Big Tech’s Battle With Labor Unions Is Just Getting Started
Organizers had a handful of key wins in 2022, but so did Apple and Amazon.com.
The Communications Workers of America offices in Washington, DC.
Photographer: Greg Kahn for Bloomberg Businessweek
The largest US technology companies spent decades arguing that they were different from the corporate stalwarts that came before them: more productive, quicker to disregard convention, more focused on making their customers’ lives better. Fixtures of the old economy—in particular, regulations and unions—were inappropriate for innovative companies like theirs, built on speed and flexibility.
In 2022 labor unions came for Big Tech anyway and scored some surprising election wins. But as the year wore on, it became clear that those skirmishes—which have yet to yield a collective contract between management and workers—were just the start of a long battle with the industry.