Employees at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter have voted to form a union, marking the first notable tech company to organize amid growing unrest in the industry.

The union, Kickstarter United, has been recognized by management after workers voted 46 to 37 in favor of unionizing. It will be part of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU).

The move comes after more than a year of frustration at the Brooklyn-based company, during which two employees claimed they were fired for organizing. Workers will now meet with Kickstarter leadership to discuss union concerns surrounding equitable pay, diversity in hiring, and platform moderation and ultimately negotiate a contract.

“Technical workers in the industry are put on a pedestal until they are no longer necessary, but every worker at a company makes it what it is – from your community outreach people, to your customer support people, to the people running your facilities,” said Dannel Jurado, a Kickstarter senior software engineer. “I’m overjoyed by this result. There’s a long road ahead of us, but it’s a first step to the sustainable future in tech that I and so many others want to see.”

The unionized workers include 85 engineers, directors, analysts, designers, coordinators and customer support specialists and others, becoming what is believed to be the first union for directly employed, white-collar tech workers in US history.

In September 2019, contract workers at Google in Pittsburgh voted to join the United Steel Workers union to negotiate better pay and more time off. In 2018, the San Francisco-based tech company Lanetix reportedly laid off a group of software engineers for attempting to unionize.

The Kickstarter chief executive officer, Aziz Hasan, said in a statement that the company supports the employees’ decision to unionize.

“We’ve worked hard over the last decade to build a different kind of company, one that measures its success by how well it achieves its mission: helping to bring creative projects to life,” he said. “Our mission has been common ground for everyone here during this process, and it will continue to guide us as we enter this new phase together.”

The Kickstarter union could hail a changing tide for the tech industry, which faced a “brutal” year in 2019 that saw workers organize over a number of issues. At Google, workers walked out to demand better protections against sexual harassment. Amazon workers publicly demanded the company do more to address climate change. Microsoft, Github and Wayfair workers demanded their companies cut ties with government entities responsible for immigrant deportation. And California passed AB5, a bill that will make it easier for gig workers to unionize.

“The tech sector represents a new frontier for union organizing, and OPEIU is excited to represent one of the first tech groups to successfully win collective bargaining rights and to be part of the labor movement’s efforts to improve the livelihoods of tech employees everywhere,” said Richard Lanigan, the OPEIU president.

The journey to forming a union at Kickstarter began with internal disagreement over a controversial comic called “Always Punch Nazis”. The conservative news website Breitbart claimed the book violated Kickstarter policies on projects that encourage violence; employees ultimately approved the comic book’s listing but management disagreed and pulled it from the website. The move led employees to begin discussing a union.

Two employees, Clarissa Redwine and Taylor Moore, claimed they were fired with little explanation after increasing their visibility as union organizers at Kickstarter. Kickstarter claimed the employees in question were fired for performance reasons, not for organizing.

Following the firings, progressive fundraisers on the platform spoke out against the alleged union retaliation, threatening to take projects off the platform. Kickstarter is known as a progressive company and is incorporated as a public benefit corporation, meaning it has committed to operate in the public interest.

“We hope to inspire all workers everywhere to fight for what they deserve: a healthy and safe workplace, both mentally and physically,” said Camilla Zhang, a Kickstarter comics outreach lead.