Silicon Valley, Meet Organized Labor
Tech companies and labor unions have never been friends. Whether union protectionism has made it tech's enemy or, as historians have written, tech's executive class was opposed to unions from the beginning, the fact remains that the Teamsters and other labor groups have never had much of a foothold in Silicon Valley.
But that's about to change. Silicon Valley's newest labor challenge is coming from the tech underclass — the blue-collar workers who cook, drive, and clean for all those coddled engineers, and who are getting tired of watching the incredible spoils of the tech boom pass them by.
This week, the Times reported that the Teamsters are attempting to organize bus drivers at Facebook. These drivers aren't actually Facebook employees — they're hired through an outside firm called Loop Transportation. But organizers are hoping that by appealing directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, they'll convince Facebook to either use a unionized contractor instead of Loop, or pressure Loop to let its drivers organize.
"While your employees earn extraordinary wages ... these drivers can't afford to support a family, send their children to school, or, least of all, afford to even dream of buying a house anywhere near where they work," the union reps' letter to Zuckerberg read. "This is reminiscent of a time when noblemen were driven around in their coaches by their servants."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/silicon-valley-meet-organized-labor.html