Software Workers at Glitch Get a Historic Union Contract
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
Software Workers at Glitch Get a Historic Union Contract:
Glitch, the software company behind Trello and Stack Overflow, now has a collective bargaining agreement with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The news is extraordinary, not just because they claim to be the first software workers to have secured a collective bargaining agreement, but because the lead-up to ratification has been so quiet: no leaked memos of smear campaigns, no evidence of union-busting firms. Wonderful, and eerie.
The contract is the outcome of an overwhelming majority vote to unionize under the CWA in March 2020, just before Glitch laid off about a third of its staff, citing the economic downturn. In a joint press release, Glitch workers and the CWA describe Glitch as an unusually willing partner in the negotiations. "Glitch's management, which voluntarily recognized the union after it was announced, is an exception and should serve as a model for executives at other tech companies," it reads.
[...] Over the past few years, unions have gone from taboo to a conceivable future for tech. Along with a wave of media outlets, workers at the podcasting company Gimlet (under Spotify) voted to unionize in 2019. Recently, Medium workers (primarily engineers) lost a unionization effort by one vote but plan to keep moving forward. Meanwhile, a union tide has also swept online media outlets.
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