs and expenses and pay national insurance and tax on their earnings. | 🔗 |
| 2019-01-18 | Attorneys seek to represent more than 4,200 women in a lawsuit against Oracle that alleged that female employees were paid on average $13,000 less per year than men doing similar work. An analysis of payroll data found disparities with an 'extraordinarily high degree of statistical significance', the complaint said. Women made 3.8% less in base salaries on average than men in the same job categories, 13.2% less in bonuses, and 33.1% less in stock value, it alleges. | 🔗 |
| 2019-01-17 | 150 Instacart workers have started a petition to protest changes in how they are paid. The petition urges the company to change this policy. It also encourages Instacart users to pay 'shoppers' the minimum $0.22 tip through the app and to pay the remainder of the tip in cash to ensure the tip amount primarily goes to workers. | 🔗 |
| 2018-12-16 | Hundreds of temporary workers for FoxConn rallied on the streets on Zhengzhou to protest unpaid signing bonuses. Protests continued for two nights before being broken up by police. | 🔗 |
| 2018-12-14 | Amid chants of 'Hear our voice,' a group of about 100 Somali-American workers and their supporters marched to the entrance of Amazon's Shakopee fulfillment center Friday evening to protest unfair working conditions. | 🔗 |
| 2018-12-06 | 20 subcontractors working at Facebook Reality Labs signed a letter to their contracting firm, Filter Digital, seeking better employment terms. The letter addressed inequities between the Filter employees and other employees at the Facebook facility, including workers employed by other contractors. Ex. Facebook closes its office for 11 holidays per year, according to the letter, but Filter only observes five of those holidays. Since Facebook's offices are closed on those days, preventing the Filter employees from working, they are forced to use six out of their 10 days of paid time off to cover the other holidays – or go without pay. A Facebook FTE shared a copy of the letter on Workplace and 'got a lot of positive reception from full time employees and other contingent workers | 🔗 |
| 2018-12-06 | For Uber drivers, the only way to go after the company for alleged state and federal employment law violations was to file an independent arbitration claim. Amazingly, thousands of Uber drivers did just that. 12,501 Uber drivers took the company at its word and filed arbitration claims in California. Under the terms of the contract that Uber crammed down these drivers' throats, it must now pay $1,500 per driver to JAMS, the arbitration service it uses -- a total of $18.7m. | 🔗 |
| 2018-12-04 | After a multiyear campaign by app-based drivers, some of whom were organized under the Independent Driver's Guild, New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission passed a new law setting minimum wage at $17.22 per hour in the city. | 🔗 |
| 2018-11-27 | Google employees have signed an open letter published Tuesday on Medium demanding that the companies cease work on Project Dragonfly, which is aimed at creating a search engine that the Chinese government would be able to control to censor certain results and surveil users. 'International human rights organizations and investigative reporters have also sounded the alarm, emphasizing serious human rights concerns and repeatedly calling on Google to cancel the project,' the letter reads in part. 'So far, our leadership's response has been unsatisfactory. | 🔗 |
| 2018-11-23 | A group of Instacart delivery workers is waging an ongoing 'soft strike' against the companies to demand better pay this Thanksgiving weekend for the third year in a row. The workers, who are independent contractors, say a recent change to the grocery delivery platform's pay structure was an effective pay cut that’s threatening their livelihoods. As a result, they’re refusing to deliver extra-heavy items, drive more than eight miles per order, or accept time-consuming, low-paying jobs. A group of delivery workers wrote a letter sent to Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta. | 🔗 |
| 2018-11-23 | Thousands of Amazon staff members across Europe protest on Black Friday over the way the companies treats its warehouse workers. As shoppers in the U.S.A. log in to Amazon to find Black Friday deals, Amazon workers in the UK, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany are striking to protest working conditions in the company’s warehouses. | 🔗 |
| 2018-11-20 | Blue Apron employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the companies, alleging that they weren't paid overtime, or for meal breaks, among other labor law violations. They are seeking back pay for missed wages and a trial by jury. Blue Apron employs thousands of low-wage workers in food processing plants in New Jersey, Texas, and California, where this suit was filed. An employee alleges that Blue Apron routinely forced hourly employees to clock out before their meal break, effectively cheating them out of thirty minutes of pay per shift, a practice known in the world of labor law as “time shaving.” | 🔗 |
| 2018-11-01 | Google employees and contractors walked out of the companies's offices around the world, one week after the New York Times reported that Google had protected three executives accused of sexual misconduct. | 🔗 |
| 2018-10-24 | Hundreds of regular Didi drivers in Xiamen went on strike in protest against the company's advantageous policy towards drivers who have not yet formally registered. Drivers said their daily incomes had fallen to around 200-300 yuan per day, about the same as regular taxi drivers in the city, and that they were now struggling just to get by. After police arrived at the site of the protest and dispersed the crowd, the workers elected their own representatives to hold talks with the company, and vowed to continue with their protests until the situation improved. | 🔗 |
| 2018-10-12 | An open letter signed by 'employees of Microsoft' asks the cloud giant to abstain from bidding on the military's massive JEDI cloud computing contract for ethical reasons involving the application of artificial intelligence. | 🔗 |
| 2018-10-09 | Hundreds of Uber drivers are expected to switch off their apps from 1pm, making themselves unavailable for work, union organisers said. Protests are also being held outside the ride-hailing app's offices in London, Nottingham and Birmingham. | 🔗 |
| 2018-10-04 | UberEats riders and a small number of workers from JD Wetherspoon, McDonald's and TGI Fridays have been staging walkouts in a pay dispute. Protests were being held in several UK cities, along with a rally in London. | 🔗 |
| 2018-08-23 | Members of the union that represents the folks behind the wheels of corporate shuttles stood and sat in front of those buses in the Castro district, demanding a secure pension for high-tech shuttle drivers. About 40 Teamsters blocked tech buses in a surprise protest. The drivers were from WeDriveU and Loop/Hallcon and transport employees for high-tech companies including Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Electronic Arts, Lam and Facebook. | 🔗 |
| 2018-08-01 | Danish gig workers from an online cleaning services platform Hilfr.dk signed a collective agreement that guarantees them benefits including holiday, sick leave, pension contributions, and higher pay once they reach a certain number of hours worked. Danish trade union 3F was a technical advisor on the agreement. As part of the agreement, Hilfr employees can automatically become members of the union once they have worked 100 hours on the platform. The agreement is preliminary and lasts one year. | 🔗 |
| 2018-07-31 | Dozens of protesters gathered outside the data analysis companies Palantir in Palo Alto, California, on Tuesday to present Palantir's employees and CEO Alex Karp with a letter asking for an end to the companies' contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). | 🔗 |
| 2018-07-24 | A group of Samsung factory employees in South Korea organized to call for safer working conditions and medical compensation from the company. After three years of protests, Samsung has agreed to accept the compensation terms and issue an apology. | 🔗 |
| 2018-07-10 | Spanish labor unions have called on around 1,000 Amazon employees to walk out for three days next week in a dispute over what it says are efforts to reduce workers' rights. The strike will took place at the San Fernando warehouse on the outskirts of Madrid, Amazon’s biggest in Spain, on July 16, 17 and 18, to coincide with a 1-1/2 day sale on the platform. | 🔗 |
| 2018-07-03 | A section of drivers from five taxi hailing companies including Uber and Taxify (now known as Bolt) took part in the industrial strike which started in early July 2018. The drivers through their association, Digital Taxi Forum want Uber and Co to double their rates and reduce their commissions so they can earn decent wages. The strike lasted 9 days, ending after Uber signed an agreement to ensure better pricing for drivers and improve welfare on the job. | 🔗 |
| 2018-06-25 | Hundreds of Salesforce.com Inc. employees signed a letter to Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff criticizing the companies's contracts with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. | 🔗 |
| 2018-06-21 | Earlier this year, a group of influential software engineers in Google’s cloud division, referred to as the 'Group of Nine', surprised their superiors by refusing to work on a cutting-edge security feature. Known as “air gap,” the technology would have helped Google win sensitive military contracts. The coders weren’t persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war, according to four current and former employees. After hearing the engineers’ objections, Urs Hölzle, Google’s top technical executive, said the air gap feature would be postponed, one of the people said. | 🔗 |
| 2018-06-21 | Workers at Amazon are circulating an internal letter to CEO Jeff Bezos, asking him to stop selling the companies's Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement and to boot the data-mining firm Palantir from its cloud services. | 🔗 |
| 2018-06-19 | In an open letter posted to Microsoft's internal message board on Tuesday, hundreds of employees protested Microsoft's work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and demanding that the companies stop working with the agency. | 🔗 |
| 2018-06-08 | Nearly one hundred Didi drivers gathered in front of the company office in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, on 8 June protesting its new “guarantee scheme.” The scheme, rolled out in April, claimed to provide drivers with a stable income but required them to work at least ten hours a day. Didi then gradually reduced the orders for those drivers who refused to join the new scheme, sparking anger among drivers who wanted to maintain a more flexible work schedule. One driver said his income had fallen by 5,000 yuan as a result of the new system. | 🔗 |
| 2018-06-04 | Hundreds of Didi drivers in the central city of Shaodong, Hunan, went on strike on 4 June in protest at a policy change that made it more difficult for them to claim their bonus payments. Videos posted online showed a long line of cars with drivers staging a protest on the side of the road. Drivers stayed on strike for six days, which coincided with the National College Entrance Examination. Drivers posted statements asking for support and understanding and apologizing for any inconvenience caused. | 🔗 |
| 2018-06-04 | There have been at least 15 strikes and protests by food delivery workers in China since 1 May as increased competition among delivery platforms has drastically reduced workers' take-home pay. Workers contracted to food delivery giant Meituan in the northern city of Taiyuan staged a work stoppage in protest at a wide range of issues including pay levels, delivery times, insurance and high accident rates. | 🔗 |
| 2018-05-30 | Google employees have led a campaign demanding that the companies terminate its contract with the Pentagon for Project Maven, a program that uses machine learning to improve targeting for drone strikes. Nearly five thousand Google workers signed an internal petition to cancel the project, and dozens resigned. | 🔗 |
| 2018-05-15 | Fellow gig workers have banded together through a GoFundMe fundraiser to cover the immediate funeral costs of a delivery worker for Caviar who was killed on the job, while demanding that the company ultimately cover the amount. More than $19,000 has been raised. Referenced on page 142 of Ghost Work (Mary Gray and Siddarth Suri) | 🔗 |
| 2018-05-14 | Workers of Oracle Korea have been sat outside the main office for more than 50 days after 19 negotiations with the management from December to April failed. This is now the longest strike by employees of a foreign IT companies in Korea. 'Some people think we don't need a union because they believe we work at a leading global IT companies and have well-paid jobs,' Kim Chul-soo, president of the Oracle labor union, said. 'It's not true at all.' Workers are suffering from a decline in real wages because there has been no increase in basic salary for the last 10 years, while half of the salary is based on incentives. Hiring scams similar to those at local banks, along with sexual harassment are also among the union’s accusations. | 🔗 |
| 2018-05-14 | Food delivery riders have marched in Sydney to demand UberEats, Deliveroo and Foodora provide pay increases and better working conditions to the many contractors darting from door to door around Australian cities. Dozens of protesters voiced their concerns in Surry Hills about the lack of regulation surrounding rider pay, safety protections and benefits like sick pay and superannuation. | 🔗 |
| 2018-04-28 | Around 30 drivers gathered on Thursday at lunchtime, the peak hour for deliveries, to express their dissatisfaction with a serious drop in the number of orders and a change in rules for payments. The majority of the protesters were freelancers for Didi Waimai who complained of unfair rules and meager earnings. | 🔗 |
| 2018-04-06 | A group of academics working on artificial technologies call for a boycott of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, a South Korean university. KAIST is believed to be developing AI weapons through a collaboration with a defense contractor. An open letter has been signed by 50 academics. | 🔗 |
| 2018-04-02 | Naver Corp., South Korea's dominant Internet portal and search engine, said that it has established the company's first labor union. After receiving official approval, the union started receiving membership applications from potential members, Naver's union said. More than 300 people joined within two hours. | 🔗 |
| 2018-03-21 | Over one thousand Amazon workers in Spain plan to stage their first strike with a two-day walkout to protest what unions claim are efforts to reduce employees' rights. The union claimed the companies aims to block salary increases, cut wages and reduce payments for those working weekends or holidays as part of a new contract agreement. | 🔗 |
| 2018-03-06 | Stanford Students Against Addictive Devices, a group of computer science students at the university, stage a protest at Apple Headquarters. They call for Apple to design devices with an 'essential mode', allowing the user to activate only basic functions. The group previously held a protest at the Apple store in downtown Palo Alto. | 🔗 |
| 2018-02-18 | After raising a round of $400 million, tech workers protest Doordash using workers' tip money to subsidize base pay. 'Silicon Valley investors clearly don't care that DoorDash cheats drivers — in fact, DoorDash is likely being rewarded for adopting practices that improve their profit margins and treats drivers unfairly. However, investors do care that their startups can hire the best tech talent to help them execute on their mission. | 🔗 |
| 2018-01-16 | After fighting for better working conditions, tech workers at Lanetix sent a letter to management outlining workplace grievances and announcing their intention to unionize with NewsGuild-CWA. They also filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The entire engineering staff was terminated after the petition was filed. In response, the San Francisco Tech Workers' Coalition, Lanetix workers from Virginia and San Francisco, and picketed Lanetix's offices in San Francisco. The NLRB investigation found evidence of unfair labor practices and the workers received a settlement in exchange for waiving their right to be reinstated. | 🔗 |
| 2017-12-13 | 118 food service workers at Yahoo won union representation at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. The food service workers, who are employed by Yahoo's contractor, Bon Appetit, are calling for respect and dignity, affordable health care, and increased wages to compete with increasing rents in the Bay Area. | 🔗 |
| 2017-12-13 | Workers from Amazon's New Jersey warehouses protested outside of an Amazon Books store in Manhattan calling for better compensation, benefits, and working conditions. | 🔗 |
| 2017-11-25 | Workers in six Amazon warehouses in Germany and at the company's main distribution hub in Italy strike on Black Friday over a pay dispute. | 🔗 |
| 2017-08-23 | Mechanical Turk workers and organizers collaborated with researchers at Stanford’s Crowd Research Collective to create Daemo, a crowd-sourced platform that provides a higher-paying alternative to Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Some Mechnical Turk workers involved with the project later came out in opposition to the original WIRED article in their own Medium article. They argued that WIRED incorrectly identified Daemo as a project originating at Stanford, as opposed to from the workers themselves and called for changes to Daemo's governing board. | 🔗 |
| 2017-07-24 | Over 500 food service workers at Facebook won union representation at the tech giant's campus in Menlo Park, CA. The workers, who are employed by contractor Flagship Facility Services, are calling for increased wages to compete with skyrocketing rents and more affordable health benefits. | 🔗 |
| 2017-03-22 | About 17,000 AT&T workers walked off the job Wednesday. Workers say that AT&T was forcing technicians to work outside their areas of expertise. The union also was protesting the companies's outsourcing and offshoring of jobs. AT&T wireless workers were not affected. | 🔗 |
| 2017-03-14 | Organizers say up to 1000 protesters have attended a demonstration held by Silicon Valley workers against the anti-immigration policymaking of US President Donald Trump and his administration. The protest was nearly five-hour-long outside Palo Alto City Hall in objection to Trump's immigration ban as well as in support of immigrants who spark innovation or work blue-collar jobs that keep those tech companies operating. | 🔗 |
| 2017-02-04 | A 'handful' of Facebook employees have vowed not to fly for 90 days following Pres. Trump's immigration ban. The company has said it is not affiliated with this protest. | 🔗 |
| 2017-02-01 | Google employees around the world walked off the job to protest Pres. Trump's immigration ban. Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai spoke at the walk-out at the Mountain View headquarters. | 🔗 |
| 2017-01-30 | In what union officials described as Silicon Valley's largest private sector organizing effort, 3,000 private security guards on high tech campuses like Facebook, Cisco and Genentech have won recognition as members of Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW). | 🔗 |
| 2017-01-18 | 50 people in the tech community came out in the pouring rain to demand the data mining startup take a firm stand against the makings of a Muslim registry. | 🔗 |
| 2016-12-16 | IBM employees sign a petition protesting IBM's cooperation with Trump. After the IBM CEO Ginny Rometty sent a letter congratulating Trump on his presidency and refusing to rule out participation from building a muslim registry, IBM employees created a petition on coworker.org to demand that the company acknowledge the diversity of its staff and not work to further the more xenophobic aspects of Trump's agenda. | 🔗 |
| 2016-12-13 | Online petition by information technology workers to work against a United States government database identifying people by race, religion, or national origin, specifically in response to the Trump presidential campaign statements about creating a Muslim registry and deporting millions of illegal immigrants. | 🔗 |
| 2016-12-03 | Uber drivers in 20 cities join the Fight for $15 movement, boycotting the app for one day to protest wages. | 🔗 |
| 2016-10-14 | Workers threatened to boycott Instacart after it announced plans to replace their tips with an optional 10% service fee. Two days ahead of the planned boycott, Instacart said tips will stay. | 🔗 |
| 2016-10-05 | Intel cafeteria workers voted to unionize joining forces with Unite Here Local 19. | 🔗 |
| 2016-08-11 | After trialling a new payment model, which Deliveroo claims has been a success, the company will begin paying riders a fixed fee per deliver of £3.75 rather than the current hourly rate of £7 per hour plus £1 per delivery. This has left some of Deliveroo’s couriers unhappy enough to hold something akin to a strike. Outside the Deliveroo headquarters more than 100 self-employed workers gathered calling for the company to keep the hourly rate. | 🔗 |
| 2016-05-10 | Uber recognizes an association of drivers, the Independent Drivers Guild, which is affiliated with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The organization represents approximately 35,000 drivers in the New York City area and provides access to discounted insurance, legal services, and roadside assistance. The group has been promised monthly meetings with management but at the expense of agreeing not the formally unionize for the next five years. | 🔗 |
| 2016-04-21 | Uber settled two class-action lawsuits that argued independent contractors should be classified as company employees. Uber agreed to pay drivers $84 million (and an additional $16 million upon IPO and pending increased valuation). Drivers were allowed to form associations in California and Massachusetts and see the data behind their rating. In later months, more than 150 drivers called for the judge to vacate the settlement. | 🔗 |
| 2016-03-31 | Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West janitors' San Jose rally targets Adobe. Hundreds of SEIU-USWW members congregated on Cesar Chavez Day to draw attention to ongoing contract negotiations with cleaning service contractors and protest abuse of workers in the janitorial industry. | 🔗 |
| 2016-02-17 | Hundreds of Lexmark workers have protested working conditions at manufacturing plants in Juarez, Mexico for months. At least 700 workers went on strike in December 2015. Workers have called for union representation, improved wages, and investigation into sexual harassment allegations. | 🔗 |
| 2016-02-10 | Intel cafeteria workers held a rally outside of company headquarters in Santa Clara to protest wages that have failed to keep up with the area's rising cost of living. Two weeks earlier the employees delivered a petition to management asking for fair process to form a union. | 🔗 |
| 2016-02-07 | Uber drivers protested fare cuts by boycotting the app on Super Bowl Sunday and demonstrating outside of company headquarters. The boycott came in the midst of a promotion by Uber to provide free rides to fans of the winning team. Earlier in the week a caravan of 100 drivers drove through the city before stopping to protest at headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Earlier in the year the company imposed fare cuts in several cities around the U.S. | 🔗 |
| 2015-08-20 | Three online petitions were started to protest parental leave policies at Netflix. The company recently began to offer a one-year paid parental leave but excluded employees in its DVD-by-mail service, who are typically lower paid than streaming employees and receive fewer benefits. | 🔗 |
| 2015-07-20 | Google employees have started an internal spreadsheet to share data on salary and bonuses. Employees have reportedly used the spreadsheet to advocate for greater compensation. | 🔗 |
| 2015-06-18 | Janitors of WeWork protest at their companies's Manhattan headquarters at 222 Broadway. In that same building, other renters and owners hire cleaning contractors at the standard city-wide rate, while WeWork pays an average of $11 an hour. | 🔗 |
| 2015-05-04 | Security guards at Broadcom, contracted through Universal Protection Service, rallied outside of company headquarters to protest retaliation for union organizing. The group was joined by Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, which has recently been pushing for greater diversity and equity in tech. UPS employees who have pushed for union organization through SEIU have reportedly had their wages cut. | 🔗 |
| 2015-02-26 | Union supporters of drivers who shuttle around Apple employees, were protesting outside the tech giant's Cupertino headquarters on Wednesday morning, ahead of their big vote Friday on whether to join the Teamsters Union. The teamsters trucked into Cupertino to protest working conditions for 120 full and part-time shuttle and bus drivers who work at Apple and other Silicon Valley companies, like Yahoo, eBay and Genentech | 🔗 |
| 2015-02-03 | Employees at H3C, a Chinese network device company acquired by HP, have been protesting the appointment of a new chairman for the last three weeks. More than 4,400 people have signed a petition and 3,000 have joined the strike. Workers have expressed concern that the election of Mao Yunan, a senior manager at HP, would lead to layoffs and would endanger promised employee stock option plans. | 🔗 |
| 2015-01-09 | A lawsuit alleges that Instacart, an on-demand grocery delivery service valued at $2 billion, misclassifies its workers as independent contractors to avoid paying expenses like overtime, reimbursements for gas and workers' compensation. The class action complaint, which was filed on Jan. 9th but has not been previously reported, describes Instacart's business practices as 'unethical, oppressive and unscrupulous' and seeks damages for anyone who has worked as a 'shopper delivery person' for the company since 2012. In 2017, Instacart won a small victory — the grocery-on-demand startup just settled a class action lawsuit to the tune of $4.6 million. | 🔗 |
| 2014-12-03 | Hundreds of Mechanical Turk workers participate in an email writing campaign to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to protest low pay and worker representation. The workers are organized by 'We Are Dynamo', a self-described guild for crowdsourced workers started by workers and academics. | 🔗 |
| 2014-11-19 | The shuttle bus drivers who ferry Facebook employees to and from work voted on Wednesday to unionize, 43 to 28. The drivers, who are employees of Loop Transportation, a contractor for Facebook, voted to join Teamsters Local 853, with several of them saying their main concerns were inadequate pay and a stressful split shift schedule. | 🔗 |
| 2014-11-04 | Artesyn Technologies announced through their QQ blog that employees mainly from the hardware department were participating in a protest against Sony. They held their protest against what they called violent layoffs and discrimination and they appealed to Sony to disclose a list of those being discharged. They also demanded negotiations and a 'fair, transparent and open' process. | 🔗 |
| 2014-09-19 | In front of Apple stores nationwide, tech companies employees gathered to protest alongside hundreds of eager customers waiting in line to buy the iPhone 6. The protesters weren't disgruntled Apple engineers or developers; they were security officers, maintenance and custodial staff demanding better wages from tech companies. | 🔗 |
| 2014-09-01 | A group of temporary workers at Microsoft has signed its first union contract with their employer, a rare feat in a technology industry typically unfriendly to organized labor. 38 bug testers who review Microsoft apps voted to create a union, the Temporary Workers of America. They work full time in Microsoft's offices but are employed by cloud services contractor LionBridge. | 🔗 |
| 2014-09-01 | Over two hundred Mechanical Turk workers and academics, organized through Dynamo, have collaborated and signed a set of ethical guidelines for scholars requesting labor through the platform. The Wiki page includes information on fair payment, communication practices, and the basics of requesting. | 🔗 |
| 2014-04-19 | Tech workers from Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe Systems brought a class action lawsuit against their respective companies, claiming that they conspired to keep salaries down by adhering to 'no-hire' agreements among themselves. The case ended in a $325 million settlement that paid out roughly $4,000 to 60,000 employees. | 🔗 |
| 2014-04-03 | Mozilla employees used a number of means to call for the resignation of CEO Brendan Eich who donated $1,000 in 2008 to support California's Proposition 8, legislature that would have made gay marriage illegal in the state. Three of Mozilla Foundation's board members resigned in protest, and other employees took to social media and wrote blog posts. Other companies, most prominently dating site OKCupid, encouraged their users to stop using the Firefox browser. Eich did ultimately resign. | 🔗 |
| 2014-04-01 | In the UK, an activist group called Amazon Anonymous delivered a letter and a petition with 55,000 signatures to Amazon. The letter called for higher wages and improved working conditions for warehouse workers, including longer breaks and an end to the practice of compulsory overtime. | 🔗 |
| 2014-03-31 | Several hundred Amazon workers in Leipzig, Germany went on strike as part of a union effort to raise wages. The company reported 340 workers were involved whereas the union (Verdi) reported the number was closer to 500. | 🔗 |
| 2014-03-03 | More than 1,000 IBM factory workers walked off the job at the factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, after managers on announced the terms of their transfer to new ownership under Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd. Experts say - the impetus for a strike was underpinned by the fact that the factory branch of the state-backed union was seen as a farce. | 🔗 |
| 2014-01-16 | A group of technicians at an Amazon facility in Middletown, Delaware filed a petition with the NLRB to organize a union but ultimately voted against it, 21-6, after pressure from management and anti-union consultants. | 🔗 |
| 2013-12-16 | Amazon workers in four German facilities (Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Graben, Werne) went on strike before Christmas to pressure the company to accept industry-wide collective bargaining agreements for worker pay. Protests began in May 2013 and have continued throughout the year. A contingent of German workers traveled to Seattle to protest outside of the company's headquarters, joined by U.S. union organizers. | 🔗 |
| 2013-11-19 | Hundreds of workers at a Chinese Nokia factory located in Dongguan, Guangdong Province have on strike. They're holding up a large banner in protest, which reads 'Workers are not simple merchandise, assets or slaves. Please do not sell us. We have DIGNITY and RIGHTS! | 🔗 |
| 2013-09-19 | German Amazon workers have continued to strike and protest in an attempt to get the company to recognize industry-level wages set under collective bargaining agreements. Workers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig have conducted a series of strikes since May. On Sept. 20th, a bus drove workers from Bad Hersfeld to Leipzig to join the two movements. | 🔗 |
| 2013-09-19 | Students from Leipzig University have formed an organization known as 'Amazon Solidarity Alliance' and have collected 500 signatures in support of ongoing strikes by Amazon workers in Leipzig. The company frequently employs students in temporary positions. | 🔗 |
| 2013-07-04 | Reddit and Mozilla, among others, posted prominent messages protesting NSA surveillance practices unveiled by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The protest was organized by the Internet Defense League, an organization of more than 30,000 websites that fights for Web freedom. | 🔗 |
| 2013-05-19 | Amazon workers at two German facilities (Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig) walked off the job to protest low wages and the company's refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement for the retail sector. Der Speigel reports that this is the 'first strike in the online retail giant's history'. | 🔗 |
| 2013-03-15 | A group of approximately 30 Uber drivers protested outside of the company's San Francisco headquarters to protest lowered pay and lack of job security, including the firing of 500 drivers over the last month. | 🔗 |
| 2013-02-06 | Mechnical Turk workers have adopted a platform named Turkopticon, which allows them to review tasks and requestors on the platform. Turkopticon was created through a collaboration between a UC Irvine computer scientist and a union leader for IG Metall. | 🔗 |
| 2012-10-01 | FoxConn workers in Zhengzhou held walkouts on three separate days to protest working conditions at the plant. News outlets also report workers have been purposefully scratching newly manufactured iPhones in protest. China Labor Watch estimates that 3,000 workers took part in the walkouts. | 🔗 |
| 2012-06-05 | Outside of Taiwan's Computex trade show, labor groups protested poor working conditions and inadequate pay for both white-collar and blue-collar workers | 🔗 |
| 2012-05-01 | Thousands of FoxConn workers in Jundiai, Brazil protested dangerous working conditions outside of the company's local plant. Complaints included lack of water and air conditioning at facilities, covercrowded buses, and low quality food in the cafeterias. | 🔗 |
| 2012-04-27 | Approximately 200 FoxConn workers in Wuhan, China threatened to jump of the roof of a building yesterday to protest low wages. The protests recalled a series of worker suicides in 2010 and a similar protest held in January at the same facility. | 🔗 |
| 2012-01-17 | A number of prominent websites including Wikipedia, Reddit, and the Internet Archive staged blackouts, taking their websites temporarily offline, to protest anti-piracy legislation in the U.S. Congress. Wikipedia staged a 24-hour blackout, while Reddit's protest lasted 12 hours. Both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act ultimately failed to pass. | 🔗 |
| 2012-01-11 | 150 FoxConn workers in Wuhan, China threatened suicide and ultimately spent two days on the roof of their plant to protest forced reassignments. In 2010, 18 FoxConn workers attempted suicide with a resulting 14 deaths. | 🔗 |
| 2011-12-28 | LG workers in Nanjing went on strike to protest the low pay they receive relative to Korean LG employees at the same plant. | 🔗 |
| 2009-12-16 | Engineers at Yahoo France held a strike to protest the company's plans to shut down an R&D office in Echirolles, laying off 78 people or roughly one-third of the company's total employees in the country. | 🔗 |
| 2009-05-18 | Thousands' of Baidu employees filed complaints at the Labor Office in Shenzen to protest recent wage cuts. Earlier in the month, 'hundreds' of employees were part of an office sit-in. The company cut wages for sales employees by approximately 30% in response to cost pressures resulting from the global financial crisis. | 🔗 |
| 2007-10-30 | Hundreds' of immigrant tech workers protested H1B visa caps on the streets of San Jose carrying banners and signs. A shortage of H1B visas has led to insecure working conditions and labor shortages among tech firms. | 🔗 |
| 2007-09-26 | Roughly a thousand foreign tech workers protested US H1B visa caps in Washington DC. They urged Congress to increase the number of visas supplied annually. | 🔗 |
| 2007-07-14 | Approximately a thousand foreign tech workers protested US H1B visa caps on the streets of San Jose. A shortage of visas has created difficult conditions for workers. | 🔗 |
| 2006-03-09 | After anonymously receiving several pages of confidential compensation guidelines, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers has relaunched an effort the unionize employees at Microsoft. The leaked guidelines showed that wages at the company barely rose in the last two years, which the union hopes will be a rallying cry for workers. In 2003, the company stopped giving employees stock options, opting for stock instead. | 🔗 |
| 2004-09-29 | IBM employees launched a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging they faced age discrimation when they were forced to transition from a traditional pension plan to a cash balance plan. The company paid $320 million to settle with 15,000 employees. A federal judge ruled in favor of employees but the company launched an appeals process that dragged on until 2006 when they officially froze pension plans. | 🔗 |
| 2001-01-09 | Customer service representatives at etown.com, a website that provides information on consumer electronics. voted on whether to join the Communication Workers of America. The New York Times reports that this is the first unionization vote at a dot com. Two workers who lead unionization efforts were reportedly fired by the company in the time leading up to the vote. Management threatened to shut down the company if unionization proceeded, which prompted CWA to file a motion with the NLRB. The company ultimately did shut down in mid-February 2001, due to failure to secure additional venture capital funding. | 🔗 |
| 2000-11-23 | The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is attempting to organize roughly 5,000 workers at eight Amazon distribution centers across the U.S. The New York Times reports that 'low-key' unionization efforts have been going on in the company for the last two years. | 🔗 |
| 2000-11-16 | In one of the first reported unionization attempts at a 'dot com company', an affiliate of the Communication Workers of America known as the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech) sought to unionize a group of 400 customer service employees at Amazon. Amazon closed the call center before the campaign could proceed further due to financial pressures following the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. Amazon has disputed unionization by arguing that the employees are owners of the company since they are given stock options. | 🔗 |
| 1999-10-01 | The Communications Workers of America have renewed their drive to organize IBM employees. CWA previously attempted to unionize IBM in 1985. This time around the union started a new organization, Alliance @IBM. It reports that roughly 100 thousand of the company's 140 thousand workers are eligible for unionization. Union supporters have started outreach and leafletting efforts at multiple locations, including the Research Triangle in North Carolina. The new organization will work with the existing IBM Employee Benefits Action Coalition. This effort continued for the next seventeen years, until it was ended 2016. At its peak, the Alliance had 400 dues-paying members. | 🔗 |
| 1999-06-04 | A group of temporary workers at Microsoft that includes accountants and lawyers has organized into a bargaining unit and is asking for representation through a local union, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers. The employees expressed frustration at their status as contract workers, citing a lack of benefits as a motivating factor for the unionization attempt. | 🔗 |
| 1998-11-23 | A law firm representing 10 current and former contract workers at Microsoft Corp. filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Tuesday against the software giant, seeking damages and full-time employee benefits for its plaintiffs and thousands of other 'misclassified' temporary employees. The 10 plaintiffs seek class-action status because they want to include some 6,000 current full-time Microsoft employees who have been 'misclassified as nonemployees' under 'various erroneous labels' and denied company benefits. | 🔗 |
| 1994-01-24 | Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) launches an online petition in opposition to the Clipper Chip, a cryptographic device intended to provide a standard for securing private voice communication. The group expresses concern about the possibility of surveillance through decryption keys held by government agencies. The petition obtains over 50,000 signatures. An earlier physical letter, sent directly to the President, received 40 signatures from cryptography and computing experts. | 🔗 |
| 1986-09-16 | A group of computer professionals, led by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), signs a petition arguing that Pres. Reagan's Star Wars system is not feasible given current technology. Such a system would be prone to major errors, they argued, and would be irresponsible to implement. | 🔗 |
| 1986-09-16 | Fourteen employees at AT&T sign a letter warning the U.S. military of over 10,000 possible errors in the Star Wars system. | 🔗 |
| 1979-09-01 | IBM workers formed an organization, IBM: Speak Up!, to protest the company's involvement with apartheid South Africa. The company created the computer system that upheld the country's passbook system. The company officially divested from South Africa in 1987. | 🔗 |