co-operatives are started by worker’s initiative. It’s not something that comes to save you. If there’s no co-op in your area, start learning what you need to start one, govern one, and how to find co-op funding.

It depends on where you live and what you’re looking for in life.

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.

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.

you answered to the wrong person.

In fact I was talking about “foot worshipping” and not foot fetish in general, which are arguably very different dynamics.

Every kink is a kink because the object of the kink holds some specific value or logic within the social context that is then relived or subverted within the kinky dynamic. If foot worshipping wasn’t, historically and symbolically, an act of submission in society, it wouldn’t be a kink at all.

It’s just to understand if you do politics or you just talk about politics.

Criticizing without strategic and contextual awareness of what you’re criticizing should stop being normalized. If you just have opinions on stuff instead of building or participating into organizations, I know for sure I can disregard your words.

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

How are you contributing to that?

I think it’s time for you to be introduced to the concept of “cognitive work”. We have been doing that for a few thousand years now.

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.

Until it starts using its power to decide what technology and contracts are taken by the company. That’s the endgame of the tech labor movement and the labor movement in a lot of industries that deal with ugly stuff.

Also there’s no ethical production under capitalism.

By working for a company and thus make them dependent on your labor (to some degree) you have power. By not working for that company, you have no power.

There are also people staying to try to unionize or sabotage the company. Don’t bundle them with the scabs. Quitting won’t change much within meta.

I organize tech workers. The expectation that they are going to fight an uphill battle inhibits a lot of them and often it’s not the scenario they are faced with. Tech workers being skeptical of the possibility of unionizing their workplace is a mind virus that needs to be eradicated for anything to happen. If then they find hostility, there are endless means to win over their colleagues, but if you discourage them before even starting, nothing will ever change.

If people stopped repeating this stuff, it would help

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

if you want to know more about TWC: https://techworkerscoalition.org/

No, it’s global. There are two timeslots to better accommodate the broadest possible crowd. TWC is mostly active in the USA and Europe atm, because the Indian chapter basically merged with the local IT union and stopped operating as TWC.

The event is organized by the TWC Global chapter, which is the “digital” chapter that supports the local chapters throughout the world.

fixed them, thank you