It took people in tech an inordinately long time to start finally realizing the value of collective bargaining.
Between AI and H1b, it might be too late.
Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
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Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Power, status, and control attract the same personalities, regardless of entity type.
It happens that these are also the types that are attracted to union leadership positions
Humans are imperfect, systems require continual improvement. I’ll take a suboptimal union over no union any day, especially in the economic human factory farm that is the US. Companies, governments, and unions are all just people. Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn, we try to win more than we learn.
I’m not delusional, I’m always going to be working class in compared to predatory wealthy people who do not need to work. I’m not a temporarily embarrassed billionaire. I’ll take every guardrail I can get. And so, I support unions, even though I do not need one. It is a decision based on logic and reason from first principles.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1706
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-...
Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happens that these are also the types that are attracted to union leadership positions
Humans are imperfect, systems require continual improvement. I’ll take a suboptimal union over no union any day, especially in the economic human factory farm that is the US. Companies, governments, and unions are all just people. Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn, we try to win more than we learn. I’m not delusional, I’m always going to be working class in compared to predatory wealthy people who do not need to w…
That's fair, I have witnessed unions that took companies to the ground, were a center of corruption and created class favoritism between old and new workers.
That does not say it cannot work, or is never needed though
Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#34Man, it's sad how far the wiki foundation has fallen. For (literally) decades no one there would have even thought of forming a union! To get them to not only consider it, but actually go through the effort of actually doing it ... the foundation truly has shit the bed.
Unionization shouldn't be seen as an emergency measure. Even if I would hypothetically accept union as a last resort, which I don't, safety nets should be built not only when you are speeding towards the ground, and often lack the resources, but much before that, when you are safe.
My perspective until now was that the Wikimedia foundation was already supposed to be a union-like organization. Would it make sense for Linux maintainers to form a union within the Linux foundation? The vibes feel similar to me.
Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the reasons were clearly stated …what are they?
off-wiki canvassing for his proposal. its in the title of the issue and the summary is right at the top of the page. " There is clear consensus for a community ban of User:Larry Sanger. There is general agreement among participants that he has engaged in off-wiki canvassing and is not here to constructively build the encyclopedia. There is also a significant concern shared by many editors that his actions constitute…
I’m not versed enough in the culture to understand what this is and why it’s a fireable offense.
Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#36Man, it's sad how far the wiki foundation has fallen. For (literally) decades no one there would have even thought of forming a union! To get them to not only consider it, but actually go through the effort of actually doing it ... the foundation truly has shit the bed.
Unionization shouldn't be seen as an emergency measure. Even if I would hypothetically accept union as a last resort, which I don't, safety nets should be built not only when you are speeding towards the ground, and often lack the resources, but much before that, when you are safe.
There are so many reasons being in a union is beneficial.
Developers should consider the likelihood of even modest efficiency gains from AI, along with a naturally cooling job market, cratering labor demand in software. Every shred of cushiness and every dollar above average in your paychecks is because you’re in a high-demand field, but it’s been that way so long that many developers have mistaken that for some sort of inherent specialness. Companies don’t pay people what they’re worth, they pay people what they’ll work for. If the demand for developer labor goes away, people that are as-or-more qualified than you will do your job for a lot less, and your employer will hire them and kick you to the curb. Being an ‘AI engineer’, unless you’ve got an advanced degree in ML or something, is no safety net. If you can make the transition from ‘developer’ to ‘fancy AI orchestrating developer’ in a few months, so can a lot of other people, and they’ll be looking for jobs.
The leverage might already be diminished enough to make unionization impossible in many places, but it’s certainly not going to get any easier. Consider it.
Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia has a lot of money, along with a valuable dataset (for AI); it was only a matter of time until rent-seeker(s) would come along and try to get it. As we saw with OpenAI, it is difficult to keep a non-profit dedicated to its public benefit mission when it has something of tantalizing value.
> it was only a matter of time until rent-seeker(s) would come along and try to get it. So, the people who helped create the valuable dataset are “rent seekers” now? Must be using a different definition of rent seeking than any i’ve heard.
The employees of the Wikipedia foundation did not create the dataset, though they definitely contributed to the infrastructure behind it. Sam Altman (and the OpenAI employees) contributed even more to OpenAI's continuing success (and that of their industry). Both groups are still rent-seekers, as they are attempting to profit off a market position which was developed under different auspices.
Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#38Wow, they're on a roll over there. Just two days ago they permanently banned the cofounder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger. Per his tweet: "Well, that’s that—I’ve been blocked by Wikipedia “indefinitely” for unstated reasons, by the “consensus” of a mob. There was no due process, no prosecutor, no dispassionate judge, no jury, no interpretation of law. All my judges were self-selected and hated me." Link to his June 22nd…
While the merits of Sanger's banning are worth debating, Sanger is dishonestly representing the process here. The reasons, rather than being 'unstated', were stated repeatedly and were not unreasonable. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...
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Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the reasons were clearly stated …what are they?
off-wiki canvassing for his proposal. its in the title of the issue and the summary is right at the top of the page. " There is clear consensus for a community ban of User:Larry Sanger. There is general agreement among participants that he has engaged in off-wiki canvassing and is not here to constructively build the encyclopedia. There is also a significant concern shared by many editors that his actions constitute…
The charge against him is specifically "Stealth canvassing", which, beyond the use of the word "Stealth", is clarified several times as:
"""Stealth canvassing: Contacting users off-wiki (by e-mail, IRC, or Discord, for example) to persuade them to join in discussions (unless there is a specific reason not to use talk pages)"""
Between calling it "stealth" and specifically calling out email/IRC/Discord, it makes it pretty clear that it is not referring to public platforms.
Iterpreting it as a ban on any public discussion of Wikipedia by Wikipedia editors, anywhere on the public internet, is a very dishonest move by the people involved in that thread, and you can tell the real reason for it by reading the many comments simply lobbing politically charged accusations against him.
Seeing folks over there policing violations of taboos that are enforced by a very small minority of the English speaking world (around 15-25% of the US for the combined equity-progressives and further left groups) makes me worry about this wonderful site, which has taught me so much over the years :(
Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are imperfect, systems require continual improvement. I’ll take a suboptimal union over no union any day, especially in the economic human factory farm that is the US. Companies, governments, and unions are all just people. Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn, we try to win more than we learn. I’m not delusional, I’m always going to be working class in compared to predatory wealthy people who do not need to w…
That's fair, I have witnessed unions that took companies to the ground, were a center of corruption and created class favoritism between old and new workers. That does not say it cannot work, or is never needed though
Some additional context: I have seen colleagues fired for illegal reasons, discriminated against, egregiously, as well as managed out through no fault of their own. I have seen terrible politics at upper management levels, which eventually rolls down to workers doing somewhere between acceptable and good work. Unions are, in my professional experience of ~25 years, the least worst option versus no union. I understand some have a different lived experience, or think they can do better on their own. I argue and support what the data and my lived experience tells me I should.
I would only swim with sharks with a cage in between us to protect me, similarly. Labor regulations and unions protect workers from sharks, and sharks are everywhere (broadly speaking, sociopaths, narcissists, and those with dark triad personalities who ascend to positions of power in entities).
The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day: Narcissism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48639459 - June 2026
Marissa S. Shandell, Courtney E. Elliott, Adam M. Grant, Worship me at the office altar: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 195, 2026, 104496, ISSN 0749-5978, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2026.104496
> Rigorous evidence shows that forcing people to come in every day backfires. Take it from studies of over 450 companies and over three million employees: Return-to-office mandates fail to increase financial returns. They succeed only in motivating star employees to quit, reducing the satisfaction of those who stay and discouraging new talent from joining. Experiments at tech companies and nonprofits show that letting people work from home part of the week boosts happiness and decreases turnover by a third — without any cost to performance. In many cases, those employees even get more done, because they don’t have to spend time commuting and don’t get distracted by office interruptions.
Khorram-Manesh, A., & Burkle, F. M. (2024). Sociopathic narcissistic leadership: How about their victims? World Medical & Health Policy, 16, 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.588
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
(the meritocracy does not exist, the hierarchy, status, and power games remain as it always does, and worker livelihoods cannot be left to luck and optional benevolence)