tech workers are workers, and yes that includes asking what our cloud sells to militaries

ok so a few people asked after my comment in the sanctions thread what "organizing my workplace" actually means. here's the long version. opinion throughout, sources where i state facts.

why i started

not because of some big ideological moment. because of on-call. our rotation went from 8 people to 5 after a "restructuring", nobody's comp changed, and the pager didn't care. then the layoffs came by calendar invite at 7am. then i found out our team's platform was part of a sales deck for a defense customer, from a slide someone forwarded by accident. nobody on the team was asked. nobody was even told.

that's the whole thesis honestly: the people who build and run the thing should have a say in how it's run and who it's sold to. that's it. that's the radical idea.

this is not new

• 2018: google employees protested Project Maven, a pentagon contract for drone imagery analysis. google said it would not renew it.
• 2019: microsoft employees signed an open letter against the army HoloLens contract.
• 2024: google fired around 50 employees after sit-ins protesting Project Nimbus, its cloud contract with the israeli government.

you can agree or disagree with any of those protests. the point is that the question "what does my labour get used for" keeps coming up, and right now the answer is decided by a few execs and a sales team.

"but defense keeps us safe"

maybe! i'm anti-war and suspicious of defense contractors, i won't pretend otherwise. but even if you disagree with me on that, you should still want a vote. a union isn't a vote for my politics. it's a structure where your politics count too.

practical stuff, if you're curious

1. start with 1-on-1 conversations. coffee, a walk. not a slack channel. ask what people would change, then listen.
2. never organize on company infra. personal phone, personal email, signal. company slack and laptops are company property and you should assume they're read.
3. know your rights. in the US, section 7 of the NLRA protects "concerted activity" for mutual aid, which covers talking about pay and conditions with coworkers, union or not. talking about your salary with a coworker is legal. your manager saying otherwise is not.
4. start with boring wins. on-call compensation, a fair rotation, severance standards. the big questions come later and they come easier when people trust each other.

you can like your job and still want a say in it. i do. solidarity, comrades (i'm contractually obligated to say it once a week).