Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#151

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:08 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #128

OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The raised fist isn't just raised in defiance or in opposition. It's also raised in solidarity and in support. And either way a raised fist is just basic union iconography and I don't see any issue

You may not see an issue, other people sure do. Do you want to radicalize or do you want to welcome? Unions in America have a perception problem which makes their jobs harder, their image is one the rebel without a cause, people agitating and being oppositional not for valid reasons but because they want to rebel. Cosplayers. People imagine 1900s coal miners as fighting for their freedoms and baristas as a joke. You…

> You reenforce this by flying flags with raised fists to represent knowledge workers at a nonprofit unionizing with nothing in particular that they seem to want to fix.

1. they very much have things they want to fix and they list them on said website.

2. Don't forget that WMF fired 7 people for trying to start the formation of this union. It had a peaceful formation at the end of the day but even if it's currently a pleasant workplace, that doesn't mean management won't throw you to the wayside the moment they see you as a threat or a liability. That's why you want a union. So you can fix shit and be ready to react should something happen in the future.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#152

Post by groundzeros2015 » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:46 AM UTC

insom wrote: post #149

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a larp. When was the last time you went to lunch with a pipe fitter?

I don’t understand your comment. Do you not know what a pipe-fitter is? What about the trade strikes you as a larp? I’ve never been to lunch with one, although my son worked as a welder’s helper at a pipe-fitting company.

The larp is that software unions are anything like blue collar unions, and that socialists want to selectively act as the voice of blue collar when they are in a completely different class and do not interact with them.

I’ll note one key difference. Software output and skills vary on a power scale. Blue collar work is often heavily defined by formal procedures and codes so that trained personnel are largely interchangeable from a business perspective (not always or completely true). So without a union it’s a constant race to the bottom because the labor is fungible and the only requirement for success is passing minimum criteria.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#153

Post by bluegatty » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 5:59 AM UTC

hunterpayne wrote: post #135

bluegatty wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Levels of waste in NGOs are a fully fair subject for debate but without context an arbitrary number is only misleading and therefore sadly cynical. Also - you have no evidence for '95% of NGO's and their ilk'. This is not Twitter.

Please remember that NGOs are not charities. And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do. I think most of the grips about NGOs comes from the selling of NGOs as charities which they very much are not. They are however, taxed in the same way as charities and donate significant amounts to political campaigns (mostly local and state level). So they get around centuries old res…

" And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do" - no, they can serve many purposes, and there are tons of things governments should not be doing.

They are entities that have a civic purpose, not for profit.

Yes, they can in some cases support political causes, that is normal.

You seem to have a narrow view of what 'community' is aka something is either a 'charity' or 'government' - the world is more complicated than that.

" That set of properties can and should draw significant criticism. " - no, the properties of fine.

They can be scrutinized like any organizaition: charity, private company, ngo, government, etc.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#154

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 7:57 AM UTC

bluegatty wrote: post #153

hunterpayne wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please remember that NGOs are not charities. And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do. I think most of the grips about NGOs comes from the selling of NGOs as charities which they very much are not. They are however, taxed in the same way as charities and donate significant amounts to political campaigns (mostly local and state level). So they get around centuries old res…

" And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do" - no, they can serve many purposes, and there are tons of things governments should not be doing. They are entities that have a civic purpose, not for profit. Yes, they can in some cases support political causes, that is normal. You seem to have a narrow view of what 'community' is aka something is either a 'charity' or 'govern…

Yours is the naïve view of someone who has never looked at how the sausage is made. There are hundreds of billions each year flowing through NGOs. Where do you think this money comes from. Hint: its not your friendly grandma.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#155

Post by hunterpayne » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 8:47 AM UTC

bluegatty wrote: post #153

hunterpayne wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please remember that NGOs are not charities. And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do. I think most of the grips about NGOs comes from the selling of NGOs as charities which they very much are not. They are however, taxed in the same way as charities and donate significant amounts to political campaigns (mostly local and state level). So they get around centuries old res…

" And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do" - no, they can serve many purposes, and there are tons of things governments should not be doing. They are entities that have a civic purpose, not for profit. Yes, they can in some cases support political causes, that is normal. You seem to have a narrow view of what 'community' is aka something is either a 'charity' or 'govern…

"They are entities that have a civic purpose, not for profit."

If they had a true civic purpose, they would call themselves charities. The specific reason they don't is because an audit of their spending wouldn't meet the standards of a charity. Remember, charities can take government money. They just can't do it in exchange for a service. NGOs can. That's not about civic purpose. Its about different administrative standards. Standards that allow abuse. That's the entire point of them using the term NGO instead of charity.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#156

Post by hdgvhicv » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #122

mmooss wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, there are allegations of adversarial management behavior. I can't find the link now, but some background: https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-workers-vote-on-whethe... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143414 https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists...

All management is adversarial with the worker.

Vast majority of managers are also workers.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#157

Post by hdgvhicv » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 9:32 AM UTC

20after4 wrote: post #108

cortesoft wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One option would have been to stay small. Keep the yearly spend down where it was in 2010, don't hire too many more people, and save all the donation money they brought in. Build that fund in the good years to pay for salaries in the lean years.

Wikimedia foundation actually have a rather large endowment¹ set up from donated funds to help sustain the organization through a hypothetical future downturn. I'm sure it wouldn't sustain the current level of spending but it would theoretically cover minimal operating expenses. There are a lot of things to criticize about Wikipedia but lack of financial planning probably isn't top of the list. 1. https://wikimediaen…

The US government has been targeting endowments. Wikipedia is far too entrenched in a single country to survive a real attack.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#158

Post by rexpop » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 11:22 AM UTC

PorciiVorbesc wrote: post #62

dbingham wrote: post #23

Lots of people asking "Why?". They say so right on their site: There are big changes happening in the technology industry and they are acting pro-actively to ensure the workers have a strong collective voice in the ways the foundation chooses to respond to those changes. "The Wikimedia Foundation and the broader technology and nonprofit sectors are navigating a period of significant change. From rapid advances in art…

Can someone explain why do they need a union when they work for a non-profit? Aren't they mostly volunteers? From my experience in my youth volunteering at animal shelters and environmental protection groups, you never volunteer for a non-profit for the money or the job stability, but you do it for the mission and the satisfaction of being the change you want to be in the world, even if that means living off ramen an…

> work for a non-profit? Aren't they mostly volunteers?

No. Common misconception. It's a business and career like any other.

> experience in my youth volunteering at animal shelters and environmental protection groups

Just not applicable, here.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#159

Post by rexpop » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 11:25 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #6

Is Wikipedia a bad place to work or something? I'd imagine it must be pretty relaxed/cushy, albeit probably at the lower end of market comp for software jobs in particular. Does the union stipulate the workers cannot be replaced with AI?

A place doesn't have to be relatively bad to warrant more democracy.

Why is everyone so apprehensive about democracy?

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 12:06 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54

cm2012 wrote: post #25

Everyone wants a piece of the wikipedia gravy train. In 2010: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses were about $20m In 2025: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses are about $200m The story of Wikipedia of the last 10 years especially is endlessly higher spending for a very stable number of monthly users (1.5b or so). You can make the case that 80% of this spend is not necessary to what the average users donating to Wik…

> It makes sense for the employees to want to lock in their share of the bag. That's the problem, isn't it? Suppose that e.g. Wikipedia traffic is down year over year because of AI summaries and then they get fewer donations. Now something needs to be cut. It's a non-profit so "investor profit" can't be that thing. If you then also make it so that it can't be workers, what's left? It's mostly either spending down sav…

> It's a non-profit so "investor profit" can't be that thing

Non-profits get corrupted through spending on well-connected vendors.