How to unionize your tech workplace is attracting attention across the tech world. Analysts, enthusiasts, and industry observers are watching closely to see how this story develops.
This update adds another signal to a fast-moving sector where product decisions, platform changes, and competition can quickly shape the market.
The best time for tech workers to unionize was 20 years ago, when they had plenty of leverage. The second-best time is now, when they don’t.
Mass layoffs, AI-driven displacement, corporate surveillance, workplace disillusionment have created conditions that have made organizing compelling for tech professionals. But the federal labor board that has historically protected workers’ right to organize has been weakened, and the companies that once feared it are openly defying it.
Here’s how organizers and labor experts describe the pros and cons to organizing — and how you can get started.
This is Part 2 of a series on tech worker unionization. Also see Part 1: “A brewing battle: More IT workers want unions. The industry doesn’t.”
The single biggest benefit of a union contract for most tech workers isn’t pay — it’s protection against arbitrary termination, especially in the wake of recent mass layoffs in tech. In the United States, nonunion “at-will” workers can be fired at any time without a stated reason, while unionized workers negotiate protections written into their contracts.
“That fear of the company letting you go for anything at any time…with a union they just can’t do that,” says Zak Thompson, a senior software engineer at Kickstarter and union steward at Kickstarter United. Now that Kickstarter employees are unionized, people are less worried that saying something negative will result in termination.
“I’ve been shocked at the willingness of my co-workers to speak up against what they see as poor or controversial business decisions,” Thompson says.
Beyond job security, unions can deliver concrete material gains. Kickstarter United was formed in 2020, although getting there wasn’t easy: two employees were fired during the organizing campaign — which itself became a galvanizing event. And while the union hasn’t been able to prevent layoffs, it did negotiate better terms: four months of severance pay and four to six months of continued health insurance, versus the two to three weeks per year of work that management had initially proposed.
Other benefits include a four-day work week; AI protections; a minimum pay floor; and standards for raises, promotions, and time off for the company’s 59 employees.
Unions can give tech workers a voice in decisions that affect their daily work — including how AI tools are deployed. “Nobody I’ve spoken to is against new tech innovation or getting trained in it,” says Max Belasco, a business platforms analyst at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law and co-chair of the UCLA chapter of the University Professional and Technical Employees/Communications Workers of America (UPTE-CWA) Local 9119.
“But when new tech innovation is being implemented, we want to know: what’s the five-year vision, the 10-year vision? Are we implementing this in a way that betters staffing, increases efficiency, or eases the lives of people already working? Or are we trying to take away jobs, automate people out of their pension or paycheck?” Belasco says.
The challenges are real. Tech professionals are less inclined to leave their jobs in the current market because wages haven’t been increasing as fast as they once were, and it can take longer to land another job.
“Tech moved from a very tight labor market in 2022 (1.85% unemployment rate) to a noticeably weaker one in 2024–2026 (3.49%),” although that’s still better than the national unemployment rate of 4.36% through May of this year, says Liya Palagashvili, senior research fellow and director of the Labor Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Liya Palagashvili of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Flexibility is a concern. The more substantive challenge, raised by economists including Palagashvili, is that traditional union contracts impose uniform terms across an entire bargaining unit, limiting the flexibility that many tech workers — and their employers —currently enjoy. Tech firms need to move fast, adjusting teams, products, and roles on the fly.
“Collective bargaining agreements can make those adjustments much more difficult, whether by making them slower, costlier, or inconsistent with the contract,” she says.
Workers skeptical of unions in a survey of 1,900 tech professionals conducted by the career site Blind cited specific concerns: that unions are “not meritocratic,” “prevent innovation,” and “hold back earnings of top performers.”
Thompson from Kickstarter United pushes back: “We have nothing in our contract about ‘you can’t bend down and pick up a piece of trash because that’s someone else’s job.’ The company is free to give bonuses and individual raises as much as they like. This is all just up to the people who are bargaining the contract from the union side.”
Organizing carries potentially serious personal risks. During negotiations for a second three-year contract in 2025, Kickstarter United went on strike for 42 days. A few months later, the company announced layoffs.
“They let go strong union leaders, including a person who had bargained our last contract,” Thompson says. The union appealed, and the issue is now going to arbitration.
If you form a union, don’t expect much support from the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that certifies US labor unions and protects workers’ right to organize, in terms of prosecuting complaints of unfair labor practices, Thompson warns. “We’re in a political moment in this country with a pretty weakened NLRB. You have to be ready to organize and withhold worker power without any guarantee of safety.”
Organizers are up against an enormous union avoidance industry. Organizers can expect fierce pushback as soon as the business discovers that organizing is underway.
“There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry in union avoidance,” says Alan McAvinney, a Google software engineer and organizing chair, Alphabet Workers Union-CWA, a 1,400-member minority union of Alphabet employees. (Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet.)
US employers spend roughly $1.7 billion a year on union avoidance consultants and law firms, as reported by a May 2026 report by the Economic Policy Institute and LaborLab.
Expect hardball tactics. Management may play hardball during the time between when organizers announce their intention to unionize and the actual vote. for instance, management can threaten to fire foreign-born workers in the US on H-1B visas if they support the union. Those workers would then have just 60 days to find a new sponsoring employer or lose their H-1B status, as reported by a recent Tech Workers Coalition blog post.
And at venture capital-backed startups, investment agreements sometimes require management to attest there is no union activity — meaning a public organizing drive can trigger funding withdrawal. Or, if a unionized company is acquired, the new management can dissolve the union overnight by reclassifying unionized workers as new hires.
With these sobering facts in mind, here is how organizers who have done it describe the process of creating a union.
At the University of California, a two-tier platform had evolved where some tech workers were unionized and some weren’t, Belasco says. Management created new titles that fell outside the union even though they had similar job descriptions and responsibilities to those in the union. Those nonunion employees received lower pay and benefits than their unionized peers, which created resentment and instability.
Belasco and other organizers wanted to eliminate that division by bringing everyone under the same contract. But when they began their unionization drive, “the biggest barrier we faced wasn’t management opposition — it was that people felt this was just the best-case scenario realistically available: ‘We have this job at the university, we have concerns about automation and layoffs, but what can we really do about it?'” he says.
The antidote to that fatalism, organizers say, is simple: “Just start talking to your immediate co-workers. Are they experiencing the same challenges you are experiencing?” says McAvinney. “There’s no need to start talking about a union at this point.”
Just get a consensus and start building a group of like-minded individuals, Thompson advises. “Always start with one-on-one conversations, and that’s what you should do the whole time. That’s the key to organizing,” he says.
Tech workers often think they’re a special case, says Thompson, and therefore that unionization isn’t a good fit. “You’re not special. You are a company of workers, you are organizing, and there is a playbook for that. Trust the process, because it tends to work pretty well,” he says.
Once there’s a consensus, continue to grow your network. Keep a list of everyone you’ve spoken with and note their disposition: “Is this person union-friendly or anti-union? Would they be a strong organizer?” Thompson says.
Maintaining secrecy early on is essential, because anti-union tactics will start immediately, and that can stop union organizing before it can gain momentum.
“Generally, employers do not want to share power with their workforce,” McAvinney says. Employers will deploy every means at their disposal to stop organizing efforts and peel away potential yes votes.
“If you look at historical examples, having 70% approval before the employer finds out about you results in a high percentage of wins when you actually cast the vote. Historically, that’s an effective buffer,” he says.
There’s a real threat of firing and layoffs. The traditional tech worker belief that job mobility makes collective action unnecessary is now being tested by a tighter job market, McAvinney says, noting that workers who many believe were fired for speaking out back in 2019 were a galvanizing factor in his union’s formation.
“You generally don’t want to be in a situation where the employer feels comfortable firing everyone. Part of that is thinking from a cynical standpoint about what the consequences would be to the employer if they did fire everyone,” he says.
One-on-one conversations that include personally asking co-workers to keep conversations confidential are key to keeping things quiet, Belasco says. When 2,100 UC tech workers voted to unionize in May, 96% voted in favor. To stay out of earshot of managers, avoid employee surveillance tools, and sidestep conference calls that could be recorded, organizers met with workers in their homes.
“That tactic is probably what made the difference between winning the election and getting the majority we got,” he says.
“Running a campaign against major employers requires the resources and expertise of the larger labor movement, even if workers publicly present as independent,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research and senior lecturer emeritus at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Options include the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), among others. Another resource, the Tech Workers Coalition (TWC), provides training on organizing tactics, AI-in-workplace issues, and contract negotiation, and can match workers to the right unions for their needs.
The Alphabet Workers Union decided early on to affiliate with CWA. “They gave us a bunch of support early on in our campaign with no strings attached,” McAvinney says.
Kickstarter is organized through OPEIU, Thompson says. “They’ll usually have resources and staff that can help you through the next steps: collecting signatures in support of a union, bringing that to management, holding a vote — the more formalized things that interact with US labor law. They’ll also help with organizing along the way,” he says.
For workers at institutions where a union already exists, there may be a faster path. Organizers at UCLA did what’s called a “unit modification,” aligning with UPTE. By organizing under UPTE, the workers didn’t have to negotiate a new contract from scratch — they joined an already-negotiated contract covering existing UPTE tech members, which put them in “a much stronger position” than starting fresh, Belasco says.
Assess what’s practical for your organizing effort. In a majority union, more than 50% of all workers in a defined bargaining unit must vote to join the union through an NLRB-supervised election in the private sector, or a Public Employment Relations Board (PERB)-supervised election for public sector workers.
The NLRB must certify the union, which then operates under its legal protections. This means, for instance, that the employer must bargain, negotiated contracts are enforceable, violations must go to the NLRB or arbitration, and workers can’t be dismissed without just cause.
A pre-majority or minority union is a minority labor organization operating without NLRB protections or collective bargaining agreements. “Pre-majority means that workers are able to demonstrate majority support — through signed cards, petitions, a walkout, or everyone wearing solidarity T-shirts — without going through a formal election,” Bronfenbrenner says.
Kate Bronfenbrenner from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University
The Alphabet Workers Union-CWA (AWU-CWA) formed as a pre-majority union because achieving majority status across a globally distributed workforce of over 100,000 was not a realistic near-term goal. “An underground model where you try to reach 70% support across a workforce of over 100,000 people isn’t realistic,” McAvinney says.
A pre-majority union can still make a difference, he says. for instance, the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA convinced management to offer voluntary exit packages — buyouts — prior to announcing layoffs.
For smaller organizations, a majority union may be the more practical option — it’s more attainable, McAvinney says. “I don’t think [the pre-majority union model] is the correct thing to do in all situations. I certainly would not recommend it to a 200-person shop.”
Kickstarter, which had fewer than 100 employees, was able to form a majority union, with 55% voting to organize.
Ultimately, says McAvinney, “there’s no inflection point where you go from being able to win nothing to winning everything, even with a contract and a supermajority. But the more people you have who are willing and able to fight for what they want, the more you’ll be able to get.”
Belasco’s situation at UCLA illustrates a broader strategic choice that every organizing campaign must make. He had been in a union position in educational tech innovation when he was told his role would be reclassified as a non-union position.
“I was given a choice: apply to the new non-union position to continue doing the work I’d trained for, or stay in my union position doing service desk work I wasn’t used to,” he says. “Essentially, it was a choice between job security and career progression.”
Belasco joined a “wall-to-wall” union, which represents a broad range of university professional and technical employees across the UC platform rather than a single job category, such as engineers or tech professionals.
Kickstarter United is another example of a wall-to-wall union. “It’s not just the engineers who are unionized, but also customer support, designers — everyone,” Thompson says.
Wall-to-wall unions are more powerful, but they’re also more difficult to achieve. Under US labor law, “professionals have to vote separately on whether they want to be combined with other workers,” says Bronfenbrenner. “You can never have a wall-to-wall unit without giving professionals the chance to decide whether they want to be separate.”
The law’s “professional employees” category includes roles like software engineers and developers but not necessarily others. for instance, customer support specialists and QA analysts would fall into the “non-professional workers” category.
Winning a union vote means having a seat at the table, says Thompson. “Once the workers have come together and agreed they want that seat, you bring that to management, and they have a chance to voluntarily recognize a union,” he says.
But in most cases employers contest the results, which must be certified by the NLRB or PERB. That process, in which the employer uses various tactics to challenge the legitimacy of the outcome, can take weeks or months.
Unfortunately, the legal framework that is supposed to protect workers during this process has been significantly weakened in the last few years. In a potentially more ominous advancement, SpaceX, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, and the University of Southern California have in separate legal actions challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB, arguing that the agency’s structure violates the separation of powers. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld injunctions against the NLRB in SpaceX’s case in August 2025 — a serious challenge to the agency’s authority.
In the meantime, some companies may disregard negotiated contracts, which can lead to lengthy legal appeals or extended arbitration.
“The NLRB can still force an election, but it can’t force a contract, and companies are saying they simply won’t comply,” Bronfenbrenner says. This is where the expertise and resources of affiliation with a major union can help, she adds.
As a result, contract negotiations can take far longer than workers might expect. At Kickstarter, for instance, two years and four months elapsed from the time of the union vote to the first contract, and that was at a 59-person company with a relatively cooperative employer. At larger companies with more aggressive legal teams, the timeline will be longer.
Forming a union is hard work, Robutti says. “It’s not a service you pay for and they protect you. It doesn’t happen spontaneously, and it doesn’t happen magically. It’s the choice to take responsibility for improving your workplace.”
See Part 1: A brewing battle: More IT workers want unions. The industry doesn’t.
Why This Matters
This development may influence user expectations, future product strategy, and the competitive balance inside the broader technology industry.
Companies in adjacent segments often react quickly to similar moves, which is why stories like this tend to matter beyond a single announcement.
Looking Ahead
The full impact will become clearer over time, but the story already highlights how quickly the modern tech landscape can evolve.
Observers will continue tracking the next steps and how they affect products, users, and the wider market.
