Tech Contractors Need to Recognize Class

I technically work "multiple" roles right now. I have a soon-to-be declared organization I'm working with that's driving my creative passions largely around art and gaming. In the process of such work, I've been extremely clear with both my collaborators and vendors of baseline rules of engagement and the like when it comes to labor. This is a different navigation from working for an employer: negotiating working contracts that have statements around ethics tend to make lawyers very upset due to ambiguity, enforcability and whichever courts once wants to make said contract enforceable within. This cost me four different collaborations. I'm fortunate enough to not be tied to a particular deadline, which would put me at the mercy of these folks, but I'm noticing a parallel between these experiences and others when it comes to understanding the bylines for organizing power.

Tech and Labor

I'm not going to defend or explain the importance of labor organizing: especially within tech. Ethan Marcotte wrote a book about that. What I do implore is for those who don't "seem" themselves as the applicable party to start doing so. In other words, if you work in tech, you are a tech worker. You are both entitled to a sane and reasonable working condition and we have an obligation to one another to work to maintain that. We can't point at Silicon Valley culture for hyperindividualism: that existed prior to it. We can only point fingers at ourselves when we find an opportunity to push things forward and choose not to; doubly so if you're in positions of authority to provide them.

Tech contractors - either independently working or part of a collective - will be where capitalists turn to as salaried tech workers continue to rail against the anti-labor movement of the corporate class; a bipartisian affair. And with the rise of generative AI as a tool of devaluing "lower-rung" human labor like customer support, we will see more and more avenues of executives looking to cannibalize its workforce to feed its own moat. This is a confusingly contentious line, as those who are more disconnected from the backend of operations see this as "innovation" and those who are more connected can clearly see the disruption it invokes in folks' lives. For all of the talk of wanting to build the world for people, technology has increasingly degraded the lives of those whose labors made it go.

Power Where You Stand

I am looking for contractors and independent workers who are aware of the impact that technology has on class. Examples of contracts, conversations or case studies that show how two groups can work together to prevent creating more precedents that replicate the conflict of class we see today is what would bring legitimiate innovation to our industry. Workers are making strides in organizing but it can't be those inside alone: it rarely is.

I don't write this to ignore the inherent power dynamics at play: contractors are at the whims of capital just as staff to the same company they'd enter a contract with. The need isn't to pit these two designations of workers against one another: it's to highlight commonalities and work on strengths that can help us all.