✊ Key Reasons for Tech Unionization
Tech workers are increasingly turning to collective action to address several core issues:
• Job Security and Layoffs: Despite being highly profitable, the tech industry is prone to volatile labor markets, resulting in large-scale and often sudden layoffs. Unions are sought after as a safeguard for fairness, transparency, and long-term stability in a capricious industry.
• Burnout and Work-Life Balance: The "move fast" ethos of many tech companies often leads to extended work hours and burnout. Workers are unionizing to advocate for better work-life balance and reasonable working hours, challenging exploitative work conditions.
• Wages, Benefits, and Transparency: While some tech salaries are high, the industry features significant pay disparities and occupational segregation (e.g., between core employees and contractors). Unions work to improve compensation, ensure equal pay for equal work, and establish open and fair processes for promotions and pay decisions.
• Ethical and Social Issues: Unlike traditional labor movements focused solely on working conditions, 21st-century tech unionization is often driven by a desire for a voice in company decisions regarding ethics and the societal impact of their technology, such as the use of AI in surveillance, military projects, or other contracts.
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• Workplace Democracy and Accountability: Unions provide a mechanism for workers to democratize the workplace, giving them a meaningful say in decisions that affect their daily work, and holding management accountable for issues like discrimination, harassment, and lack of diversity.
• Impact of AI and Automation: As companies deploy increasingly sophisticated AI-enhanced technologies for monitoring, evaluating, and potentially displacing workers, unions are seen as a powerful tool to ensure workers are included in the design and implementation of AI to protect their job quality and rights.
📈 Changing Perceptions
The old narrative of the "pampered tech worker" is eroding, leading many, including mid-career engineers, to reevaluate unions not as a hindrance to innovation, but as a necessary tool to establish fairness, transparency, and a sustainable work environment. Tech workers are realizing that their collective power is necessary to secure their rights and ensure their expertise is used for equitable and beneficial purposes.
31 replies (most recent on top)
@10r ahh legacy yellow terminology and functionality.
@10r
We need CWA to intervene immediately because the leadership behavior within the Michigan Enterprise/T-Mobile for Business organization including actions by senior management has created a deeply toxic, retaliatory, and harmful environment that is damaging employees’ well-being and compromising the integrity of the operation.
@10d Enterprise Network Technology. The folks who take the design from the folks at HQ and implement them in the field. At Sprint, the ENT folks in the market would re-engineer a solution and then wonder why it didn't work with the rest of the network. Not the brightest bulbs on the string.
@yb ENT ? Ears nose and throat ? Acronyms without any relevance outside a very small group.
@ft
The ENT Senior Manager for the Michigan market, the Senior Manager, and the ENT Regional Director need your immediate attention. The hostile, toxic environment they have created and enabled is so severe and relentless that people are losing their well-being, their stability, and their livelihood because of their actions. Under their leadership, the culture has become brutally toxic filled with discrimination, intimidation, and direct retaliation against anyone who speaks up or refuses to tolerate their behavior.
Employees are mentally exhausted, constantly targeted, and pushed to the breaking point. This is not an isolated incident or a misunderstanding — it is a persistent, deliberate, and damaging pattern driven by leadership at multiple levels. Their conduct has created a workplace where people feel unsafe, unprotected, and completely unsupported.
This level of toxicity, discrimination, and retaliation is unacceptable and dangerous. Immediate intervention is not optional, it is necessary to protect employees and stop the ongoing harm caused by these leaders
Avoid dropping names, it’s not allowed here, and mods are pretty strict about it.
@g7 obviously you were not a contributor to the success and so were jettisoned.
They tell you “best quarter ever,” and then lay you off for getting them there.
T-Mobile “leaders” lie to your face every day that you are here.
I wouldn't go near CWA based on my previous experience as a member. They collected and did nothing for us. When our site got shut down (after CWA lied to our face) some people relocated out of state to only have that site shut down 6 mos. later. That's my experience and I would never go back.
We are told we are paid competitively when we are not. Corporate says that X is what the pay is. Said when the company we buy US Cell has people in the same position getting paid a ton more. Unions would help a bunch with pay and when we are told to just get it done with no regards to employee safety
There are no bots d u mb d u mb. IT will hot help any Telco anymore. Telcos have to cancel IT before the internet phone companies take over. Nobody cares about IT. Let it go. It is a business thing. A new business model
Oh, are the bots back out? I think that means we’re on the right track.
@az Can I borrow some of what you're smokin'
@bh from Google Gemini-
Yes, union workers can be laid off, but a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) typically provides protections that non-union workers don't have. These contracts often specify that layoffs must occur according to specific criteria like seniority and may grant bumping rights, where senior employees can take the place of junior ones. Union workers also have the right to file a grievance if they believe a layoff violates their contract.
Doesn't sound like anything more than you already have. Unions don't/can't stop layoffs.
Union Busting Laws in WA:
“Washington State has enacted several laws and protections to prevent union busting and safeguard employees' rights to organize and engage in union activities. The Employee Free Choice Act, signed into law in April 2024, makes Washington the sixth state to prohibit employers from disciplining or firing employees who refuse to attend mandatory "captive audience" meetings, which are often used as a union-busting tactic. This law ensures that while employers may express their views, employees are not required to listen
Under Washington law, it is illegal for employers to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights to organize and collectively bargain. Employers are also prohibited from discriminating against employees for exercising their rights under state collective bargaining laws. Additionally, retaliation against employees for union activity is strictly forbidden, including actions such as termination, harassment, denial of promotions, or giving negative performance reviews due to union involvement
The Washington State Labor Council supports local unions across various industries and helps ensure that workers' rights are upheld. Employees who believe their rights have been violated can file charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which investigates unfair labor practices and can order remedies such as reinstatement, back pay, and posting of notices informing employees of their rights. Charges must generally be filed within six months of the alleged violation.”
Similarly for Kansas and Texas.
I remember the last time they tried this in Bellevue. They have to be offsite. If managers see any organizing flyers they are to confiscate, destroy and/or notify HR/Legal.
Unions had their place in the US. 80 years ago.
There's a reason IT was reorged under marketing. Everything CWA touches turns to manure. If the remaining simpletons do cwa, outsource the department
@b1 This is illegal.
Try to stop all of us.
Whoever is coordinating this union talk should beware, you will all of a sudden end up on a PIP and will be gone quickly and mysteriously.
@az awww. Bless your heart. Does someone need a hug? 🤗
Yes, let's get the union signups going! And let's see what happens.
Here are the initial list of demands:
- Union membership is only open to U.S. Citizens. No H1-Bs, Green Cards, etc.
- Deutsch Telekom must fully divest from the company.
- Sheety goes immediately back to India and all Deutsch Telekom employees are removed from leadership positions and sent back home.
- The CEO and all Executive Leadership positions can only be occupied by U.S. Citizens.
- All H1-Bs and Contractors are immediately removed from the company.
- Mike Sievert is sued for fraud; for lying to employees and endangering their lives.
- Anyone who perpetrated the lies of the Sievert regime are also immediately removed from the company with possible legal action to follow: Deanne King, John Freier, Mike Katz, Callie Field...
Lori Ames needs to go. She single-handedly destroyed RNEO and got Jennifer fired.
@ap Yup, that is the T-Mobile way. Positive vibes only. Deflect and pretend like everything is good.
When they are the culture that needs to be reset.
Notice there has been zero acknowledgment by IT leadership about employee satisfaction scores? They are horrible scores BUT Katz, Jeff and his leadership team don’t care. They will be purging many tenured employees and bringing in fresh blood for a culture reset.
@a9 Keep telling yourself that as you get fu---d over by the shitbags at the top of this company again and again.
Jeff Simon is a race traitor and a traitor to his country.
Sign me up. Fu-k the fake a-s "leaders" of this company.
Sr Directors, VPs , SVPs, EVPs are all getting rich on the work you are doing. There is no loyalty to you, you are only as good as the last thing you delivered. You will be thrown out with yesterday’s trash on a whim.
Legacy teams think about all you have delivered over the years. Jeff is getting ready to toss you to the curb. Instead of training you for digital platforms your seen as outdated and antiquated.
Jeff, Srini and the board don’t care that you won’t be able to support yourselves or your families. But they care if they don’t maximize their bonuses and stock shares.
Highly skilled technical workers do not benefit from collective bargaining. It's a way to get your salary reduced and likened to a salary of a person who is less or even far-less accomplished and talented than you are. If you are an extremely valuable and accomplished worker, you only lose from collective bargaining, you don't gain anything.
Tired of being overwhelmed, overworked, disrespected, having your job security threatened by incompetent leadership (looking at you people in Kevin Lau’s org Senthil’s org, Stef’s org)
Show up and listen to them