Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

Why now?

It’s a question that journalists get asked almost constantly in a newsroom. Half the time, it’s because most stories need to be timed, and timely; in sync with what’s happening in the broader world. But other times, it’s because that’s what gets you to the root of whichever big headline trend you’re trying to parse right then. 

One such recent trend has been the increasing acceptance of organised labour (aka unions) among Big Tech employees. 

The fast and furious spurt of layoffs over the past few weeks is certainly a reason. I mean, just in the first three weeks of January, we’ve had Google’s parent company Alphabet announcing 12,000 job cuts, and news breaking that Amazon and Microsoft are expected to cut 18,000 and 10,000 workers this year, respectively. 

Unionisation isn’t an unexpected response to such insecurity. Unionised workers, by and large, have more protection from arbitrary dismissal, and better severance packages and working conditions compared to their unorganised counterparts. And it’s the reason why almost all professions eventually evolved their own unions. 

But tech has, by and large, been a weird exception to this. As the information technology industry began growing over the past few decades, unions were on the wane across sectors in North America, the home of Big Tech.

And tech unionisation didn’t even have to wane, because it hadn’t ever really taken hold. Not in the US, and not in India. 

But that’s starting to change. 

Why now?

How layoffs are triggering unionisation in tech

For a large portion of the last two or three decades, a job in a medium- or large-sized technology company was seen as a very respectable option for a white-collar professional, at least in India. Now, IT layoffs and job cuts were always a thing, but for a long time, even if there was the chance of getting fired, IT professionals believed they could get another job in another tech company. 

And for a long while, that was mostly true.