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.

I’m far from being a doomer. I just don’t believe technology will save us. There are better ways.

open source startups are still part of the same ecosystem that fuels big tech. Big tech, being more powerful, can capture commons very easily and that’s true for the vast majority of open-source code. The very concept of open-source was conceived by a person with the same ideological and cultural background of the tech oligarchs now in power.

yeah and it does harm. Any technology amputated a part of us. The point is deciding if it’s worth the cost.

yes. That’s how Mussolini and Hitler got into power.

After the USAID thing I called it this morning: Before the end of march the U.S. is a dictatorship in all but name.

You’re optimistic. Yarvinists are openly advocating for dictatorship.

USAID was a probing attack, gauge the reactions, develop plans, figure out how to do it better with the next department. You don’t start with Homeland Security, the CIA, or the FBI - that’s the final part.

Well, debatable. Purging the secret services first is always a great idea when you’re doing a coup.

You should start the union

if it happens, or simply if you get more involved into Romanian unions, reach out to me. I organize events to connect tech workers organizing interionationally, so we might do something.

Go for it. If you want to look for a very good example of union communication, look up “More Perfect Union”. Very American, but it shows a way to bring union news to people in a cool way.

Pretty much anywhere outside the USA, the communication of tech workers unionizing is pretty much absent and expecially news about it. This is a big deal, but it doesn’t say much about the actual penetration of unions in a given sector. It’s a complex topic, but I explain it with the fact that the topic is pretty much uninteresting, unless it’s a well-known brand is unionizing. Since most famous tech companies are American, there’s enough mass of news there to actually push media outlets to cover news.

In Italy, where there are very few “well-known” IT companies, the topic is completely absent, to the point where IT union organizers from a city don’t know about big wins by other IT unions organizers from another city. Nonetheless the narrative is not the thing, and there can be big impacts that become visible to the general public only after sociological studies.

So, long-story short, the fact you never heard about SITT doesn’t say much about its effectiveness, just about their ability to communicate.

Are you aware that Romanian IT sector has the highest rate of unionization of any IT sector in the world? SITT is a case study studied all over the world. https://transform-network.net/blog/interview/the-romanian-it-workers-labour-union-showed-that-everyone-can/

It might not be the sexiest, most modern radical union, but it is a case of success with numbers to show. Maybe you can start from there.

most cursed take of the day. This is a terrible system that turns workers in self-entrepreneurs, where most struggle and a few get a lot of money.

where do you live? The tech workers movement is reaching pretty much everywhere there’s tech production.

luck is not gonna help. Only action and organizing can save us. Join a union too.

what years of culture war do to the human mind