TM

So the next morning we get an email from management that says they changed their minds, they decided not to cancel the project. As frustrated as we had been with management, we felt like the right decision had been made. They did the right thing, and that was very respectable.

But within two weeks, the team that I was on was called toxic and we were told never to question management’s decisions again. Staff were reminded that New York is an at-will employment state and they could be fired at any time. Management even pushed out an employee who had posted about the project being canceled in Slack. They said, “We can’t trust you. We don’t see a future for you. We’re not going to fire you, but here’s the separation agreement.” They forced her out of the company.

That was just beyond the pale. I mean, number one, it was absurd that we had to defend the idea of not helping the alt-right. Number two, you can’t force someone out of the company for those reasons. It is wrong and unethical. The problem, of course, is that the people who were making those decisions were the same people we were ostensibly supposed to report our problems with management to. So we realized the only way these people could be brought to heel, the only way management would have any checks on their power or accountability, was if we created a new power, and it had to be a union.

It wasn’t just this incident. There are a lot of policies that aren’t written down anywhere, and benefits that aren’t guaranteed, that can be taken away in a heartbeat. There might be a severance policy, but there’s no one forcing them to adhere to it. Management can do anything, legal or illegal, and no one really has a mechanism for addressing that. This is the classic power imbalance that unions exist to correct. If you want a fair workplace, you have to fundamentally change the structure of power. And that’s what a union is. A union is an equalization of power.

It was very clear to us that we ought to be thinking about a union. But none of us had any experience. None of us knew what to do. So we started having the very first conversations and we got a small nucleus of people together, and we went out and we just researched as much as we could — everything from Googling late into the night to having very long meetings with professional organizers. We talked to old people, young people, people who are currently engaged in campaigns, people who had done it before. It was wonderful. And during all this time, while we were researching, we were having conversations with coworkers, talking about things that are going on in the company and how we can make them better.

We really felt that the clock was ticking. We thought that this was something that had to happen as soon as possible. We couldn’t just wait for someone else to save us. We realized, you know, there’s no one coming to save you. You have to look to the people next to you, hold hands with them, and work together, and that will save you.

As our numbers grew, our knowledge grew, and the network of professionals and experts that were advising us grew. And soon it became very clear that it was absolutely possible to build a union within the walls of Kickstarter, to shift the fundamental power imbalance that existed in some form everywhere.

There was a greater concern that was looming over my mind the entire time, which is that if all of human culture is going to be filtered through these digital platforms, it is stupid and wrong to leave those platforms undemocratic. It kept me awake at night, the idea that Kickstarter could become something like Facebook or Twitter, where we wear the mask of neutrality while engendering the right-wing radicalization of the country and the world. I absolutely would not stand for it.