The fragmenting of teams needs more attention. My group uses a follow the sun model that has our team split up across at least seven countries, plus a decent chunk are always contracted through a vendor. Add in remote workers, and it's very difficult to see an effective way to organize.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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For example, in Italy, the workforce is highly fragmented due to numerous small and medium-sized consultancy firms working for the same client. Each company might assign only a few workers to a project, scattering employees across different locations. Since workers serving the same client have different legal employers, it's unclear whom to address with demands, making organizing particularly challenging. This dynamic doesn’t exist in the same way in the US.
Ouch. This absolutely exists in the US too. It is concerning that organizers that claim to be experts in tech organizations don't have this awareness.
In Italy they are probably above 90% of the workforce. They are the defining form of IT sector. In the USA way less, and also individual contractors are legal, while in Italy they are not, so there's a whole issue of illicit dynamics ("body rental") which in the USA are equally a problem, but they are not illicit and nobody cares about them.
Shitty, exploitative consultancies exist wherever there's an IT sector, but in certain countries, like Italy, Brazil, or Romania, they are the only form and this shapes the union landscape a lot. Romenia proves that this is not a blocker to achieve high union density though.
isn't that a lot like the film industry though? Maybe thats the model that makes sense.
No they dont. Some of the bigger unions deal with tech all the time.
Theres quite a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_sector
The people who wrote that page are mostly from the organization discussed in the article. Struggling doesn't mean they never achieved anything. Also maybe go beyond the title.
This is why I stress that it is more important so "Protest Smarter" and not "Protest Louder".
It's required that you kind of be on top of things.
Trade unions stuck in the past shocker.