JannekeParrish

This is a really great question!

So first thing's first - not all tech workers are highly paid. I'd even argue that the majority of them are not. There's a stereotype of tech being full of engineers making six figure salaries, but that's not the reality for most tech workers. For example, over half the workers at Google are temporary, vendor, or contract workers, or TVCs. These are low paid workers with no real job security and far fewer benefits or protections than their FTE counterparts. This is the job I started in when I first started at Apple. I was a contract worker, hired on to do multi-lingual data analysis and translation in Austin, TX. I got paid $15/hr, which was less than I'd made delivering pizzas. When Apple hired me on as a full-time worker, I got a pay raise - to $16/hr. There are tech workers who make a lot of money, absolutely, but they are not the norm. For many, many tech workers, a union offers potential pay increases, equity of opportunity, and benefits that there isn't another way to achieve.

However, even for those highly paid workers, unions still offer a lot of benefits. I think an example like Twitter or Bandcamp is helpful to point to here. To reiterate, not all workers there were highly paid, but for Twitter workers - and especially those on H-1B visas - a union could have offered some job security or severance pay, rather than leaving workers stranded. Bandcamp United did a really great job negotiating this for their members, and I think that's a great testament to what unions can do.

It's also well-worth discussing what unions do beyond pay and benefits. One thing we fought for at Apple, for example, was pay equity, remote work, and equity of opportunity for all workers. Remote work especially is something that a lot of workers benefit from, and would do wonders to make the tech industry more accessible to a broad range of workers. While not every job in the tech industry is high paying, there are still lots of good jobs to be had there. Remote work is one way to open those jobs up to the people who can do them, but can't move to Austin or the Bay Area or Atlanta or what have you. Unions in the tech industry benefit not only the workers who are currently there, but the workers who want to be there as well.

Great questions!

1. We have had successes! Apple retail workers, for example, got a pay raise to $22/hour largely because of the pressure we were putting on Apple. Our efforts also got multiple shareholder proposals examining Apple's union busting efforts and commitments to equity in front of shareholders, some of which passed.

2. I don't work as an organiser. It's something I do in addition to everything else in my life, and always has been. I think this is one of the challenges of tech, that the "always on" nature of many of the jobs in tech limit the ability to have spare time for organising. However, I also think that's something I admire about my fellow organisers - despite everything, we make the time to take care of each other and do this work. There absolutely are paid organisers in unions like CWA, but not in AppleTogether.

3. Some of us have worked to get new legislation passed. Cher Scarlett, for instance, helped pass a version of the Silenced No More Act in Washington, limited what NDAs can cover when it comes to harassment and discrimination. As an organisation, we don't necessarily work with politicians, but there are definitely political goals that can and ought to be achieved.

I do not. I spent over five years working at Apple, and have zero desire to interact with it or its products further.

Thank you!

Unions are definitely useful for salaried workers as well. One thing that the Kickstarter Union focused on, for example, was including workers' voices in the course of the company and giving workers more of a say in the decisions the company made. This would essentially give everyone a greater stake and greater sense of ownership in their work, rather than workers just being told what to do. Bandcamp United has a similar approach, though in addition to advocating for workers' voices in the company, they also advocate for the musicians who use the platform and the fans who benefit from it.

With AppleTogether, one element we've been fighting for is remote work and making work more accessible for a variety of workers. It's a topic that I think resonates with a lot of people throughout the tech industry, and is one of the reasons we exist in the first place.

You'll also find some common threads throughout all these unions of fighting for pay equity, transparency, and job security. Bandcamp United is another really good example of this, as their union did a lot of work to get them severance during the recent layoffs. Even though unions are more traditionally associated with blue collar work, those ideas of pay equity, transparency, job security, and having a voice in the course of your work are ones that I think all workers benefit from.