Transcending Borders? Horizons and Challenges of Global Tech Worker Solidarity

Abstract

While the reach of tech firms has become planetary, the counterpower of their workforces often remains local. The article explores the challenges and opportunities to transnational solidarity among tech workers, the higher-paid employee strata of tech companies. Based on three recent cases of transnational organizing, I argue that three markers stick out in the efforts: informal organizing instead of institutional power-building, the importance of labour migration and the surprising lack of using structural power to this date. The articles concludes that tech worker organizing can learn from the conflicts of lower paid gig workers in the industry and institutional developments geared toward transnational worker representation.