Ep. 109: Organizing and Mobilization In The Tech Industry (Ft. Wendy Liu and Ben Tarnoff)
From Amazon’s increasing domination over the economy to broader collaboration with government programs like weaponized drone operations and burgeoning surveillance apparatuses, Big Tech seems only to be getting bigger. And, arguably, more dangerous. In the contest of capitalist growth imperatives, the main counterbalance to this power seems to be the tech workers themselves, workers who refuse to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or tolerate sexual harassment. In this episode, we’re talking with Wendy Liu and Ben Tarnoff about the ongoing efforts to mobilize and organize tech sector workers towards better working conditions as well as the power to make decisions over their work to avoid social harm and orient the tech sector toward a moral accountability.
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About our guests:
Wendy Liu is a former Google employee and current economics co-editor at the New Socialist UK and web-editor at Notes From Below. You can follow Wendy on twitter at @dellsystem and follow her work at https://dellsystem.me/.
Good reads from/featuring Wendy on tech sector mobilization:
https://notesfrombelow.org/article/towards-an-organized-tech-industry-part-one
https://newsocialist.org.uk/towards-an-organized-tech-industry-part-two/
https://notesfrombelow.org/article/tech-culture-unions-meritocracy
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/09/tech-labor-movement/567808/
https://newsocialist.org.uk/tech-workers-inquiry-at-twt/
Ben Tarnoff is a founding editor of Logic Magazine whose work you on technology and politics you can also find in The Guardian and Jacobin Magazine. You can follow him on twitter at @bentarnoff and follow his work at http://www.bentarnoff.com/.
Good reads from Ben on tech sector mobilization:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/09/silicon-valley-tech-workers-labor-activism
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/lanetix-tech-workers-unionization-campaign-firing
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/google-project-maven-military-tech-workers
https://www.thenation.com/article/can-engineers-change-silicon-valleys-political-agenda/
https://www.thenation.com/article/meet-the-activists-organizing-the-tech-sector-against-trump/
