Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
en.wikipedia.org175 points by akolbe 3 hours ago
175 points by akolbe 3 hours ago
Some people here think Wikimedia Foundation's mission is to keep Wikipedia up. That's a subset of their mission. I attribute nearly all of the blame to WMF, because their donation ads are quite deceptive.
The actual, public mission of Wikimedia Foundation:
> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
As such, WMF spends a lot money (combined) on a splatter of projects, like funding photographers to go to events like Fifa World Cup and Cannes, and take (CC or public domain) portraits for Wikimedia Commons (https://www.wikiportraits.org); etc.
SV is a cancer. Even its charities are like this.
In contrast, proud of EFF voluntarily recognizing its union and agreeing to a good contract for workers: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-and-ifpte-local-20-at...
“SV”?
I think all these silly little acronyms and abbreviations are the real cancer. I don’t why people feel the need to use it. Poor communication skills in my books.
SV is so SV-centric that people in SV can only call SV "SV" and assume everyone outside SV knows what they are talking about.
Remember that this is what your money funds when you donate to it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
No wonder they've upped the guilt tripping this year. Wikipedia has enough money right now to run Wikipedia forever but it keeps wasting it on useless stuff and feeling like it needs more. The WMF cannot fathom how to operate without continuous growing wastes of money, and without donations, Wikipedia would die within two years. We need to starve the beast so it learns to live frugally again.
Jimmy needs his third yacht, dangit!
I don’t know if you’re joking or not but of course Wales doesn’t profit directly from this. And, as a non-profit, compensation of executives is public knowledge. I believe Board members get zero compensation other than reimbursement for travel expenses.
(Jimmy Wales did cash in on his reputation with some ads for luxury watches and idk what else he does for $).
Salaries at the WMF have absolutely exploded, though they started out very low given the location and the talent base they were competing for. You probably want the WMF to be a somewhat competitive employer, and Silicon Valley salaries are also through the roof across the board. So those $400K executive salaries are (grating my teeth) vaguely justifiable.
A volunteer-run page summarizes salary progression in key roles (up to 2024)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...
So you can be assured your money isn’t going to the executives’ bank accounts, not directly anyway. However, this is precisely why non-profit organizations tend to get bloated. The executives can’t get away with a million dollar salaries and not other goodies like stock grants. But you can justify staffing up, which benefits the careers of the executives.
Seems it'd be far more reasonable to direct the excess funds into an endowment of sorts instead of spending it on other areas.
If they did that they'd already have a big enough endowment to fund all of Wikimedia for life.
Well, Wikimedia does have an Endowment, currently valued at $169 million. See Form 990:
https://wikimediaendowment.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20...
This is in addition to assets of around $300 million held by the Wikimedia Foundation. Form 990:
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...
For expenses breakdown see the most recent audited accounts:
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wiki...
I have donated to them for many years and will stop now. I will not support any kind of union busting.
Be sure to tell them why you stopped. I’ll be doing the same. Hopefully this pressures them to give up on this
Some years ago, I think a french contributor pointed that out, aka asking why the wikimedia foundation wants so much money.
Now the picture is getting more clear - denying a union is clearly big brother billionaire thinking, e. g. lowering cost while maximizing abuse of workers/employees.
Wikipedia is a money laundering outfit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CANCER
The linked article doesn't even come close to suggesting money laundering. It really just argues that Wikimedia is similar to virtually every other successful organization on earth and that its bloat grows with its resources.
Wow insightful.
The mere existence of The Mythical Man-Month or Peopleware does not prevent this behavior. Turns out it's actually super, super hard to avoid. It's pervasive enough to have several books written about it, and several more angry blogs written about specific companies' failure to achieve the allegedly "easy, obvious" thing that very, very few companies actually succeed at doing!
Makes me wonder if it's not so obvious or so easy... hmm... Nah, probably everyone else is malicious and/or stupid.
Money laundering has become a default catch all term for "monetary misuse / suboptimal allocation". At least among the general public.
I worked in AML tech for a bank earlier in my career. I put up a fight against this misuse of terminology for a while, but eventually just gave up. Just embrace that everything is money laundering to many people and life is easier.
Words in general don't really mean much anymore, online anyway.
It reminds me of when health fads take off. Everyone "has OCD" or whatnot. I'd talk to people and they've given me a rundown of who they claim they were, but lol, they weren't that person.
Everyone can identify and use words however they want. Once it goes viral the meaning of the word changes. It's difficult to parse who people are nowadays cuz of it.
There's no sense fighting it. Someone will tell you you're wrong, you're out of touch, you just don't get it, or "your vibe isn't right".
> Money laundering has become a default catch all term for "monetary misuse / suboptimal allocation".
No it definitely has not
Among the generally misinformed public, which I was clearly referring to, yes, it absolutely has. Everything is money laundering.
Do you think I was literally saying the financial definition has changed?
I don't think he thought that, he was probably expressing the view that he doesn't think the representative person's understanding of the term is the same as yours.
I have to confess, I've never heard anyone talk about money laundering in the way you suggest.
The root of this thread literally uses it in the way I observed. So...never? It's literally right there! I see similar uses everywhere (speaking specifically of the general public, not financial industry professionals), calling every misallocation, misspend, or even simple fraud money laundering. Reddit, HN, Facebook, LinkedIn...everything is money laundering.
Again, I'm kind of an expert in AML, so I probably pay attention to it way more than you do, and probably have a much better perspective on this. I constantly see people refer to almost all misuse or misallocation of funds as money laundering.
Maybe you just don't know what money laundering actually is? Because the vast majority of the public certainly doesn't.
Personally (n = 1), this thread was the first time I've seen the term "money laundering" used hyperbolically like this.
It is interesting how "enshittification" just happens because of scale.
People are really not curious enough about bureaucracy. We complain literally our entire lives about "bureaucracy" and all the bad outcomes it produces.
But I've met literally no one who thought "hmm... if there's this emergent phenomenon across virtually every single large-scale human endeavor... and that phenomenon seems to systematically produce undesirable outcomes... at the cost of billions of dollars or millions of lives... maybe I oughta inspect this phenomenon more closely!"
People have been told for so long that private companies are more efficient than government that they have started to simply believe it, as if the problems of large scale organisation aren't universal.
Some cracks have emerged in that, at least in the UK. Trains, water companies, etc, all used as solid examples of private sector waste and extractiveness.
Another word whose usefulness has been degraded to just mean “bad behavior by an organization”.
With “enshittification”, Doctorow meant something specific, where a platform rises to popularity by serving its users, then betrays those users to its business partners to make more money, then finally betrays even those business partners to keep most of the value for themselves.
Anyway I guess Doctorow brought this on himself by choosing a word that’s fun to say but isn’t clear about what it refers to.
Doctorow approved the generic use. He said he never meant for "enshittification" to only ever refer to the platform lock-in pattern. It refers to any way that things get worse on purpose.
Enshitification doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice to sacrifice quality and integrity for short term profit. There are plenty of large products and companies that haven’t gone this way.
This is called the Iron Law of Bureaucracy
Which as your article points out, is as easy to solve as reading The Mythical Man-Month. That's why it's an Iron Law. It's easy to remove!
Also, as you point out, it's actually the same as money laundering, which is an actual crime. So as it goes, every large organization is committing massive scale organized crime (to their own detriment, oddly enough), but they can stop doing so by just reading The Mythical Man-Month.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Yes. everyone kinda sucks in their own ways. Mostly not enough to matter in their lives, but in large groups, the suck adds up.
I don't think of non profit bloat as enshittification. Enshittification is gradual reduction in quality of a user facing service over time that used to be trusted. Here it's just a matter of (arguably) inefficient spending as fundraising had increased but I don't think there's any rollback in services.
I could not find any indication that the purpose of this ever-increasing spending (while alarming) is money laundering in the essay you linked. Can you provide any other source to back up this claim? Money laundering is illegal, while spending money in of itself is definitely not.
I'm generally critical of WMF and think (1) they waste significant amount of resources on mis-managed projects, and (2) are not very honest or transparent in donation communications.
But to play devils advocate, a lot of this depends on your views of what WMF should be. Some see WMF as "keep wikimedia sites up and healthy". But the foundation is much broader:
> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
As an example, one of the hundreds of projects that WMF funds is the WikiPortraits Photo Service (https://photos.wikiportraits.org). Take this with a huge grain of salt, but Sol found ~$500K of direct grants in the past 3yr; with 50k Creative Commons or public domain portraits taken as a result.
Some people might be shocked at this, and feel scammed that some of their donation to WMF is funding photographer's hotels/flights/compensation to Cannes, Fifa World Cup, etc; instead of servers or infra or 'KOTL employees'.
Others might think it's an incredibly great use of money; at just $10/photo; while contributing novel, high-quality, human-authored, freely licensed content to the world
That $500K over three years represents 0.08% of the foundation’s budget in that time period. The question is, what are they spending the other 99.92%? There is a significant small chunk spent on crucial infrastructure, but it’s mostly a slush fund for board pet projects.
Yes, that is a good example. I used to be cynical about these uses of money until I met a 70-year-old volunteer who regularly attends international cycling championships to take pictures of the cyclists. She is totally devoted to documenting the sport and is not by any stretch of the imagination getting rich doing that or living in luxury. So I've changed my mind: her being able to do that is a good thing for her, for Wikipedia and for the sportspeople involved in these championships. YMMV.
The expenses tracking revenue does rather paint a picture.
No individuals should be donating to wikipedia, it is clear that any donation will be spent as rapidly and as wastefully as possible.
This makes it look like the goal of the union is to get into the piggy bank, rather than reverse some kind of hellish work environment.
Fair compensation is a legitimate reason for unions.
I don't know much about this situation, but I know it is possible for unions to basically be a group of drama-oriented bullies that pressure their coworkers to join. A secret ballot seems like the right way to ensure it actually reflects the will of the employee base.
>It might even be a lawsuit that forces the WMF to pay out a judgement that is larger than the reserve.
lololol
Wikipedia was almost illegal in the UK due to age verification, but the government granted it a special exception.
Can someone explain what "union recognition" means, concretely?
At the conceptual level, unionising is simply a group of workers gathering into a group and saying we want to negotiate as a group. Usually this is done by workers to improve conditions and to have a better say when they’ve been being ignored or worse, poorly treated.
Union recognition is then the company accepting that the union exists and then agreeing to meet and engage with it.
Not accepting it, is usually a crappy corporate move in an attempt to not have workers collaborating together.
Lots of research shows that generally places where unions exist have better work conditions and perform better over the long term.
The US has lower union involvement than in many countries.
> Lots of research shows that generally places where unions exist have better work conditions and perform better over the long term.
Do you have any non-partisan sources for this? Genuinely curious. When you say perform better what do you mean specifically? And does better work conditions include better pay or just on-site conditions or something similar?
https://www.nber.org/digest/202508/unpacking-union-wage-prem...
They earn more and are more productive. Here is one Canadian study but I’m sure you can find more if you’re interested.
The non partisan source is the history of the industrial revolution itself.
I am not saying that you are doing this, but I tend to find that people who think we don't need unions anymore are engaging with the status quo in the same way as people who say we don't need vaccines anymore.
> The non partisan source is the history of the industrial revolution itself.
I think that’s less of a factor of unions existing themselves and more so the public realizing the need for stronger labor laws. Though certainly unions were advocating for stronger labor laws (as they should have been).
> I am not saying that you are doing this, but I tend to find that people who think we don't need unions anymore are engaging with the status quo in the same way as people who say we don't need vaccines anymore.
I wouldn’t think that, because that doesn’t make sense. Vaccines are a clear public good. Unions can be but aren’t necessarily. Or should I bring up public unions like police unions?
I don’t have a strong position on unions. I don’t care too much one way or the other. Folks should be able to freely organize, business should be able to freely fire. But I think the OP’s claims need more substance. If you look at “performance” well none of the Mag 7 have unions, all have insanely high pay, and great benefits to boot. Would it be better under a union? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
We have gone a long way since industrial revolution.
e.g.
Child labor now outlawed.
There is a minimum wage. (You can argue it is still way to low, but going from zero to some is a huge change)
Some OSHA rules mandate employer provide safety equipment.
What you described is the result of the government acting as one big, but very conservative, union.
Literally demonstrating the point in dofm's second paragraph right here...
I think working conditions have changed enough since then to make a request for non-biased studies a reasonable one. Most debates about unions seem to boil down to “I just know” or anecdotes. I would expect unions to fund research to show that working conditions are better in union shops, but not include the fact that some unionized shops can’t compete in a market with non union shops and might go out of business. (But have great working conditions until the last day) And vice-versa for pro industry research. Unions are adversarial, and feel necessary to people that view employment or employers through that lens. It’s possible that we can still credit unions with the status quo, but 1they have nowhere near the adoption of vaccines to make the analogy a good one. I’d rather debate “which employers/industries” need unions than debate whether they are objectively good in all circumstances.
Note that government labor regulations are effectively just really one big union (called the government). Where would we be without them?
Smart unions are supposed to take business conditions into account. If the business is losing money, the union would recognize that and pull back a bit, because it needs to be a symbiotic relationship to last, not a parasitic one. However, businesses are rarely willing to share honest financial numbers with their unions.
> Note that government labor regulations are effectively just really one big union (called the government).
That’s not at all what a union is. Why else would federal workers need their own unions? The point of a union is collective bargaining power for labor. Federal workers have little to no bargaining power when budgets are set by Congress. Especially when they can’t strike.
I can't parse this comment in relation to the context.
They’re pointing out that calling the federal government “a big union” is inaccurate, and reasons why.
> Note that government labor regulations are effectively just really one big union (called the government). Where would we be without them?
Playing devil's advocate:
- Having government functionally like one big union make individual union obsolete.
--
But the government isn't very good at it. The government also represents the owners of the companies, and it did the bare minimum to stop the workers from literally murdering the owners and setting their houses on fire (which used to happen regularly before the government guaranteed worker rights).
The conceptual level breaks down in places where an open shop is illegal or disincentivized, which I suspect is the case in California where the Wikimedia Foundation is based. Europe usually has open shops, not closed shops, for example.
No, it doesn't. There is no such thing as an "open shop" in the US, even under right to freeload. Union membership is determined by job classification. If you are working in a unionized environment, and your job title is a union job title, you are in the union. You will be covered by the contract your union bargains with the employer. The only question, then, is whether you pay the dues to cover the costs of union membership. In a right to freeload state, you can choose not to pay the costs.
You both have it mostly backwards. The Taft-Hartley act mostly bans closed shops and allows states to pass “right to work” laws making payment of any agency fees to unions optional.
In no state are any employees compelled to formally join a union. In an American-style “closed shops” in a non-right-to-work state, if you don’t join the union the bargaining agreement can charge nonmembers an agency fee representing most of the dues they would pay as members. Not to mention pressure tactics to join.
Also especially in the trades in major markets unions control apprenticeship programs and hiring halls and make it virtually impossible for nonmembers to get union work, as well as gatekeeping access to apprenticeship programs in the first place.
Right to freeload laws work as I describe. Although no employees are forced to "join a union" in the sense of signing a piece of paper joining the union, in all cases they are union employees in practice. That is, the union collectively bargains their working conditions, the union supports them via grievance if the employer doesn't follow the contract, and so on. The right to freeload allows for such a person to get by without paying dues - that is, the cost of providing these collective bargaining and legal representation services.
It just struck me how dystopian the phrase "right to work" is. Like, you have the right to go down the coal mine for 16 hours a day and get lung cancer! No right to get paid, though...
Is union recognition legally required to, say, organise a strike? Do workers who participate in a strike organised by a non-recognised union expose themselves to getting fired?
When strikes are legal is really complicated and depends on industry.
The thing to understand is that labor law in the US was created to "reduce labor strife." Unions existed before they were recognized as legal. What labor law tries to do is make an orderly process with the goal is no strikes and a mutually agreed-on contract.
The company recognizing the union is the first step towards a contract. Basically it's saying "I understand this organization represents these employees and I should negotiate with it."
This reminds me of the German approach to street marches. They are allowed, must be registered with the police, and the police will ensure there are several policemen around for each protestor just in case any of them "try anything". The police form a box around the protest, restricting it from going anywhere not approved and restricting people from seeing the signs; they also blare their sirens so that the chants can't be heard outside the box. The cost of all this is, of course, billed to the protest organiser.
So as you can see, they have incredible free speech! They allow just anyone to carry out a street march!
As someone living in Germany, what you're saying is not true. It is correct that protests have to be registered, that's the case for pretty much all developed countries. It is also correct that the organizers are responsible to cover costs. But the police doesn't restrict people from seeing signs, doesn't blare their sirens. They mostly stay on the side while handling the traffic, and intervene if the protest becomes chaotic. In the vast majority of protests they do literally nothing other than being present.
Compared to the US where multiple protesters have been killed on video by ICE this year Germany is a dream of free speech
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> Wikimedia Foundation is asking for an election to ensure everyone actually wants this.
Why? Does recognition entail that every worker is compelled to join the union?
My dad worked for the United States Postal Service for decades. He never joined the union, but he was still legally required to pay union dues, and the union was still legally required to represent him. So at least in some cases, yes, starting a union does affect all employees and practically requires them to "join" even if there's an option to not join on paper.
Wouldn't it be better to join so that you can have a vote in the union operations, including to disband it?
Is not what happened? WWU announced on 28 July that they would file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. The announcement also accused the Wikimedia Foundation of being disingenuous in their public communications:
Also on the communication by wales he says he wasn’t happy with the election because people knew who voted for, but he didn’t deny there was some kinda of election?
> This is incorrect. Voluntary recognition, which is what this article is about, means that an election is not done. Wikimedia Foundation is asking for an election to ensure everyone actually wants this.
Misinformation.
Voluntary recognition just means that there isn't a 120 hard fight against union elections to decide if there CAN BE a union.
Dark Horse comics just voluntarily acknowledged their union. After that is union elections, to decide who the union elected is.
There is no evidence of unions performing better for digital services at all. Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
“No evidence” or “I haven’t looked for evidence”? Unions do more than just keeping people from dying in mining accidents — for example, I read this yesterday with what sure looks to be concrete benefits for the workers:
https://www.propublicaguild.org/updates/propublica-guild-rat...
This isn’t impressive. 13% over 4 years? In any case this can’t be evaluated without knowing what was initially offered pre union and what they initially asked for.
> Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
You mean, like actors? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAG-AFTRA
Or teachers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association
Or service employees? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Employees_Internationa...
> Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
Sure, the arguably most successful union in the history of the US, the Screen Actors Guild, is only useful because it kept all of those actors from being worked to death, and it has nothing to do with all of the millions of dollars that its members make yearly.
At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.
It’s quite common that that also extends to negotiation on salary bands, and it’s also quite common the company then applies the same salary bands to non union employees also, rather than the norm in tech of individual negotiation. Many people think they’re in the group that is negotiating outlier salaries and would lose from this. However, many people with that viewpoint are also wrong about their position in the salary scale.
Sometimes this extends to promotion criteria and some unions push for tenure or seniority based promotions. This may or may not be better than your individual companies specific combination of merit, nepotism, the political clout of your managers and the business criticality of your department.
One thing that happens in the US that is illegal here is some companies agree to becoming a union shop and make joining the union compulsory.
> At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.
By federal law, if a company has a union, the union must represent ALL non-management workers, even those who do not pay dues.
This is obviously fucked up. But this has been union law at the NLRB for a long time.
The fair response: a union should only legally be responsible for representing its members. But these sorts of terrible union laws are the consequence of attempting to destroy them since their creation.
And for those of you who think unions are terrible (capitalists and ilk), what we had before was 'firebomb the business or the bosses house', and basically waging war between capitalists and labor. Unions and legal representation WAS the compromise.
Labor history has always been a bloody and murderous affair. Go look up the history of the pinkertons.
>By federal law, if a company has a union, the union must represent ALL non-management workers, even those who do not pay dues.
This is not true. There can be non-union job classes even if the employer has some unionized employees. Even in different geographic areas you can have one location have class X union and another non-union (eg Starbucks).
What you cannot do, is have a unionized location with union Software Engineer I and non-union Software Engineer I. Sometimes employers try to skirt this and have non-union jobs that are too close to union jobs, and then it's lawsuit time.
The problem there is that if it doesn't represent everyone, the company will simply give better conditions to nonmembers to pressure members to quit their membership. You do still have a way to change the union even if it's involuntarily representing you: just join it and then vote to disband it.
“Union recognition” means the employer acknowledges that the union is the bargaining representative for a subset of employees within the organization. This comes with additional legal duties on the part of the employer, such as exclusively bargaining with the union and not attempting to negotiate directly with individuals the union represents.
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1. Mention some concrete facts. Or at least assert some claim.
2. Given the very low rate of unionization in the USA, I think the issue you need to be most concerned about is no-benefit gig work instead of a huge wave of unionization.
If you are capable of adding any substance to your various comments, you need to do so. Otherwise you’re just strengthening the view of the opposite as your comments read like someone is desparate to manipulate public opinion.
My understanding from trying to read the post is that WF isn’t happy with the process because the vote isn’t closed. It doesn’t sound completely unreasonable to me. And then they are attacked because they are working with a law firm, since a decade or so, with things that has nothing to do with union recognition thing. Apparently that law firm is known as a ”union buster”, but there’s no evidence that the law firm has been involved in the negotiations around the union. To me the argument that WF is evil and hostile to unions is weak.
I’m always careful when I see a post about how bad and evil WF is. They come up quite frequently nowadays. WF have powerful enemies, because you can still read things like climate change is real and vaccines are good for you there.
I don’t think WF is perfect, and I do think their shortcomings should be publicly criticised and discussed. But overall, I still think they are an important force for good, and will continue my monthly donations to them.
Wikipedia's side
> [W]e believe a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board is the appropriate path forward. This process protects individual choice and ensures that any outcome reflects the collective will of those eligible to participate.
> [Jimmy Wales:] One of the problems with the process so far is that it was not secret and we have heard from some staff members that they felt pressured because the organizers would know how they decided. That isn't a great process and it goes against our movement's values quite badly to have people in a situation where they are pressured into something one way or the other.
Counter-argument
> The community response to the WMF statement has mostly been one of dismay, with fears that the Foundation will use the time gap between now and the secret ballot to discourage employees from union involvement, using union busting methods as described humorously in an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
The episode is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8dUXRpoy8, a transcript is at https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/tv-series/union-busting-last-w...
---
Honestly, I'm on Wikipedia's side: there should be a true secret ballot. It should be soon and I'd be fine seeing the union win. Sure Wikipedia can use threats and propaganda in the meantime (so can Wiki Workers United), but that is less coercive than a public ballot.
Wikipedia has to say that people were being coerced to sign the cards in order to activate the NLRB secret balloting process. The "normal" thing (as expected by the law) is the company recognizes the union once there are enough cards signed.
The secret balloting process is a second phase activated only if the company alleges that the cards were signed under duress. Wikipedia is saying they believe that people were coerced into signing these cards in order to activate the NLRB process. They have to say that the cards are improper or recognize the union.
I read Jimmy's statement and it comes across as exactly the kind of leadership you would want in this situation, whether you are a pro-union employee or not. An employer has a legitimate interest in making sure their employees are not intimidated into some action they don't want to do. At the same time, he is willing to recognize and welcome the union if that's what the vote reflects.
Yeah for the counterargument like... if you were afraid of tipping your hand, maybe you should've done it the correct way (anonymously) the first time?
They are doing it the correct way. In order to get union recognition you need to get enough people in the company to sign union cards. This is the normal way to create a union.
Companies argued that some people could be coerced and so the NLRB created a "two step" process in case the company protests the creation of the union. Basically if the company says "we don't think these cards were signed under proper circumstances" the NLRB would come in and hold a secret ballot.
That is basically what's happening here, and "wikipedia's side" is actually them reading a statement written by their lawyers in order to activate the NLRB balloting process.
The real reason why the companies like to invoke the secret ballot process is it takes a long time, and this gives them a lot of time to fight the union, fire the organizers, and "convince" employees to withdraw their support.
Interesting! Wasn't aware of this.
Given that they know the company may invoke NLRB's process and require a second anonymous ballot anyway, can organizers not start with an anonymous one?
No. There's basically a chicken and egg problem. It is not illegal to discuss unions in the workplace or to pledge support for a union. But the "union" has no standing to do anything other than talk to people.
So to get a union you first need people to talk to their colleagues, and if the people they're talking to seem agreeable, get them to sign a card saying that they would like to be in a union. Once they have enough of these cards that have been signed by people who have spoken with union representatives and pledged their support for a union, they can go to the company and use the cards as proof that the union has broad support.
The idea that people are compelled to sign union cards is a bit of a fiction. Signing a union card is an act of bravery because it paints a target on your back especially if the union drive fails. It's documentary evidence that you're a troublemaker.
In fact, Wikimedia has already fired a team that had several members heading the unionization effort. [1]
This is classic union busting behavior. Of course they won't say the reason they let the team go was because of unionization efforts because that's illegal. But they certainly will point to vague reasons.
This sort of firing decision is also a key part of why the union started in the first place [2]. Apparently Wikimedia has a bad habit of just letting people go, playing favoritism, and breaking promises to employees.
[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unionization-at-Wikimedia-Commu...
We just went through institution of a union at my employer for one type of employee. The organizers did exactly this, and as an observer/affected party it was a little coercive. But you know it has to be, because people always prefer the status quo. It takes a lot of work to unionize and it ultimately never felt forced because we all wanted it. But man, the pressure to sign and put your name down was high, and BECAUSE there were no protections, definitely unnerving.
No, you need the signed cards to take to the NLRB and get an anonymous election.
The process actually ends up working like this:
1) you sign the cards
2) the company alleges that the cards were signed under duress and people didn't actually want to sign. This is a necessary step in order to invoke the NLRB process
3) this puts everything on hold for the months it typically takes for the NLRB to act, allowing the company time to engage in anti-union activities.
That's not how it works. You need the signed cards to hold an election. Employers can, seeing a large majority publically willing to sign the cards before they have any solid protections, choose to forgo the election on the basis that a majority of employees were willing to sign.
If the only reason WMF had to request a formal election was to allow secret ballot, they would not be hiring union busting law firms. The point of such firms is to legally and illegally discourage union membership - the penalties for doing so illegally are comically small.
It's not that the company can forgo the election. The company must allege that the cards are improper in order to activate the NLRB secret balloting process.
Has any company ever not alleged it?
Some do, but if you hire a union busting law firm the first thing they have you do is read a statement alleging impropriety with the union cards, in order to initiate the NLRB process.
Companies aren't required to present any evidence other than "we have reason to believe" so it's pretty much a ritual at this point.
Yes, but it's uncommon enough that doing so is called "voluntary recognition" of the union, acknowledging that the expected process is to file the cards and then do the NLRB election.
I understand why factory workers or store clerks might want a union but I'd never understand why tech workers should.
I guess except the game developers but the most realistic threat vector for them is the studio shutting down, so a union wouldn't really help.
For exactly the same reason as factory workers or store clerks: to even out the power imbalance against the owners.
I can only assume you aren't paying attention to, and aren't personally experiencing, the impact of AI on the industry.
Power has shifted dramatically in favour of the ownership class in the last couple of years. That's precisely what unions are meant to counterbalance.
What’s a union going to do if (doing a lot of work there) AI significantly reduces the demand for software engineers or tech workers generally?
If employers have the upper hand at the moment, the union contract will be more evenly distributed perhaps, but isn’t likely to be “better” overall.
That combines to have tech workers, who often have an exceptionalist view of themselves, to conclude that a union would cost them all the union overhead and prevent their exceptional talent from being properly rewarded.
I'm hardly a fan of the WMF, but the headline is clickbait. The WMF has used a law firm called Jones Day for brand and trademark management for over a decade. The firm is one of the largest legal firms in the US and it also does union busting, but a) the WMF does not appear to have engaged them for that, and b) the relationship long predates the current kerfuffle.
> However, it eventually transpired that the Foundation has chosen to be represented by the law firm Littler Mendelson, which has an equally strong reputation for union busting.
> we have heard from some staff members that they felt pressured because the organizers would know how they decided
in 2026? one would think wikipedia people pick up some self-help literature now and then and know how to fake a backbone until you grow one ...
( I have my own share of behaviors that I should have fixed when I was 11 so don't take this the wrong way )
What is this?
Hierarchical pressure? At freaking wikipedia? Fear of getting pressured into eventual compliance? At freaking wikipedia?
How the hell does a foundation select a board like that? And what are they gonna do? Send Napalm, Agent Orange, Sarin Gas?
There are union-busting law firms? What are they gonna do? Infiltrate your meetups?
I'm a bit baffled
> we have heard from some staff members that they felt pressured because the organizers would know how they decided
This is a statement written by their lawyers to activate the NLRB secret balloting process.
The company is supposed to accept the union cards unless they have reason to believe that the cards were signed under duress (the popular image of "union thugs" with baseball bats intimidating people).
I hate unions. I hate lawyers. I hate any consolidation of power in general, so I hate all sides here. And I've never had the "I want a refund" feeling on donating to (what I thought was) a charity, that I now think deeply misrepresented itself when it asked for money.
Sigh. For me Wikipedia is synonymous with petty bickering and fiefdoms and politics. Why I am not surprised by this? It's like student unions only worse
Good. Most tech unions are worthless and only accelerate outsourcing. Unions can be good though, like in construction where the work is inherently dangerous.
Here's the union's demands. [1] Which of them do you find particularly unreasonable?
How are unions worthless? First they can prevent unsustainable growth. Wikipedia doesn't need to grow, second they prevent exploitation of the worker, why should some random person treat wikipedia as their personal lottery wikipedia wasn't a new, or good, or well executed idea. It's a basic service that helps collate information.
What's wrong with outsourcing? That's what we do with all our bad ideas. Need to blow leaves from one side of the street to the other? Get a Mexican to do it. This frees up people to have better ideas, like well written articles that don't have a hundred irrelevant links littering the page.
This comment is pretty representative of why tech unions are worthless. Form a union to stop growth, and you pay your hard earned salary into such an organization with these goals?
Read WP:CANCER, there's a good argument. Wikipedia keeps spending its donations on useless stuff and therefore needs more and more donations each year. If it just stuck to running Wikipedia and a few side things, it would already be funded for 1000 years.
yes, yes, blame the victims. It's always the fault of the pedestrian for being in the road.
They are getting paid. Don't like it? Resign. Find another job. Don't like any? Open your own business.
OP is right. Union only makes sense for job that are inherently dangerous where union's primary job should be ensuring safety.
So paid overtime, vacation, parental and sick leave, and 40 hour work weeks are, in fact, shameless excesses that have made office work worse?
It may be due time to disentangle the Wikimedia Foundation from Wikipedia.
Which Side Are You On?
I have never understood why it's okay and not wildly illegal for anyone to interfere with unions at any level in the USA
Then again we still don't have universal healthcare and now even more million have lost health insurance due to cost so I guess it's stupid all the way down
People just keep voting against themselves. might be billionaires someday so gotta protect dubious "rights" of the ultra-wealthy just in case
Because the USA is an oligarchy of the ultra-wealthy. Next question?
Definition of oligarchy: like a dictatorship, but with more than one dictator.
Every leftist organization goes down that way. From progressive NGOs to even unions themselves. Unions lawfaring other unions from being created. Most famously of course the realized utopias themselves. From Russia, to China, etc
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Given your other, completely insane comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143931
I am inclined to assume that you are paid to oppose unions online.
Also your recent comment history consists entirely of angry contrarianism.
GP posting account is 4 months old, 40 karma. Recently became active.
Check comment history. Does not seem to engage in productive dialogue.
Can you provide your view of the events, then?
Note that I know nothing about the topic but the article, but the article says:
> [W]e believe a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board is the appropriate path forward.
Honestly, that was the point where I stopped reading and hid this story.
They used a non-secret election! Fuck them tbh. Jimmy Wales is entirely right here.
They followed the process for forming a union in the US.
The claim that the Foundation totally supports the right to unionize but wants to hold a secret election would be a lot more credible if this happened before the workers had a supermajority (!) of signatures collected.
> They followed the process for forming a union in the US.
They followed a process. Secret ballots are also an established process. From your own link:
> Since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) became law in 1935, card check has been an alternative to the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) election process.
My understanding is that a secret ballot election is actually the more common scenario.
> The claim that the Foundation totally supports the right to unionize but wants to hold a secret election would be a lot more credible if this happened before the workers had a supermajority (!) of signatures collected.
Do you really envision a situation where a supermajority of signatures were collected from fully non-coerced and well-informed employees, but some union-busting magic is going to cause them to lose a secret ballot election?
I envision a scenario where the foundation just tries to drag out the process as long as possible because that's the best they can do in the situation they're in.
I envision this because I've seen the same strategy used elsewhere myself (in the unionization context) and delaying to wear down opponents is a common strategy (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay,_Deny,_Defend)
> They followed a process.
Both of the processes require collecting signatures in the same way, the difference is what happens afterwards and when. Even for the election they would have to collect signatures, so claiming that collecting the signatures was somehow "wrong" for not being a secret vote suggests either a lack of understanding or intentionally trying to muddy the waters.
> Do you really envision a situation where a supermajority of signatures were collected from fully non-coerced and well-informed employees, but some union-busting magic is going to cause them to lose a secret ballot election?
No, I fully expect the secret ballot to have the same results. So what point is there in doing the secret ballot when everyone knows what the outcome will be? Is it maybe to delay recognizing the union so management has more time to come up with union-busting strategies?
See, what you are missing is the games that would be played if they did a secret election.
"Can you prove that only employees voted in this?" "Can you prove there was no ballot stuffing? "
I am not generally pro-union, I believe it has it's place but have also seen downsides but I have seen these games played out before.
Read the post.
It's all fear mongering around a very balanced response from the WMF.
Could they engage in union-busting? Sure. Did they? No.
The article appeared to state both the facts and the assumptions being made off of them pretty clearly.
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You need to be more specific than that if you want to convince people. As far as I can tell, the title is factually correct; if it's not, I'd like to hear your argument.
Both halves of the title are true statements.
Unfortunately you can construct just about any narrative using true statements. Omission of facts is usually the damning trait of dishonesty.
Jimmy Wales is an Objectivist supporter of Israeli policies, you can't expect much from that combination.