Why a tech union?

The workplace is not democratic

The workplace is not democratic. Workers don’t get to vote on the board, investors, CEO, customers, contracts, pay, or even the basic conditions of their daily work.

Unions don’t just go on strike for better wages – they ensure workers have their say in all aspects of the business. You can make sure everyone’s got access to work from home. You can get better maternity and paternity leave. You can protect your non-unionised colleagues in offshored offices. You can pressure management into refusing a contract with a dodgy client. Unions bring democracy to the workplace.

“Organising in tech has its own challenges, especially with tech giants with huge resources. Organising in such workplaces is therefore more challenging. As an online-first trade union, UTAW is super accessible. It’s been really easy to get involved, to get trained in the skills I need to organise at work” UTAW Organiser

About UTAW

• United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) is an independent and autonomous branch of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) formed in 2021. We are the UK’s only union specifically for the tech industry, and the only online-first union in the country.

• We’re a union by tech workers, for tech workers. Our founding members were activists from the London Tech Workers Coaltion (TWC), who sought to form a industrial union presence in the tech sector. This gave tech workers across the country a formal, legal entity that allowed staff at various companies to come together an organise around workplace conditions, current issues in tech and society at large.

• We’re the biggest tech union in the UK. UTAW represents your interests in the workplace and protects you and other workers from overwork, underpay, poor working conditions, bullying bosses, and the innumerable exploitative practices of the tech industry.

Tech union timeline

1970s

• 1972, New York - The Committee to Plan a Computer Union meets to plan an “industry-wide, all-inclusive union which would span the gap between professionals (programmers/ analysts/operators) and non-professionals (key-punch operators/tape-handlers)”. While the plans were not realized, it is one of the first known attempts at unionizing in the computer technology industry.

• In the UK during the 1970s, members of the Lucas Aerospace Combine Committee, workers at Lucas Aerospace proposed saving the company by producing technologies that fight climate change instead of waging war — showing how workplace democracy can solve the crises of capitalism.

1990s

• Workers at Versatronex Corporation, a company in Silicon Valley that makes circuit boards, went on strike to protest low wages and a lack of health care and other benefits. Most of the strikers were Latina women and had contacted the United Electrical Workers Union - they struck after the company fired a worker who was vocal in supporting unionization.

• The Communications Workers of America have renewed their drive to organize IBM employees. CWA previously attempted to unionize IBM in 1985. This time around the union started a new organization, Alliance @IBM. It reports that roughly 100 thousand of the company’s 140 thousand workers are eligible for unionization. Union supporters have started outreach and leafletting efforts at multiple locations, including the Research Triangle in North Carolina. The new organization will work with the existing IBM Employee Benefits Action Coalition. This effort continued for the next seventeen years, until it was ended 2016. At its peak, the Alliance had 400 dues-paying members.

2000s - ‘dotcom bubble’

• Hundreds of workers in Washington State attempt to form unions at IBM and Microsoft creating a new group called Washington Alliance of Technology Workers or WashTech with the help of Communications Workers of America.

• In the early 2000s the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees started conducting survey of tech workers across the country found. In 2004, the survey showed that just 33% supported unionizing their workplace. By 2016, that had grown to 59%.

• In one of the first reported unionization attempts at a ‘dot com company’, an affiliate of the Communication Workers of America known as the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech) sought to unionize a group of 400 customer service employees at Amazon. Amazon closed the call center before the campaign could proceed further due to financial pressures following the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. Amazon has disputed unionization by arguing that the employees are owners of the company since they are given stock options.

2010s

• 2015 - The Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) was founded after full-time tech employees began meeting with and organizing alongside subcontracted workers, including cafeteria workers, security guards, and janitors. These initial meetings helped tech workers learn from each other and allowed tech workers to identify ways they could support subcontracted service workers struggling for unionization and greater economic protections.

• In 2016 Ubereats delivery drivers go on strike after the company introduces a “pay per delivery” charge. The strike forces the company to back off.

• Also in 2016 Deliveroo drivers file to win union recognition as part of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain. The company changes their contracts to prevent them from being classed as employees, thwarting the unionisation attempt.

• Uber loses an employment tribunal case, and under UK law their drivers are now classed as employees rather than casual workers.

• In 2016 Mexican app delivery drivers met to form the Sindicato Independiente de Repartidores en Aplicaciones (SIRA APPS, rough translation: Independent Union of App Deliverypeople). The union souight legal recognition, and demands worker accident insurance, worker-led onboarding for new delivery drivers, and assistance with social benefits registration.

• 2018 - More than 3,100 Google employees signed a petition, demanding that the company end Project Maven — a Pentagon contract that would have seen Google develop artificial intelligence to improve drone targeting by analyzing video imagery. Following the petition, Google was hesitant to end the contract, and it took an additional two months of worker organizing before the company publicly announced that it would not renew Project Maven.

• in 2019 Kickstarter Employees Vote to Unionize in a big step for organising workers in tech; engineers and others at the crowdfunding platform voted narrowly to form a union, one of the first tech companies to do so.

• July 2019 - London chapter of the Tech Workers’ Coalition is formed

2020 - now

• 2020 sees members of London TWC found the United Tech and Allied Workers union project.

• September 2020 over 1,500 Amazon employees walked out of work to protest the company’s negative environmental impact. The walk out was historic, the largest corporate walkout in the tech sector in recent memory.

• October 2020, UTAW launches as a national branch of the Communication Workers Union

• October 2021 Medium workers in the US announce they are forming a union with the Communication Workers of America

• After a three year campaign, Amazon warehouse workers in New York win their union, forming the Amazon Labour Union

• 2022 sees Apple Retail employees from around the globe organise ‘Apple Together’, a collection of international unionisation efforts including members from UTAW in the UK