Nedzhvetskaya and Tan: What we learned from over a decade of tech activism // John Harris: In a world of online everything, a real #PeriodOfReflection could benefit us all

By Dilip -
Our database of collective actions challenges the mainstream media narrative. Here are our eight key insights In the past year, tech worker mobilization has reached unprecedented levels. Kickstarter employees sought union recognition from their company. Amazon workers led a cross tech-industry walkout to support the global climate strike. Googlers grappled with unionization, fought against increasing corporate hostility, and challenged their company’s unethical partnerships. Even Chinese tech workers have joined in, with the viral 996.icu campaign that demanded more reasonable working hours. We documented all the collective actions in the tech industry in a publicly accessible online database and analyzed the results. What we learned challenges many mainstream media narratives about the tech workers’ movement. Here are our eight most important insights.

1. Tech worker actions are growing exponentially

There were more than a hundred publicly reported actions in 2019, some involving thousands of people. This is almost triple the number of actions we saw in 2018 and nine times the number in 2017… read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/22/tech-worker-activism-2019-what-we-learned

 John Harris: In a world of online everything, a real #PeriodOfReflection could benefit us all
He didn’t get to nationalise the railways or dish out free broadband, but right at the year’s end Jeremy Corbyn made one undeniable contribution to politics, culture and human understanding. In the wee hours of 13 December, as the scale of Labour’s drubbing became clear, he said he would be stepping down after the start of a “process of reflection”. 

Online, this phrase was combined with another P-word Corbyn had used in the same speech, and yet another viral sensation was born: #PeriodOfReflection was rapidly everywhere, and its use became more and more ironic as the noise around the contest to be Labour leader increased. The apogee of absurdity probably arrived last Wednesday, in the mid-afternoon, when #CorbynwasRight was the number one hashtag on Twitter, and calm and introspection seemed very far away indeed....
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/23/periodofreflection-social-media


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