On May 23, 2025, we, the Washington Post Tech Guild, won 82% of the vote and became a newly minted certified union, all under the ownership of Jeffrey Bezos, the third richest man on Earth.
Why have a tech union? That question was hard to answer for very long time. We as dreamers of dreams, the engineers and designers in tech were promised we too can make a dent in the universe. We were the next founders. We were on the verge of the next big thing.
Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, we were raised to believe we would become millionaires and rockstars, or at least be in the company of workers from Google, Apple, Netflix, and Facebook. We were paid handsomely for our talent to produce apps that squeeze more from the diminishing attention of our users. Benefits like 100% paid healthcare, and unlimited vacation were a job interview away. You had to be a sucker not take the money on the table. If you were unhappy, just go the next job, with even higher salaries and generous benefits.
We were sent home to work during the Pandemic. We did everything we can keep the lights on and be there for our families. We were hired at the Big Tech Company in droves. The dream of the dreamers.
Then, layoffs by the thousands came, and generous benefits were suddenly axed. Friends and co-workers you had worked with for years wrote gut-wrenching farewell emails. Bad decision at big tech companies (Metaverse) after bad decision in my space (the media had no strategy after Trump), no executives were held accountable. Instead workers faced the brunt of the consequences. We got laid off, demoted, or outright fired.
At a certain point, you think to yourself, it's a matter of time before they toss me out.
I'll admit to you, and keep this to yourself, I believed in the deal. I didn't believe in unions could be nothing more than a drag, a waste, and no-nothing group protecting lazy unproductive employees. I bought in to the idea that if didn't come in with your A-game, in changing the world, then you are not worth the company's time or money. Go somewhere else.
How small and self-centered and stupid of a view is that. That's the rich man's way in polluting the worker's mind and removing their sense of power. It's a world where you have to fight alone. It corrupts a worker's sense of their own labor. It steals from person soul.
During the vote, my dear friend Jack Nugent was tallying up the yays and nays. There was a moment, where there was 25 consecutive yays. I look to him and just smiled. We had the votes, I knew that. It was matter by how much. But after those 25, I felt something I haven't felt in a long time: glory of winning.
With the final vote in, we, the Washington Post Tech Guild, drank to our laid-off friends, colleagues who refused to move across the country for an uncertain future, and brothers and sisters who built something far bigger than any app: a union.
Why have a tech union? Because you deserve it.
