this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
243 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37739 readers
705 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They’d need to unionize first.
It’s expensive to live in tech communities. All the workers would need to move their families to somewhere more affordable and demand to work from home, on top of everything else, and they’d need to have enough savings to afford that. Right now, tech workers tend to carry debt, which is the bane of collective action.
Sort of. But people in society CAN act in solidarity. It's obviously unlikely (something tech CEO's calculated in these layoffs).
Obviously, capitalist exceptionalism is going to cause them not to do this. No one wants to loan their neighbor some money to weather a strike that WILL eventually lift ALL BOATS because of the whole "fuck you, got mine" vibe of EVERYONE in cutthroat capitalist societies. If I had the money, I'd certainly take part in this kind of collective action...and I'd also argue that many tech workers can because they were paid INCREDIBLY well in comparison to most trades....but you and I know they won't.
I'm a member of a stagehand union that will NEED to strike during the summer (our busiest season) in order to gain some ground back from what price gouging, austerity, and inflation has taken from us. I can easily guess how likely the membership will be to endorse a strike when we will have been out of work for more than a year when negotiations start. That doesn't make what I said less true; just about as unlikely as a third power coming to power in the United States two party electoral system.
I agree with you but let's not pretend that that's not entirely BY DESIGN.