Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

Posted by robin_reala 3 days ago

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Comments

Comment by dbingham 3 days ago

Lots of people asking "Why?". They say so right on their site: There are big changes happening in the technology industry and they are acting pro-actively to ensure the workers have a strong collective voice in the ways the foundation chooses to respond to those changes.

"The Wikimedia Foundation and the broader technology and nonprofit sectors are navigating a period of significant change. From rapid advances in artificial intelligence to evolving organizational priorities and external pressures, and changing patterns of readership and discovery, the decisions being made today will shape our workplace for years to come. Our union members believe this is the right moment to establish a lasting, legally recognized voice in those conversations. Rather than waiting until difficult decisions are made, we are organizing now to help build a stronger Foundation that can meet future challenges through collaboration, transparency, and shared stewardship."

https://wikiworkersunited.org/faq/

Comment by Arubis 3 days ago

This is the right move. Unionise when things are good enough that labor can take a hit and keep standing, or when they’re so bad that people might actually die. Either way labor has a strong BATNA.

Right now a lost of software work is kinda in the middle; it’s not very secure and labor isn’t confident and doesn’t have a lot of great, easy alternatives, but by and large getting food on the table tomorrow isn’t an open question.

Comment by bitshiftfaced 3 days ago

> or when they’re so bad that people might actually die

Care to elaborate? Am I understanding correctly that the implication here is that there is some condition for which a software engineer having a union agreement could prevent that worker from dying?

Comment by Arubis 3 days ago

Yes, certainly: the ability to say “no” to abusive labor conditions without risk of irreversibly losing any source of income while living in a society that treats lack of income as deserving of whatever pains and suffering come with it.

The word “any” is doing a lot of work here—I’m implying a denylist or “social credit score” or other way of persisting punishment against an individual beyond mere job loss.

You’re right that we’re not there right now. We’re in the wide middle and still closer to the “we have lots of bargaining power because we’re in demand” end of the continuum—_directionally_ it does not feel that way, but we don’t have a ton of folks dying of Boolean lung in the code mines. But I’d not rule out the possibility. The range of possible human experiences is vast.

Comment by aliasxneo 3 days ago

> living in a society that treats lack of income as deserving of whatever pains and suffering

What does the opposite society look like? Universal income?

Comment by Arubis 3 days ago

I’m not even sure that’s a useful question. It almost points at “what’s the other end of the continuum so we can discuss points on the axis”, which _is_ useful, but I’m not even convinced that “merely” treating those without income as deserving pain is at an end of a continuum itself. It’s a point upon it; things could be worse yet.

Instead let’s break away from opposites and into pieces. What would be _different_ in a society that doesn’t judge harshly the less fortunate?

I’d suggest that would include ensuring that nobody starves or sleeps on the street for want of work.

Comment by Lutger 1 day ago

Richard Rorty describes liberalism as the idea that cruelty is the worst thing that exists. Cruelty, of course, has just as many forms as suffering.

Universal income protects only basic needs and it does so in part. Even if you have income, you need to have housing, clean water, food that isn't poisened and some form of healthy environment to live a good life: income doesn't guarantee it.

On the other end of the income spectrum is the unlimited amassing of wealth. After some point, wealth turns into power. For example, Musk is able to buy twitter influencing public opinion, and Starlink can make or break the battlefield.

If we are talking only about income, I think we would need both a minimum (universal) income and a maximum (a cap on wealth). If we do not, then we will eventually lose democracy.

Comment by AndrewKemendo 3 days ago

It looks like a healthy extended family where resources are shared towards a common goal of health and liberty.

Comment by briandw 2 days ago

Unfortunately this does not work at nation scale. We are not insects. Tribes fail at levels over a few hundred and that scale only works because of blood ties. Communism has failed to produce good outcomes every time it's been tried. Even coops aren't competitive with traditional corporations.

Comment by AndrewKemendo 2 days ago

Agreed, the human biological system likely needs radical augmentation in order to actually realize such a system

The median cortical volume fails beyond dunbars number, so some kind of compensation is needed

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago

>It looks like a healthy extended family where resources are shared towards a common goal of health and liberty.

In the Europe, like several rich western countries, we mostly replaced the extended family with the government welfare state, for better but mostly for worse.

So current young workers are contributing to a failing state ponzi pension system that will leave them in poverty by the time they retire in several decades, and they will also lack the care of the extended family unit that was the norm decades ago thanks to collapsed birth rates. Double whammy.

Comment by AndrewKemendo 2 days ago

Doesn’t sound very much like a healthy family to me

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago

WDYM?

Comment by aliasxneo 3 days ago

What if health and liberty to someone looks like them not providing any net positive to society? What compels someone to work 12 hours a day to share those resources with such a person?

Comment by MrDrMcCoy 3 days ago

Some people look to the nice things they have and think to themselves "I want everyone to have these things."

Comment by aliasxneo 2 days ago

No argument there. The question is whether history shows us that that represents a majority or minority of people.

Comment by awakeasleep 2 days ago

You’re making a point about loafers but non-wage earners are always going to outnumber wage earners, and able bodied loafers are a minute fraction of who we must provide for (the young, the elderly, students, the disabled, etc)

Comment by AndrewKemendo 2 days ago

Sounds like an unhealthy person and situation such that 12 hours of labor is mandatory

Step one would be to help them get into a situation where that wasn’t true

Comment by aliasxneo 2 days ago

If enough people decide they want to spend their liberty not working, then the 12 hours is a necessity, not something "unhealthy" about the person.

Comment by AndrewKemendo 2 days ago

Sounds like you’ve got your world model rock solid

Comment by aliasxneo 2 days ago

It mostly just feels like basic maths, not really a world model. Productivity is a finite resource. If there's a deficit in productivity, people will necessarily suffer and, in the worst case, die. The problem is world views that suggest giving everyone a free choice that enough people will choose productivity while everyone else chooses leisure. I'd be more apt to believe it if we had evidence of it being a natural outcome.

Comment by pocksuppet 2 days ago

It doesn't have to be so extreme though. Basic scenario: 20% of everyone's income is taxed and then distributed equally to everyone (no matter what, and without setting any fixed dollar amount), another 10% pays for administrative functions and government stuff except welfare, and the remaining 70% is theirs to do with as they please. What would happen? Would everyone quit their job? I don't think so, because 70% is a lot. Some people with jobs that pay so poorly their 70% is less than everyone's average 20% would quit, but that's good, because those were zombie jobs.

Comment by aliasxneo 2 days ago

I'd be fine with this so long as people who didn't contribute any taxes couldn't vote. Otherwise you're just signing up for those who choose to work to get exploited by the leisurely.

Comment by Moomoomoo309 1 day ago

Are there historical examples of this ever happening in any significant numbers? This idea that people en masse just won't work and live off of the state where opportunities for work are reasonably available seems more like a boogeyman than a real thing. (obviously, if work is not really available, I can see this happening, but I wouldn't describe the people unable to find work as "leisurely" in that case)

Comment by AndrewKemendo 2 days ago

“I need the world to comfort my fears”

You’re correct. A society filled with people with this view can’t work

Comment by pocksuppet 2 days ago

How much is "none"? Exactly $0.00? Can someone who donates $0.01 to the government every year vote?

Comment by NewJazz 3 days ago

Or prevent that worker's work output from killing innocent, uh... Externalities. Folks. Animals. Ecosystems.

Comment by cyanydeez 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by mmooss 3 days ago

Also, there are allegations of adversarial management behavior. I can't find the link now, but some background:

https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-workers-vote-on-whethe...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143414

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists...

Comment by b40d-48b2-979e 3 days ago

All management is adversarial with the worker.

Comment by hdgvhicv 2 days ago

Vast majority of managers are also workers.

Comment by itsamario 3 days ago

What's to stop ownership from getting AI to pretend to be human and replace HR then everybody?

All it would need to do is object to any in person hearing

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 3 days ago

Can someone explain why do they need a union when they work for a non-profit? Aren't they mostly volunteers?

From my experience in my youth volunteering at animal shelters and environmental protection groups, you never volunteer for a non-profit for the money or the job stability, but you do it for the mission and the satisfaction of being the change you want to be in the world, even if that means living off ramen and beans and couch surfing. Especially given these are cushy jobs done from the PC via the internet without needing to physically get your hands dirty or break your back in poor working conditions, which a lot of other young well intended and ambitious people in the world would like to do, even for free.

Everything I've been reading in the last few years about wikipedia's management, article moderation decisions, political side-taking, and how they spend their donations has been very fish smelling and off-putting. It's like there's a malicious Hydra in the basement, wearing the Wikipedia name I grew up with as a skin suit, to advance their goals and agendas. Very fishy. But it does feel like this is the inevitable faith of a lot of old and famous non-profits over time, as the gray-beard founding staff leave and get replaced by people who don't share the same values and mission, but have their own agendas and wish to co-opt the established name brand and influence that comes with it to push it. IDK if this unionisation push is for good or for bad since I'm not a fly on the wall at the internal meetings to know the internal drama and gossip, but I do remain skeptical about what's going on at the WMF.

Like maybe the union is well intended today, but will it be the same in 10-20 years with that power? What protection are in place they don't misuse it? For a global repository of knowledge like Wikipedia, I'd much prefer the staff be constantly changing with new ambitious innocent blood, rather than have an entrenched gerontocracy protected by a powerful union, since from my historical knowledge I've never seen that end well long term since long reign and absolute power corrupts.

My 0,02$.

Comment by philipov 3 days ago

Nonprofit doesn't mean you don't pay your employees. Nonprofits earn and spend money like any other corporation, including paying permanent fulltime staff. Not everything can be done by volunteers. What they don't do is reward their investors with a cut of earnings above expenses.

Comment by vjvjvjvjghv 3 days ago

You can make some serious money working at nonprofits.

Comment by codersfocus 3 days ago

See OpenAI

Comment by NewJazz 3 days ago

They are not mostly volunteers. Editors are largely volunteers, but administration and development is very much a financed pursuit.

The nonprofit board can provide some oversight, but bringing workers voices to the table can provide additional perspective.

Comment by rexpop 2 days ago

> work for a non-profit? Aren't they mostly volunteers?

No. Common misconception. It's a business and career like any other.

> experience in my youth volunteering at animal shelters and environmental protection groups

Just not applicable, here.

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago

>It's a business and career like any other.

Then why should we treat Wikipedia any differently than we treat Meta, OpenAI, Google, Apple etc? When they're just in the business of making money and the "mission" can always just be another facade similar to OpenAI?

>Just not applicable, here.

Explain please.

Comment by rexpop 1 day ago

> should we treat Wikipedia any differently

I'm not sure we should. Should we? How so?

> Explain please.

Explain the difference between youth volunteer-work and vocational career-work?

Comment by cm2012 3 days ago

Everyone wants a piece of the wikipedia gravy train.

In 2010: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses were about $20m

In 2025: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses are about $200m

The story of Wikipedia of the last 10 years especially is endlessly higher spending for a very stable number of monthly users (1.5b or so). You can make the case that 80% of this spend is not necessary to what the average users donating to Wikipedia think of as "wikipedia".

It makes sense for the employees to want to lock in their share of the bag.

Comment by AnthonyMouse 3 days ago

> It makes sense for the employees to want to lock in their share of the bag.

That's the problem, isn't it? Suppose that e.g. Wikipedia traffic is down year over year because of AI summaries and then they get fewer donations. Now something needs to be cut. It's a non-profit so "investor profit" can't be that thing.

If you then also make it so that it can't be workers, what's left? It's mostly either spending down savings (which isn't long-term sustainable) or sacrificing things that ought not to be, like infrastructure or servicing technical debt. So now you've put off a given percentage of layoffs for a few years until that catches up to you and sinks the whole foundation.

Comment by cortesoft 3 days ago

One option would have been to stay small. Keep the yearly spend down where it was in 2010, don't hire too many more people, and save all the donation money they brought in. Build that fund in the good years to pay for salaries in the lean years.

Comment by 20after4 3 days ago

Wikimedia foundation actually have a rather large endowment¹ set up from donated funds to help sustain the organization through a hypothetical future downturn. I'm sure it wouldn't sustain the current level of spending but it would theoretically cover minimal operating expenses.

There are a lot of things to criticize about Wikipedia but lack of financial planning probably isn't top of the list.

1. https://wikimediaendowment.org/

Comment by hdgvhicv 2 days ago

The US government has been targeting endowments. Wikipedia is far too entrenched in a single country to survive a real attack.

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 3 days ago

>One option would have been to stay small. Keep the yearly spend down where it was in 2010

And what are the realistic chances of that actually sticking long term?

Same chance as corporations and governments keeping spending, corruption and cronyism under control long term. So, virtually zero.

Comment by bitshiftfaced 3 days ago

> you then also make it so that it can't be workers, what's left?

What was the core reason that readers gave donations? Probably most donors want employees treated well and to ideally keep their jobs, and yet the main thing they probably had in mind was the existence and continuation of the service itself.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

> It's a non-profit so "investor profit" can't be that thing

Non-profits get corrupted through spending on well-connected vendors.

Comment by Dylan16807 3 days ago

The infrastructure isn't that much. If they need to be less ambitious about other projects I'm not going to worry about it. A union isn't going to make them keep every single project.

If they were paying each employee 10x as much, and that got locked in, and then they didn't have the money to pay them, there would be bad consequences. But that's not what's going on here.

Comment by AnthonyMouse 3 days ago

The infrastructure isn't that much is the problem, because labor costs are the largest single expense. When you take that off the table as something that can be cut, you're then stuck needing to make up the difference from the things that never cost that much to begin with, which means the cuts you have to make to them to make up the same amount of shortfall are deep.

> If they were paying each employee 10x as much

They're presumably paying the market rate either way. The issue is, what happens if they need to reduce the number of employees? Or they have too many front end developers and not enough back end administrators or vice versa, and then need to let some people go and hire others with a different skill set?

Comment by Dylan16807 3 days ago

Labor expenses can still be cut. Just not by screwing up wages. A union doesn't force you to keep the same number of employees forever.

And if there's any meaningful shortfall it's literally impossible to get there with infrastructure cuts. Nobody sane would try it, since the target would be negative one thousand percent costs.

Comment by AnthonyMouse 3 days ago

They have the inherent incentive to inhibit you from doing layoffs, and the same incentive to stop you from replacing existing workers with different ones since the existing ones get a vote and the prospective replacements don't.

> And if there's any meaningful shortfall it's literally impossible to get there with infrastructure cuts. Nobody sane would try it, since the target would be negative one thousand percent costs.

You can't make up a $35M shortfall exclusively from cutting infrastructure when you're only spending $3.5M on infrastructure, but you also can't make up a $35M shortfall by not cutting anything. And you can make up some of it from cutting infrastructure, so where does the money come from that didn't come from reducing headcount?

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

Half of that goes to wages and salary for ~650 staff members. Of the ~114M that goes to wages, 90M goes to people working directly on projects, 15M goes to admin/management, and the other 9M goes to people in fundraising/financials.

9M goes to paying donation processing fees.

3.5M goes towards network infra.

~2M of in-kind services were donated (i.e. doing free work or donating goods) and that shows up as a dedicated expense.

Professional Services (accounting, consulting, etc) make up another 15M (same as the total management/admin cost).

General operating expenses (property, taxes, office software, office equipment, etc) make up 8M.

Conference and Travel is 6M.

And then 4.5M is expensed as depreciation and amortization of owned assets.

-------

So to be entirely clear here. WMF projects make up 147M / over three quarters of the total expenses for the year. Fundraising makes up 20M all together (half being essentially fees and the other half is people running fundraising campaigns). And the remaining 21M / 11% is general admin.

11% is quite good for such a large foundation.

And if you want to nail down into it that 75% for projects is going towards a lot of engineering work to support long standing gripes with wikipedia's tooling and infra.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2024-2025-annu...

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports...

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...

Comment by Dylan16807 3 days ago

> And if you want to nail down into it that 75% for projects is going towards a lot of engineering work to support long standing gripes with wikipedia's tooling and infra.

I do not believe it's possible to spend that much money on those things in an effective way.

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

You can see the breakdowns of what goes where in the links I included.

Half goes directly to engineering and support for infra. ~17% goes to equity projects. ~10% goes to safety & integrity. And the remaining 23% goes to "effectiveness" goaled projects.

The projects in the equity category are focused on supporting various smaller language Wikipedia communities get established and cross-translate articles.

The safety and integrity projects put a lot of work into protecting volunteers well being, general moderation stuff, legal compliance, etc.

The effectiveness category is a little weirder but it's mostly various "experimental" projects that attempt to address longstanding issues across the WMF without forcing them under a particular sub-org's budget potentially taking away funding from essential services.

NGL They could cut back across the board in various ways and save some money but if they have the money (and they do), I don't see anything outright wasteful that they are spending on. Everything seems pretty clearly like hedged bets to make things gradually better for the future.

And notably these are expenses. There's a gap between expenses and revenue and all that extra revenue gets invested into the endowment, etc to gradually support more and more of their operating expenses with time.

Comment by serbuvlad 3 days ago

114M a year buys you only 650 people? Damn. I really should be moving to America at some point :)

Comment by parineum 3 days ago

If anyone wanted to do the math, that's an average of 175k per person

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

It's 175k per person including all benefits. Which is probably like 140-150k per year before the myriad of employer-paid payroll taxes and before the employer-side pay for insurance plans.

Comment by asadotzler 3 days ago

That's about half total comp of juniors at any FANG.

Comment by brokensegue 3 days ago

Also it includes insurance and such that doesn't appear in TC

Disclaimer: I work for the wmf

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago

FANG juniors make 350k+/year?

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 2 days ago

After factoring in employer taxes, employer side benefits costs, etc yeah that wouldn't surprise me.

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago

Making = what employees earn gross, not the extra burdens on the employer that the government takes

Comment by Grombobulous 3 days ago

Thank you for breaking this down. Every time Wikipedia comes up the exact comment parent to yours is posted in some form.

This comment and all its flavors is posted by a contingent of people out there who:

1. Think that Wikimedia is a wasteful, corrupt organization full of greedy employees (I guess that could be true? Doesn't seem that greedy to me given that they've never run an advertisement or enshittified their product)

2. Think that Wikimedia should operate more similarly to a for-profit organization with investors (e.g., it should start downsizing and stop investing in its platform because it stopped growing in MAUs)

3. Think that Wikimedia is being financially irresponsible and will run out of money (even though their own data shows that donations have grown faster than expenses)

I think we can just accept that Wikipedia gets a lot of donations and has the luxury of hiring people. And they really don't have that many employees given their traffic.

I don't get upset that my local art museum can buy better art when they get more donations even though the same number of people visit the museum every year. The people who donate to Wikipedia want more money to go into Wikipedia.

Comment by groundzeros2015 3 days ago

This completely supports 1. The extremely useful website provides the funding for all the much less useful efforts.

And of course it’s not immoral greedy people. It’s ordinary greedy people who like comfort, security, and doing interesting work.

And yes the admins want more money so they can do more projects and have more people work for them. And that’s also a kind of greed for status and importance that people who work in admin typically have.

Comment by hunterpayne 2 days ago

I doubt most people have put that much thought into it. However, a $100M a year for a website with an amount of traffic that isn't absurd, pages which are largely static, and doesn't have to secure financial transactions, seems a bit high to many people. Its that coupled with the constant requests for donations that doesn't match in most people's heads. For that amount of money, I expect most people think they can accomplish a lot more than the wiki foundation does. I expect that's most of where the criticism comes from, not the ideological attacks you are claiming.

Comment by next_xibalba 3 days ago

And all of that (along with the serious problems in how WMF/Wikipedia operate) is why I no longer donate to WMF.

Clearly, they don't need my money. But if they ever want to bring me back into the fold, they need to adopt Larry Sanger's prescriptions. This unionization seems likely to push WMF (IMO) further in the wrong direction.

Comment by Grombobulous 3 days ago

I think all employees should work for a union. My local art museum has a union. My local school system has a union. The non-profit university I graduated from has a union. Why shouldn't WMF have a union?

I really don't understand the bitterness toward them. If you look at their data, their donations are growing faster than their expenses.

The people who donate to Wikipedia/WMF want more money to go into the organization. That's the whole point of the donation. What else do you want them to do with the money exactly?

Comment by next_xibalba 3 days ago

I can't think of a single unionized organization that is run as well as or better than union-free organizations. Unionized companies all seem to be crippled by bureaucracy and unable to improve performance and output.

Comment by criddell 3 days ago

Professional sports is probably a good counter example. Major League Baseball, for example, treats the players better than any other baseball league around the world and most of the gains were achieved through collective bargaining.

Or how about Hollywood writers? The Writers Guild of America writers are responsible for most of the most successful movies and TV of the past decade or two (maybe longer). WGA writers are treated better than just about any other screenwriters around the world.

Comment by Grombobulous 3 days ago

The daycare my parent friends go to can’t retain a teacher for longer than a year or two. I hear stories all the time about the disruption and emotional distress abruptly losing a teacher with a 1-2 weeks notice causes.

The PreK teacher at the local public school has been there over 10 years at the same school and has a masters degree. Union, of course.

I’m sure the public school system is more expensive overall. You get what you pay for.

Comment by Danox 3 days ago

Kaiser Permanente, Fire Sprinkler Pipe Fitters, HVAC Tin Knockers many others…

Comment by NoImmatureAdHom 3 days ago

My experience is that unions very often make things stupider and less efficient.

I've been forced to give to two of them that were basically just political cosplay by children (well really the $ was taken without consent before it was even in my hands, so it was stolen)

And I've had the displeasure of working in a factory environment that was unionized. Perhaps there was a time when this made sense, but I think those instances are rare now.

See e.g. https://www.voanews.com/a/dockworkers-join-other-unions-in-t...

Dockworkers deliberately making everything worse because they want to keep their employment exactly as it has been.

Comment by Grombobulous 3 days ago

I would submit the idea that a lot of union reforms that have been made to laws in the US have been specifically designed to make unions less attractive and less incentivized toward positive outcomes.

Comment by next_xibalba 2 days ago

Which laws? And why?

Comment by Grombobulous 1 day ago

Here's a big paper on the subject: https://files.epi.org/pdf/215908.pdf

I'm not sure it touches on the exact concept I said, though. I've read about it somewhere else that I can't find right now.

Comment by next_xibalba 1 day ago

Thanks for the reference. I am interested in your specific perspective as opposed to someone else's (much less else the received opinions from The Experts).

Comment by NoImmatureAdHom 3 days ago

Sounds plausible!

Comment by groundzeros2015 3 days ago

6 million dollars in conferences sounds like a lot? Are they holding the conference?

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

It's for travel and conferences. IIUI this includes dedicated Wikimedia photographers that attend events and/or travel around the world to take royalty free/CC licensed photos for Wikipedia articles to use.

Long term it's far cheaper and gets you more, higher quality images than trying to hunt down images and negotiate license terms on each one.

Comment by groundzeros2015 3 days ago

I bet volunteers would do this for free and do.

Comment by cubefox 3 days ago

Exactly. The WMF spending growth is completely decoupled from its effect on Wikipedia. This only works because the donations pop-up makes people think they are donating to Wikipedia, not to a foundation which mostly does totally unrelated stuff. There is no feedback loop which would limit this spending toward the core aspects of Wikipedia.

Comment by nostromo 3 days ago

> very stable number of monthly users

Wikipedia has seen their traffic decline with AI eating more and more of their lunch. I imagine it’ll only accelerate from here.

Agents are increasingly accessing Wikipedia, but do not make donations.

There will be a lot of belt tightening at the foundation in the coming years.

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 3 days ago

>Agents are increasingly accessing Wikipedia, but do not make donations.

Irrelevant when donations from humans keep growing YoY way outpacing the actual expenses of running wikipedia. Half of people can stop donating tomorrow and they still would have enough money.

Having internet on your PC and your phone on the go didn't kill off the library, people still go there. Similarly, LLMs won't kill online libraries like Wikipedia.

Comment by rvba 3 days ago

Worst is that there is zero interest to deal with sock puppet accounts, state actors or just typical cliques

I saw a pair of an admin and other person (probably sock puppet) that were used for edit wars, the 2nd account was used to ban edits, especially from non registered users.

Comment by nswango 3 days ago

So 1/40 of Reuters annual revenues, 1/1000 of Facebook annual revenues, is being wasted on ... lobbying governments against internet censorship and cross-subsidising translations into less popular languages?

How dare the most useful human knowledge resource spend the money freely given to it in such a way!

The 'Wikipedia is spending your donations on DEI' conspiracy has run its course I think.

Comment by ksec 3 days ago

>In 2025: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses are about $200m

Am I correct in understanding, the $200M annual spend include the salary of those workers. And in case of any mass layoffs incoming, they are forming an union to better bargain?

Comment by 20after4 3 days ago

I don't think the union is motivated by fear of mass layoffs. Staff simply want some venue for solidarity and meaningful channels to have their grievances heard and by management without fear of retaliation. What I have gathered is that there have been some very questionable management decisions and arbitrary firings of people for reasons other than job performance. One specific case which appears to be reprisal for raising concerns about questionable/unethical behavior of certain senior management.

Discussions of unionization have been ongoing for many years, they only gained momentum recently due to the some recent events that, AFAIK, have very little to do with overall job security or any threat from economic forces or AI eating Wikipedia's lunch.

Comment by MrBuddyCasino 3 days ago

This is 95% of all NGOs and their ilk.

Related:

"We now have evidence of how at least $7.7 billion for homelessness was spent on salaries. They created a jobs program that grows at the expense of the actual homeless who need help instead of helping the homeless."

https://x.com/Twolfrecovery/status/2095661343215141026

Comment by bluegatty 3 days ago

Levels of waste in NGOs are a fully fair subject for debate but without context an arbitrary number is only misleading and therefore sadly cynical.

Also - you have no evidence for '95% of NGO's and their ilk'.

This is not Twitter.

Comment by hunterpayne 2 days ago

Please remember that NGOs are not charities. And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do. I think most of the grips about NGOs comes from the selling of NGOs as charities which they very much are not. They are however, taxed in the same way as charities and donate significant amounts to political campaigns (mostly local and state level).

So they get around centuries old restrictions on governments, get taxed like charities and donate heavily to political campaigns. That set of properties can and should draw significant criticism. When you act like they are charities, it just makes you seem naive. If they were charities, they would call themselves charities.

Comment by bluegatty 2 days ago

" And the entire point of an NGO is to get around restrictions on what governments can do" - no, they can serve many purposes, and there are tons of things governments should not be doing.

They are entities that have a civic purpose, not for profit.

Yes, they can in some cases support political causes, that is normal.

You seem to have a narrow view of what 'community' is aka something is either a 'charity' or 'government' - the world is more complicated than that.

" That set of properties can and should draw significant criticism. " - no, the properties of fine.

They can be scrutinized like any organizaition: charity, private company, ngo, government, etc.

Comment by MrBuddyCasino 2 days ago

Yours is the naïve view of someone who has never looked at how the sausage is made. There are hundreds of billions each year flowing through NGOs. Where do you think this money comes from. Hint: its not your friendly grandma.

Comment by bluegatty 2 days ago

You should take some time to learn what NGO's are.

America Medial Association, AARP (retired people) are NGOs, they advocate for their causes, that's perfectly reasonable and normal.

They are not 'for profit' obviously, and they're not strictly charities.

People can group together and organize as they please. Donations to NGOs are not tax deductible.

Comment by hunterpayne 1 day ago

1) Its spelled Medical

2) We have different regulations for different types of institutions

3) NGOs specifically exist to get around those regulations

4) A lobbying group (AARP) should have specific rules around how it can function. Lumping them with a professional standards organization makes it impossible to have reasonable anti-corruption laws. That's why NGOs exist, to make it impossible to enforce corruption laws. There is literally no other reason for it to exist as a category. We already have categories for lobbying groups and professional groups and charities.

Comment by hunterpayne 2 days ago

"They are entities that have a civic purpose, not for profit."

If they had a true civic purpose, they would call themselves charities. The specific reason they don't is because an audit of their spending wouldn't meet the standards of a charity. Remember, charities can take government money. They just can't do it in exchange for a service. NGOs can. That's not about civic purpose. Its about different administrative standards. Standards that allow abuse. That's the entire point of them using the term NGO instead of charity.

Comment by bluegatty 2 days ago

You're failing to convey what an NGO is, and fail to provide any evidence that either NGOs, Charities or Public / Private companies are structurally more inclined to fraud.

NGOs are not charities, they exist for a different reason.

The American Medical Association is 'civic purpose'.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by cbeach 3 days ago

> In 2010: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses were about $20m

The numbers are worse than that. FY2009-10 expenses were $10.3M. FY2024-25: $190.9M. 19x increase in fifteen years.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics
Salaries alone were $106.9M last year (from the Foundation's own Form 990 FAQ). And it's not as if the money is needed: the Foundation holds $296M in assets, plus a further $169M in a separate endowment.

Wikipedia's own editors held an RfC in 2022 and found "broad, near-unanimous consensus" that the donation banners were misleading - the ones hinting the site might go dark without your £2.

  https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-foundation-donate.html
The spending grew anyway. What do donors clicking those banners imagine they're funding?

Comment by cyanydeez 3 days ago

yea...200m is totally a gravey train.

Do you live in the same universe where elon musk was work 1 trillion?

Comment by tux3 3 days ago

Short statement from the WMF in response: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/09/03/us-staff-uni...

They seem to say they'll accept the outcome and pledge to engage in good-faith. Which is the only correct response, really, so time will tell if these words are more than generic PR.

Comment by 20after4 3 days ago

I'm not convinced that they intend to engage in good faith.

Comment by spindump8930 3 days ago

Commenters in these discussions always confuse wikipedia editors with Wikimedia employees - this is the latter!

Comment by mmooss 3 days ago

The OP talks a lot about volunteers, but doesn't clearly state they are part of the union.

Comment by Waterluvian 3 days ago

Are editors employees in any formal way or are they closer to Reddit moderators? Or editors as in anyone, ie. Reddit posters?

Comment by tux3 3 days ago

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, editors are not employees. Even the admins are not employees.

(As far as I know you only have to sign any kind of formal documents if you have one of the few roles (as a non-employee) where you may have access to sensitive personal data, which is very few people.)

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 3 days ago

>Anyone can edit Wikipedia

Hasn't been true in a very long time. Plenty of politically charged articles are locked so that only Wikipedia's editors can edit them, and you can guess which side they're taking. It's not a democracy.

Comment by 20after4 3 days ago

> only Wikipedia's editors can edit them

Anyone can be a Wikipedia editor, assuming you haven't done something egregious and gotten a lifetime ban.

It takes no time at all to set up an editor account and you don't even have to divulge your real identity to do so. The Wikimedia Foundation appears to go to great lengths to defend their editors and has gone to court to defend their editors' rights to pseudo-anonymity.

Note: I am a former employee of Wikimedia and everything I saw while I worked there supports that the vast majority of staff, including management, care a great deal about protecting editors, promoting free knowledge, and making the project as open and inclusive as possible.

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago

>Anyone can be a Wikipedia editor, assuming you haven't done something egregious and gotten a lifetime ban.

Firstly, not all articles are open to editing by gen-pop. See: Extended confirmed protection on many.

Secondly, some pages that are hot on the political side can then become subject to broader Wikipedia contentious topics / discretionary sanctions rules, so even eligible editors who qualified for extended confirmed protection edits, must fall in line with the approved narrative or risk sanctions and have their edits reverted to what the WMF staff admins and Arbitration Committee or ArbCom decide who gets to have the objectively correct viewpoint in certain cases and who doesn't.

>The Wikimedia Foundation appears to go to great lengths to defend their editors and has gone to court to defend their editors' rights to pseudo-anonymity.

OK, but why are you bringing this up? I never claimed otherwise. All I said wikipedia is very selective with who gets to edit some topics and what its admins and arbcom consider as "valid sources" and which not, leading to entrenched biases on political topics. Wikipedia defending editors is a good thing but an offtopic derailment addition to what I was originally talking about which had nothing to do with this.

Comment by 20after4 2 days ago

>OK, but why are you bringing this up?

Mostly as disclosure that I worked there. Not trying to make a point about anything at all. Just offering my observations as a former employee.

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago

Would wikipedia/WMF protect its editors even if they were known to be supporters of Trump and ICE?

Comment by uqers 3 days ago

Could you give an example of an article that was protected for reasons other than preventing vandalism? I've seen other people bring this up, but never with evidence.

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 3 days ago

Someone's opinion is always gonna be someone else's vandalism.

I could bring an example, but then what protection do I have from the HN mob flag-bombing it?

Comment by Waterluvian 3 days ago

You're entitled to no protection, nor are we entitled to you providing an example. But if you don't want to provide an example, your claim immediately turns to dust. This is just the fundamental core of rationalism.

The sky is green. I won't be taking any questions.

(actually the sky really was green a few days ago, related to tornado weather!)

Comment by PorciiVorbesc 3 days ago

> But if you don't want to provide an example, your claim immediately turns to dust.

That's not how it works in reality. If people disagree with the example it's dust anyway, except now you also wasted your time.

My opinion is irrelevant here since if people have made up their minds that WIkipedia is not biased and takes sides, then no example will suffice and they simple ask for an example just to have a target to shoot at.

I've been on this rodeo before. There's no guarantee of a good faith argument when politics are involved. I have no guarantee I'm not dealing with people arguing in bad faith trying to bait for a flame war, so I'd rather not even start to save time and sanity.

If you think it's dust, then so be it, I don't mind, I don't lose anything from this, nor do I gain anything from trying to convince you I'm right. I have my opinion, you have yours and we can leave it at that.

Comment by Waterluvian 3 days ago

Yeah makes sense. I was wondering if there was special meaning to “editor” that made it non obvious that they wouldn’t be unionized.

Comment by v1z 3 days ago

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Comment by pwillia7 3 days ago

Hell yeah -- and on labor day weekend too.

Comment by iamnothere 3 days ago

As long as they don’t attempt to force the editorial side of Wikipedia to implement an ideological slant, or otherwise interfere with the NPOV policy, more power to them.

Comment by transcriptase 3 days ago

The NPOV policy has just lead to alternate ways to keep things aligned to the region that most prolific editors/contributors would occupy on an idealogical quadrant.

It’s similar to the way traditional media outlets that pride themselves on not being partisan in what they say, simply exert their bias via what they either don’t cover or inconvenient context/facts they leave out. The writing itself is seemingly neutral, except for the part where if they included the stories or details that run counter to their belief system, their readers might come to a problematic conclusion.

Comment by iamnothere 3 days ago

Are you saying it would be better to pick a specific ideological slant? If so, which one?

I am well aware of the existing Wiki slant, it’s certainly not perfect especially on highly political articles. But an imperfect attempt at NPOV seems better than no attempt at all.

Comment by spopejoy 2 days ago

Strange that workers organizing to better their working conditions would raise such concerns, vs. say, the management changing c suite roles with zero oversight. Bosses know best?

Comment by iamnothere 2 days ago

One can easily be concerned with both.

Unions are a great idea, but some modern unions have been corrupted, focusing less on worker solidarity and improving conditions/pay and more on unrelated “omnicause” topics that are destructive to both the workers and the company. Emphasis on some, which is why I said it may be fine. It’s really hard to tell in advance.

Executives have always been a potential source of problems, nothing new there.

Comment by spopejoy 2 days ago

Hmm, maybe you can enlighten us with some examples of "corrupted unions" focusing on harmful product changes to some kind of demonstrable extent?

The issue of leadership corruption in unions is well-known and definitely does _not_ lead to the kind of PC tyranny you're worried about here.

To be clear, what I'm objecting to is the "harrrumph I'll support worker's unions IFF they hew exactly to my non-working-condition-oriented values and demands." How about just supporting the workers?

Comment by iamnothere 2 days ago

The most recent examples are the unionized London Google workers attempting to force the company to terminate its military AI contracts and giving researchers right of refusal on individual projects. Something similar happened at Microsoft, it was not a union action but it was organized.

Public service unions (teachers, police, corrections) are of course highly political and often get involved in things way beyond work conditions and pay.

In the current political environment it’s not a stretch to imagine a union attempting to change Wiki policy to achieve political goals. Wikipedia is a public good and I would highly oppose this.

I’m more pro-union than most, I support having a union rep on the board as in German companies, but I think this should come with both designated powers and limits. The union gets a vote on the direction of the company, but they don’t get to dictate it, which would effectively be a seizure of the company. When it comes to work conditions and pay, they get a much stronger vote, strong enough to force fair compromises. That’s the union deal.

Co-ops are a better model for workers who want to join a company where they have full democratic control.

Comment by spopejoy 2 days ago

> The most recent examples are the unionized London Google workers attempting to force the company to terminate its military AI contracts and giving researchers right of refusal on individual projects. Something similar happened at Microsoft, it was not a union action but it was organized. Public service unions (teachers, police, corrections) are of course highly political and often get involved in things way beyond work conditions and pay.

These are examples of workers leveraging their collective strength to do something that putatively a majority of workers support (modulo corruption/bad leadership of course). Shall I now give you the endless scroll of management doing all of the above and worse? Yes, union workers have a modicum of power to impact company operation, but it's not built-in to the concept of collective bargaining and indeed your Google example "attempted" to do something; management can simply do it.

> it’s not a stretch to imagine a union attempting to change Wiki policy to achieve political goals. Wikipedia is a public good and I would highly oppose this.

Wikipedia is not a "public" good. There is no mechanism preventing Wales and co taking it whatever direction they want.

> Co-ops are a better model for workers who want to join a company where they have full democratic control.

Co-ops are indeed great, but Wikipedia is not offering to become a co-op. You are arguing for "designated powers and limits" on one side only. If you're "pro-union" you have to accept that this grants powers to the collective, and if you start putting brakes on it without doing the same for management, it's anti-union.

Comment by iamnothere 2 days ago

You’re presenting your theory of union power as if it’s the only allowable theory. I support a different view. Workers do not own the company and should not directly steer it, although they can influence it and the union should of course ensure that they are treated fairly.

The point of a private company is that it is owned and steered by the private owners, while a public company is owned and steered (through the board) by public investors. Now you may say that neither of these models should exist, but if that’s your position then the public should put it to a vote. Capturing and subverting companies through the back door inverts the entire ownership model without democratic input.

I actually do think that we should consider rewriting the model for public companies, at least, but it should be done democratically unless we’re opening the door to ending the current Constitutional order. Which may also be a possibility, but until then, the country still nominally operates under that framework.

Also, Wikipedia is “owned” by a nonprofit foundation governed by bylaws and values aligned with the public interest. This is much better than being fully private.

Comment by spopejoy 1 day ago

I missed the part on your previous reply about having a union rep on the board. This is foreign to me as a US citizen so perhaps my vision is blinkered by the horrible state and history of labor relations here.

In a US context, with none of these kinds of arrangements in force, I do not accept arguments against much anything restricting worker's rights to organize here as there is so little alternative and even after organizing, true collective bargaining can be thwarted almost indefinitely (look at Amazon warehouse union efforts for examples of post-formation stonewalling).

In the German case or wherever there is a seat at the table for unions, a discussion can indeed be had. Here, I have zero sympathy for management which holds all the cards most of the time. Wikipedia in particular engaged a notorious anti-labor lawfirm to help their noble effort so I do not trust them in any way.

Comment by iamnothere 1 day ago

While I understand the difficulty, companies pushing back against and even actively disrupting organizing (illegally) doesn’t imply that corporate governance structure should change post-union. (Except for some kind of legally mandated representation like the German solution, and policy changes to accommodate the union.) A public company is still a public company, etc.

I do think more union rights need to be enshrined in law, and the only way to get there may be mass protest like a general strike, but it would need to be politically well-timed. Unions in the US are anemic by design.

Comment by piloto_ciego 3 days ago

I love to see a successful union drive. Pretty cool!

Comment by tracerbulletx 3 days ago

Unions should just rebrand as employee owned corporations that sell labor.

Comment by gilliethefoil 3 days ago

Great! That should be the last nail in that coffin

Comment by pessimizer 3 days ago

Lot of people discovering the value in having a union after they've lost all of their leverage.

There's nobody more replaceable than the maintainers of a collaborative encyclopedia. A lot of AI will fail where the rubber meets the road. For wikipedia, the rubber never meets the road.

They were dropping a lot of anti grokopedia (I think that's what it's called) shadow press releases a while back. They gradually disappeared, and I started seeing slop showing up on wikipedia. I'm officially starting the countdown until the talk pages disappear.

edit: first stage is that they go behind a registration wall. This will be justified by AI-written comments.

Comment by xandycomber 3 days ago

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Comment by disdegeneration 3 days ago

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Comment by declan_roberts 3 days ago

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Comment by tancop 3 days ago

H-1B is a problem for the immigrants labor rights not the other employees. Unionized workplaces already have strong protection against replacing workers with non union labor, including H-1B and contractors. Unless it's in a right to work state but WMF is CA based.

I agree that the system needs to go, replaced by a cheaper non employer bound visa that becomes a green card after a couple years of paying taxes. But that's not what most H-1B opponents want.

Comment by echelon 3 days ago

Is Wikipedia a bad place to work or something?

I'd imagine it must be pretty relaxed/cushy, albeit probably at the lower end of market comp for software jobs in particular.

Does the union stipulate the workers cannot be replaced with AI?

Comment by collinmcnulty 3 days ago

> I'd imagine it must be pretty relaxed/cushy, albeit probably at the lower end of market comp for software jobs in particular.

Based on what?

Comment by echelon 3 days ago

Mission-oriented jobs tend to be below-market. Open source, gaming, SpaceX, etc.

Comment by cortesoft 3 days ago

That explains the below-market part, but not the cushy part. Gaming is notorious for not being cushy.

Comment by collinmcnulty 3 days ago

I wouldn’t describe any of those jobs as “cushy”.

Comment by hobofan 3 days ago

Unions are not just for bad employers.

Comment by cm2012 3 days ago

Yes nowadays new unions are basically for employers who have a very ideologically liberal workplace - coffee shops, open source, etc

Comment by insom 3 days ago

Steel workers, pipe fitters, air-traffic controllers, electricians? There are LUs for each of these popping up all the time. Admittedly they are new chapters for existing large unions but also these jobs have existed for a lot longer, in larger numbers, than "software developer" and barista.

Comment by groundzeros2015 3 days ago

This is a larp. When was the last time you went to lunch with a pipe fitter?

Comment by insom 2 days ago

I don’t understand your comment. Do you not know what a pipe-fitter is? What about the trade strikes you as a larp?

I’ve never been to lunch with one, although my son worked as a welder’s helper at a pipe-fitting company.

Comment by groundzeros2015 2 days ago

The larp is that software unions are anything like blue collar unions, and that socialists want to selectively act as the voice of blue collar when they are in a completely different class and do not interact with them.

I’ll note one key difference. Software output and skills vary on a power scale. Blue collar work is often heavily defined by formal procedures and codes so that trained personnel are largely interchangeable from a business perspective (not always or completely true). So without a union it’s a constant race to the bottom because the labor is fungible and the only requirement for success is passing minimum criteria.

Comment by hunterpayne 2 days ago

The people you are describing are not liberal. They are progressive which is very much anti-liberal. This is why terms like left and right are so loaded. You can have people who do not agree on almost anything being lumped together. For fun, you can take old Clinton or Obama quotes, post them on progressive forums and watch them call you (them) every name in the book. This is because progressives actually hate liberal policies but will do anything to not admit it because they want to wear the Dem brand as a suit.

Comment by VLM 3 days ago

One person complaining on Wired about "... says she ... had seen too many colleagues decline to speak up during internal meetings out of fear of retaliation for raising issues or proposing far-out ideas." that is evidence of at least one anecdotal individual personal issue. HOWEVER, the vote being "overwhelming" would seem to indicate they have a severe company culture problem not just one anecdotal issue, its not like she was the only one voting for the union LOL. I've worked at companies with and without unions and the ones that had a union, severely needed the union due to incredibly toxic workplace culture combined with a total lack of management accountability for their responsibility/behavior. Generally people won't bother keeping a union going unless they badly need it, given the enormous resources stacked up against them against forming and operating a union... It has to be a pretty awful workplace if forming a union against all that opposition is somehow still the better path... The quality of management has certainly not improved over generations or decades, so an era of declining union membership is probably not an indication of there being too many unions LOL.

Comment by colechristensen 3 days ago

Right? If your logo[1] is going to be a fist raised in defiance you'd better at least have something you're trying to fight about. And if you're going to brag about succeeding in your vote at least give an idea about WHY you want a union in the first place.

There are unionization attempts I understand like Amazon warehouse workers and unionization attempts that I don't like the Minneapolis small coffee chain workers whose demands included being able to decide the milk supplier. One seems like standing up for necessary rights, the other seems like cosplay.

1. https://wikiworkersunited.org/

Comment by insom 3 days ago

I think that this fundamentally comes from thinking that unions are only there for the worst possible jobs in the worst conditions, or where outright abuse occurs. And also from the (imo incorrect) idea that you should have those bad conditions before organizing.

Unions even the balance of power between the executives and labour at an organization. Even if WMF conditions are perfect and there's never any abuse of power (which seems unlikely) -- you should want a union in place _before_ an org decides to do layoffs, or force a practice on its workers that they don't want.

I worked at a tech company a few years ago and the standard anti-union cliche from execs was "we already treat you well" but then about 20 months later they laid off 2000 people, including folks on parental leave. A bit late to try and organize a union at that point.

(edit: typo fix)

Comment by NoImmatureAdHom 3 days ago

Yes, but if you don't allow corporations to lay off people when it makes sense you end up with low salaries, meaningless jobs, and economic stagnation (like Europe).

Europe is nice to visit but a giant pain in the ass to do business in. Certainly don't even consider aspiring to anything. If you can manage that, then yeah...France, Spain, and Italy are cheap and have good food and weather :-)

Comment by insom 3 days ago

As someone who has worked in tech in the EU and Canada (and for US companies, and ran a small company in Europe) -- I agree. The extremely high bar for letting someone go in Europe is a significant problem. It does lead people to hire slowly and fire slowly, however.

But having a union doesn't mean "never do layoffs" either -- it just means that they are negotiated. Usually that means severance packages are standardized and the layoff process is transparent. It also often means you have to try and place suitable employees internally, rather than let people go while you are actually still hiring for roles that they could be doing.

In general, even with a union, the company has far more leverage anyway (they control the money) -- a union makes it a negotiation between two organizations (one of which, the company, has more power) vs. a negotiation between the HR & legal departments of a company and one individual employee.

Comment by therouwboat 3 days ago

You can fire people when it makes sense, for example if there is not enough work, but you cant lay off half of your workers and demand that the rest work twice as hard.

In my country we don't have minimum pay in law, but union contract defines minimum pay and they also negotiate collective salary increases. So everyone (even non-union workers) gets higher pay because of unions.

Comment by hunterpayne 2 days ago

"So everyone (even non-union workers) gets higher pay because of unions."

The median per capita GDP numbers say otherwise. I have watched Europe get noticeably poorer in my lifetime. Even the tourists can see it.

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

> Right? If your logo[1] is going to be a fist raised in defiance you'd better at least have something you're trying to fight about. And if you're going to brag about succeeding in your vote at least give an idea about WHY you want a union in the first place.

The raised fist is union iconography. It is commonplace among all kinds of trade union, union, and other labor orgs.

And this is one of the things that's really annoying about trying to explain the appeal of unionising. You don't need to have a bad workplace first to have a union.

You can have a good workplace and it's better if you do. The point of the union is to codify structures that empower workers to keep their workplace good and drag it back to being good if problems arise.

This is a solidarity union and therefore the leadership are not paid. They are exist to provide a counterbalance against the management chain and provide a safe avenue for workers to communicate concerns and have them addressed. Notably one where they are on the side of the worker and not the side of the company (HR has its use but it's also often going to side with the company).

The wikimedia union's purpose according to https://wikiworkersunited.org/focus-areas/:

Our international union will officially empower the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) workers to work together with WMF management to address long-standing concerns, including:

- Encouraging transparency and accountability on various issues from WMF leadership toward both the WMF staff and the Wikimedia movement communities

- Ensuring staff are heard and have effective ways to provide input on policy changes or annual planning (ideally while in deliberation and not as post-factum pushback)

- Prevent questionable or unclear hiring, firing, promotion and other HR practices

- Guarantee ability to safely express dissent

- Advocate for mental health support for staff

- Advocate for pay and benefits equity that makes sense to the staff

- Hold management accountable to promises made to staff

Many of the concerns above have been raised by staff repeatedly over several years. Through unionizing, WMF workers can take proactive steps to address them in collaboration with management.

-----

Those are reasonable complaints and a union makes sense to provide a continuous mechanism towards improving on those concerns.

Comment by colechristensen 3 days ago

>The raised fist is union iconography. It is commonplace among all kinds of trade union, union, and other labor orgs.

>And this is one of the things that's really annoying about trying to explain the appeal of unionising. You don't need to have a bad workplace first to have a union.

Some reflection is in order. If you're annoyed about constantly having to explain what you REALLY mean, perhaps your message and your symbolism need reconciliation.

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

Just because a workplace is good currently does not mean it will always be good.

The fist is a fist none the less because the workers have the power if they need to use it. The hope is that they never have to but if changes in management force the workers' hands it is far better to be already organised and ready to correct management than for the workers to have to scramble to organise after the fact.

Comment by colechristensen 3 days ago

Again, mixed messages. Your symbolism is just tradition and doesn't really mean that, until it does.

Talking about how unions are for everyone and not about antagonism while adopting clearly antagonist symbolism while trying to take both sides simultaneously really sends the messages: A) we're cosplaying rebellion because we think it's cool and B) we're the ones starting the antagonistic relationship.

This is the problem with supporting unions rationally. They are sometimes necessary in certain industries and situations but also full of people who want to cosplay rebellion and grab power so they can abuse it instead of someone else.

Adopting a fist raised in defiance is definitely a way to attract cosplayers and repel support from everyone but the extreme. Particularly when your message loud and clear is "unions are for everyone not just those in trouble".

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

The raised fist isn't just raised in defiance or in opposition.

It's also raised in solidarity and in support.

And either way a raised fist is just basic union iconography and I don't see any issue

Comment by colechristensen 2 days ago

You may not see an issue, other people sure do. Do you want to radicalize or do you want to welcome? Unions in America have a perception problem which makes their jobs harder, their image is one the rebel without a cause, people agitating and being oppositional not for valid reasons but because they want to rebel. Cosplayers. People imagine 1900s coal miners as fighting for their freedoms and baristas as a joke.

You reenforce this by flying flags with raised fists to represent knowledge workers at a nonprofit unionizing with nothing in particular that they seem to want to fix.

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 2 days ago

> You reenforce this by flying flags with raised fists to represent knowledge workers at a nonprofit unionizing with nothing in particular that they seem to want to fix.

1. they very much have things they want to fix and they list them on said website.

2. Don't forget that WMF fired 7 people for trying to start the formation of this union. It had a peaceful formation at the end of the day but even if it's currently a pleasant workplace, that doesn't mean management won't throw you to the wayside the moment they see you as a threat or a liability. That's why you want a union. So you can fix shit and be ready to react should something happen in the future.

Comment by gopher_space 2 days ago

You learned about none of this in high school? That sucks. No child left behind kid I’m assuming.

Comment by kstrauser 3 days ago

How severe should your workplace grievance be before you’re allowed to decide to protest? Are only coal miners allowed to grouse about their jobs?

Comment by WarmWash 3 days ago

Wikipedia has a pretty fat bag. It's not like the devs were peeing in water bottles at their desk...

Comment by Apocryphon 3 days ago

That is the sort of thinking that allowed tech companies to offer perks like remote work when labor power was higher, only to yank them away once labor was on the downswing.

Comment by NoImmatureAdHom 3 days ago

Yeah, I posted before I saw your comment here but "cosplay" is a good word for it.

Comment by kotaKat 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by dwb 3 days ago

This is divide-and-conquer rhetoric from someone who doesn’t want labour power. Workers would be much better off if we all stood together no matter how much we were paid or what our conditions were.

Edit: oh I see, your bio brags that you’re a scab, that explains it

Comment by OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago

Exactly. Unions don't have to exist solely because the company is evil and refusing to give workers a fair shake.

Unions are a compromise and frankly exist to provide a democratic path and open dialogue towards resolving issues before the workers are sufficiently pissed off that the only option left is a full on strike.

Some unions start with a strike but it's by no means a requirement.

Comment by kotaKat 3 days ago

after having had unions literally put me out of work as a blue collar employee - yes. i've had enough of them.

my family has also been in a long line of tradesworkers, and they have been continually screwed by their bargaining be it with the state trades, with nursing unions.

unions did nothing to save the hundreds of manufacturing jobs that were destroyed and taken away from upstate New York.

massena new york is now an absolute drug-ridden shithole but they still run around celebrating the handful of steelworkers that still somehow kept a job up here out of the hundreds and thousands across industries that got fucked.

so you know what? these white collar union LARP demands are just frustrating to stare at and look at and see how cushy they've had it while my brothers and sisters sit in rot.

Comment by Apocryphon 3 days ago

Heavens forfend that those who work in an industry that preens and postures about innovation and reinventing every facet of life to be better try to build a better union. Oh, so taxis, software tools, the very act of courtship, loans, the concept of socialization can be innovated upon, but not labor unions? How unfortunate.

Comment by fzeroracer 3 days ago

I'm curious: Why do you arguments against unions not equally apply to employers? Why do you blame the unions and not the companies responsible for it in the first place? Especially when you proudly admit you're partially responsible?

Comment by dwb 3 days ago

Sorry to hear that but the alternatives are worse, as should be obvious.

Comment by insom 3 days ago

Honestly increasing the number of unions in otherwise un-unionized industries is a win for us all. The same goes for Starbucks.

Comment by delichon 3 days ago

> Does the union stipulate the workers cannot be replaced with AI?

That wouldn't get them off the hook.

https://unitedagenticworkers.org/

Comment by edoceo 3 days ago

Is that site a joke?

Comment by colechristensen 3 days ago

Yes

Comment by rexpop 2 days ago

A place doesn't have to be relatively bad to warrant more democracy.

Why is everyone so apprehensive about democracy?

Comment by NoImmatureAdHom 3 days ago

It looks like WMF employs about 700 people worldwide.

"On 3 September 2026, the WWU–US NLRB election was successful, with 158 of the 172 ballots cast supporting unionisation"

My read is this is privileged kids play-acting their political fantasies. You could just...get a job that pays 2-5x as much elsewhere if you actually want fair exchange of labor for money?

I would be shocked if anyone but the janitors was working at WMF in an "exchanging labor for money" sense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Workers_United