Leadership’s anti union strategy slows organizing to a stop and organizers begin to lose hope.
Welcome back to the oral history of Kickstarter’s union. We’re picking back up just after management kicks off a new phase of union avoidance strategy. In late April 2019, leadership had begun holding multiple sessions to explain why management felt a union was not right for Kickstarter. This final part of Captive Audience covers May to September, a time in the unionization effort when management’s grip tightens, workers are further divided, and organizers begin to lose hope.
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Recap of Captive Audience
By late May 2019, just two months after the union’s company wide debut, leadership had managed to make pro union discussion and organizing activity radioactive. Organizers are finding it harder and harder to have open conversations with coworkers about the challenges Kickstarter faced and the need for structural change. Outreach one on ones had gone from open explorations of what collective worker power could look like for the company to tense, slow conversations, usually consumed by the task of undoing misconceptions planted by management. Management’s anti union all hands sessions and communication cultivated a toxic environment within the walls of Kickstarter. Pro union conversation was firmly stigmatized as a form of conflict. The classic union busting tactic of positioning the company as one big family that was being divided by the union was gaining traction.
I think something management really tried to play up throughout this whole thing was Kickstarter was totally harmonious and everything like we had this perfect Eden of like work where you could just, you know, like, do your job and you didn't have to worry about this type of stuff. And then the Union came and it created all this conflict and like suddenly we can't talk. We can't have these open conversations that like we used to anymore, which of course ignores the fact that it work was not great for a lot of people, and there were all these problems, but they really tried to frame it as like The Union is creating conflict where there was none. -Patrick
Organizers who had been part of the effort from the beginning see the effect of management’s anti union strategy in stark relief. The union drive had been operating for months under management’s radar without making the office feel any different. Only after management began to position the union as a threat to Kickstarter and organizers as adversarial troublemakers, did tension between workers skyrocket.
I remember that. The word of the day. But word of the day for folks that her anti union. Was adversarial folks would often say, hey, if we if we allow a union at Kickstarter have a process will be very adversarial and combative and we won't be able to be friends anymore. And it'll you know DESTROY, DESTROY THE relationships we built up amongst ourselves. - David
This was very effective at cloaking management’s intention to retain centralized, ultimate power. They skillfully positioned Kickstarter’s leadership as necessary defenders of employees. This positioned working against the union as part of their responsibility to the workers they were charged with empowering. Sitting in Kickstarter’s theater, organizers watched management repackage familiar union busting talking points to appeal to the values and identities of our coworkers. Every week, the rhetoric would expand to incorporate more classic anti union talking points. Quickly, management began to suggest the union would cost the company so much that it put Kickstarter’s future and our jobs in jeopardy.
The amount they were quoting, which I don't remember the exact number and everything like exorbitantly high. - Corey
Management started to position support for the union as a choice that the creative community couldn’t afford. The logic was, a union would hurt Kickstarter and, by extension, the community and mission we served. That Kickstarter was fighting the good fight, bolstering culture, and the manifold costs of a union would make it significantly harder for the company to continue making space for art and independent expression.
Management did everything they could to really place that on the shoulders of every individual workers there, right, and nearly I tied in with their identity. It just felt like they were painting a picture story about how important Kickstarter wasn't how you're doing work that was going to save the world or that we are already saving the world and that we just had to like survive. And our mission was a list of port and things of on everybody had to the thought in suspicion and we were All on Noah's Ark together. - Karlee
Leadership made themselves more and more approachable, to the point where suggesting that there should be a check on their power was becoming a harder and harder case to make. The more social trust they gained the more comfortable undecided workers were with the traditional uneven power structure. Even when workers would agree that there were issues that needed to be addressed, it became harder to lead them to the conclusion that structural change was the answer. Cultivating emotional ties to Kickstarter... and the leadership team… and the mission… was the sugar that made swallowing anti union sentiment more palatable for workers on the fence.
Once the anti worker perspective was established as good for the company, good for our community, and good for employees, pro union sentiment became harder and harder to express, especially in large open forums controlled by management. The leadership team produced focused All Hands meetings, fireside chats, information sessions and in each of these large gatherings, the entire agenda was aimed at explaining how a union was destroying everything workers loved about Kickstarter.
It was just an hour, full of everybody who is in the highest level of power at the company standing in front of you on a stage. passing around a microphone saying why this is bad for the company and not willing to change their stance in any way. And they have a huge amount of power and their voices and it's just not a great feeling to be at one of those when like you're working with your co workers to try to improve the company not take it down like we're trying to fix the things that are broken. - Corey
These meetings were frustrating and demoralizing and... they were a magnifying glass. These sessions were designed to feel adversarial because any pro union statements countered management’s established premise, that a union would be detrimental to Kickstarter. Anything less than total agreement with management was playing into the narrative of the union dividing the company. And management was amplifying this constructed conflict by modeling irritation and animosity towards pro union sentiment.
I remember one of the People on the senior board of directors that would be sitting at the front of the room, representing management was like shows petulant in their facial reactions to what people. Someone would ask it. You know, like a very neutral question and this person, which And roll their eyes and like be like the bad kid in the back of the class about it, and I'm like holy shit, dude. Like, you can't do that. But like There were no consequences. You know, like I realized, oh, that person can do that. - Karlee
I was sitting upstairs and I remember [senior leadership] smirking so much at the questions that were asked that. I was like, it made me angry because people were like, with regard, like for example [union member] question like that was a very, very serious question. And he smirked. And I wanted to like throw something. - Toy
Everything about these meetings was designed to put management on higher ground than union organizers and create the illusion of an open workplace where a diverse range of perspectives is supported and encouraged. But expressing dissent played directly into management’s narrative of the union as inherently adversarial.
Yeah, that definitely felt like a scenario in which it served us best not to react, but they were hoping that we would react. And it was, you know, it was not. We were not sitting there on equal footing. This was not neutral territory. We were at work meeting they had called and they had required us to be at and it felt like the, the goal was to draw us out in some way that would Make us less bad undermine us gets angry basically trying to get us to play into this like angry divisive role that they had scripted or us and that they wanted everybody else to to, you know, buy. - Alex
It felt like that scene in star wars where it was like it’s a trap! - Alex
Those meetings aren't really winnable, I don't think I think that they're like The point of a captive audience meeting is not to like hear the, the argument for a union in good faith and be convinced that a union is a good idea. The point of a captive audience meeting is to like exhibit control. - Patrick
I would highly recommend to anybody in the Organizing effort. It's like stay the course let them do that little piece and then go speak with your colleagues in the safety and privacy of somewhere outside the building. - Alex
These meetings were not a place for employees to get answers or hear a substantive discussion. Essentially, these AllHands meetings were a stage, created by management, to share information that benefitted them and to amplify tension.
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Neutrality
One of the biggest challenges organizers faced in this intense period of captive audience meetings was feigned neutrality from management.
It really felt like for a good while every all hands meeting with a captive audience meeting and they're all kind of starting to blur together to me because you can only hear. We're not anti union but so many times. - Trav
Management would bring everyone together for a mandatory meeting, list off classic anti union talking points, explain why a union was bad for Kickstarter, and then end with 'but we do not have a position on the union - that is for the workers to decide.”
They go through their whole spiel about how union just isn't the right framework, quote, unquote. For Kickstarter and how they're very explicit that they don't want to Union, a Union would be bad for Kickstarter and that they would not voluntarily recognize right so management clearly crystal clearly coming down as anti union and then someone gets up on the mic like for asking questions to literally just thank management for not taking a stand and letting the employees decide. - Amy
While their actions were unquestionably anti union, management’s carefully worded rhetoric left room for interpretation, especially for workers hearing these classic anti union statements for the first time. This made it easier for undecided workers to feel they were getting unbiased information from management to facilitate an independent conclusion. And this rhetoric was successfully making undecided workers more and more skeptical about forming a union.
I would say more would say actively actively against the concept of it. Truthfully. - Tom
Considering workers rely on management for critical information about the health and direction of the company, it’s not that surprising that workers are already primed to accept guidance and information when it’s framed as insight about how the company is functioning.
Literally my third day my third day was an All hands. That was a response to our response of a previous all hands. I remember being so confused. I swear to God, the first meeting. I remember Lee afterwards I texted some friends and I was like, You know what, actually. I don't know if a Union actually makes that much sense. I remember thinking like, but like, you know, they raised some good points about like a, you know, like I hate I I, I feel so I feel so mad at myself and I i understand how it happened. You know I shouldn't feel mad at myself because this is exactly how these dynamics of our work, but like I remember being like, Oh yeah, you know, like you're not as agile. If you have to do, do all these x y&z processes. These people are the people who gave me my laptop and other people who, who, you know, Show me, show me where the bathrooms are right. To that hear them say these things. I legitimately thought to myself, like, oh, okay. So, okay, I remember changing our service perspective and being like, maybe, maybe it's actually overblown and maybe it's not actually a thing. - Tom
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HR Report
In addition to captive audience sessions where all employees were expected to attend an anti union presentation, management continued to demonstrate commitment to improving working conditions. One week there was anti harassment training, then another week there was unconscious bias training… and one week, HR sent around a survey asking for anonymous employee feedback. This HR survey was positioned as a way for HR to get a better understanding of what could be improved at Kickstarter but for many organizers it felt like another performative gesture.
There was a bit of a sentiment certainly amongst so to have been active in the organizing effort for a long time, but it was a day late and $1 short. - Alex
Nevertheless, this was an opportunity to share how staff was feeling with management and workers took full advantage. Alex, one of our most active organizers, spoke to quite a few coworkers about what they planned to share anonymously with management.
I remember a lot of people getting very honest in that survey and to express a lot of things that they had not felt safe expressing in a public forum or even in any form that had their face or their name attached to it. And so I remember there was a there is a little bit of glee at the opportunity to get feedback anonymously. - Alex
One day HR held a meeting in the theater where they presented the results of this survey. This was a well attended session. Workers were interested in the results and how management positioned them. And as expected, HR carefully presented the results to serve an anti union strategy. Criticism of management and negative feedback collected in these surveys was muted and underplayed, supporting the mandated narrative that there are some challenges, that management welcomes feedback, and that together we could improve Kickstarter, totally union free.
I mean having talked to people about what they included in their survey and then not seeing any of that reflected in the Summary of their results and not seeing, seeing a lot of stuff gloss over that I knew people have given a lot of details feedback on was interesting to say the least, if not surprising. - Alex
After a few qualitative slides addressing cherry picked feedback, HR clicks to the next slide and fills the giant screen at the front of the theater with a graphic visualization. It was a word cloud meant to share a snapshot of feedback submitted about company morale. We all stared up at this jumble of words and the largest letters spelled out union busting, toxic, retaliation… and on and on.
Not a positive cloud. A bit of a grey cloud. - Alex
Woof that word cloud. That was perhaps the most damning word cloud that I’d ever seen. - Dannel
This word cloud was one of the few moments in this carefully crafted presentation when organizers felt worker feedback was being reflected. HR didn’t say much, if anything at all while this slide was up. It felt to some organizers as if this was a clever way to create the illusion of transparency by sharing raw feedback in a processed form.
There’s no point that you can claim that they're not being transparent about the information that we are submitting to them - Dannel
Even though this word cloud felt like a moment of truth to organizers, revealing the challenges management was covering up with concessions and rhetoric, it was yet another example of how effective this communication from management can be. This word cloud, like so much of management’s anti union communication strategy, left room for interpretation, it seemed like transparency, it asked for trust and time. But ultimately, this was another moment where management had gathered information from workers individually, filtered that information to serve their agenda, and presented a narrative that encouraged workers to see management as the source of progress. To workers on the fence or against the union, in the context of management’s larger narrative that a union is inherently adversarial, this word cloud and the raw negativity splashed across the screen was seen as a symptom of the union.
People talking about union stuff. If it was in the office. It was like, like a drug dealer something like you have to like keep it keep it as quiet as possible, or like leave the building. - John
Energy certainly changed. I mean, I would continue to say hello to pretty much everybody. I mean, I knew pretty much everybody at the company signing whether the huge company as good with a big names. And there weren't a lot of people who just snub you in the hallway. - Alex
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Turnover
Organizers had collected support from everyone who was strongly supportive and now it was time to try and move the undecided or even the anti union workers, inch by inch, to the side of the union. At the time, Kickstarter was aggressively hiring. There were a lot of new faces. Like many tech companies, Kickstarter also had a fairly high rate of turnover. This revolving door of workers meant that coworkers who had been pro union or people organizers had spent months building trust with and moving inch by inch, some of these signatures were gone overnight. All of this work and investment was draining from the company faster than organizers could build critical mass.
The turnover rate was a huge challenge for us. In fact, people are moving companies all the time, but also at this particular moment and Kickstarter history. I mean, with the leadership change with people being pushed out of roles. You know, with the always punch Nazis kind of follow a lot of folks relieving of their own accord. And those conversations with the new faces that were coming in who were, you know, still in their honeymoon period as we both experienced in our first month that Kickstarter thinking Wow, you know, there's beer on tap and wow this office has a rooftop garden in front. Yes, blame to those people that you know. Those things don't equate to a healthy and productive respectful working environment. - Trav
I think it can be really overwhelming. For someone to join and be like, look at all this trauma that happened, look at, look at all the bad stuff that happened. Are you super glad you joined this company. You know, when people are like, I'm just, I'm just here. I just got here, geez. - AnonB
Numbers at meetings were dwindling and the union’s lack of momentum was becoming visible. New employees would come to union picnics, or lunches, or meetings and get the sense that there was less support for the union than expected. Fewer and fewer organizers were shouldering more and more of the burden in these deadlift conversations with new coworkers.
I remember thinking like, Oh, that wasn't a lot of people Are at that particular one. Which again is one of those things where it's like Management get stuck gets to force everyone out of their work day to spend time at this thing. And and meanwhile you know the grassroots efforts from the Union has to be has to both like a be in amenable hours be when these people have to do it from their own time and work and see has to be, you know, like has to be presented in such a way that is so like Like like has to make sense to someone like me, like, it has to be, it has to be so many things at once and it gets Puts puts Puts puts you all an asset at such a disadvantage on on a million different levels. - Tom
Signatures Slow
These few months when signatures slowed to a stop felt like an eternity for organizers and by June, just three months after the union’s public debut, management’s anti union strategy had nearly halted the union drive. It had been weeks since we had any new signatures. This looked like the end.
Things ground to a halt and just like momentum inspires confidence and you get this feedback loop of positivity and more momentum, a lack of momentum does the same. And there was a time where it had been so many weeks since we had new sign ups new signatures that Kate from OPEIU raised the specter, the phantom of the idea that maybe we weren't ready to have a union right now. And that, that was the nadir. - Taylor
Every day I would wake up and and you know in the middle of the night and think we're too far behind, or that email that we sent yesterday was not effective enough or management got the jump on calm for this particular week. So this week. They're winning. I mean it was just a revolving door of anxieties and successes and wins and questions and fears. - Trav
The number of attendees at the weekly meetings plummeted. The number that the amount of forward momentum that we had earlier from getting so many signatures hit rock bottom and it felt like we were in stasis and when your union organizer it can feel like stasis is the end. - Taylor
I felt a blithering consuming uncertainty about our tracking because it felt like every move that we did took us three steps forward and three steps backwards at same time. - Karlee
And it was terrifying. But there were a handful of people that really kept the fire going and we consistently made the decision every week that we are not stopping. We are not giving up. we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. Here's something we haven't tried. Let's try that. Here's something that we tried once and it didn't work. Let's try it again. You know, let's I talked to this person. I couldn't get a commitment from them. You talk to them, maybe you can get a commitment from them… - Taylor
As these one on ones become more intense, the conversations deepen. And they become harder, emotionally. One day, Taylor met up with a coworker for one of these last stitch outreach sessions.
We were so close. We just needed a handful more of signatures on these forums and we would be able to file. You are so close. And there was one person had been really hard to get hard to nail down always eager to listen to arguments and and to hear the stories and everything, but just hadn't signed on that dotted line just yet. He was out on paternity leave. So I drove out to his neighborhood. On this Sunday dappled bench around the corner from his apartment. He's got his brand new newborn baby in his hands, and he tells me Taylor. He says, Taylor. I'm just, I've got You know, I've got two kids that get this new baby. I've got to be careful. I can't do anything that would risk, me being able to take care of them. And I understand that I get that i i feel that i don't have kids, myself, but I don't. You don't have to have kids to know what it is like to be scared of losing your job, you know, I like That scary. I don't have kids, but if I can't pay rent. I'm fucking scared and I'm sad right I know what that feels like. I understand it. But I said to him, what I would say to anyone in the same situation. Forming a union signing this card feels risky sounds risky but it doesn't even compare to the risk and danger that we let ourselves be in If we work without protection if we let management have that power to constructively terminate or to fire us for no reason, with no recourse and nothing to show for it. Letting that situation stand working under those conditions. That's risky…. - Taylor
The union… didn’t get a signature that day... or the day after that... or the day after that. Organizers were at a point where we had to initiate some of the hardest conversations we’d ever had. Sometimes these one on ones were with our friends, making rejection especially heartbreaking.
There was a really hard conversation that I have with someone who is my friend like real is my is my friend. Is my friend. And it really fucking sucked. It was like I remember We were really trying hard to get those last signatures, so that we could file. I had been working my way up to getting like somewhere with this person. And finally, it was like, kind of in a desperate moment of desperation, where People were like, we were we were starting to lose steam. It was really hard for me to have that conversation because this was someone who like I'd go to dinner with like we'd go and have hang out and get cocktails like alone after work, and just have like a really we were really good friends. And to hear them. Be like, and they literally said they're like, you know, I respect all the work that you've put into this, but I will not sign a card I because I don't want a union. They didn't like how this all felt they didn't like it just felt wrong, like how how it had all gone down felt wrong. And I remember saying to them. But why do you. Why is that the you. Why is that the unions for, like, why is that Kickstarter United's fault like this, didn't have to feel this way. You know, it only feels this way because we've been like pitted against each other, And yeah, they're like, Yeah, but I just, it just doesn't feel right. I can't, I can't do it. And, you know, they had to go to a meeting and I sat on the roof and cried because I was so frustrated. Um, it felt that it felt really bad like that was probably the low point for me was that was that conversation. - Toy
One of the hardest parts of this stream of rejection, was the feeling of powerlessness. Organizers had seen the power of collective action and built a strong sense of solidarity. But coworkers who were inculcated with management’s anti union rhetoric before we had had a chance to innoculate or demonstrate worker power, became closed off to the very concept of collective action. When an organizer is essentially asking another worker to join with them to make the group stronger… and they leave the conversation without a signature, it’s a very immediate reminder of how powerless we are as individuals.
Pretty early on, I started having conversations with, um, with a colleague. He was really, um, he was really focused on the details of how all of it would work and what would actually be in the union's purview to, um, to bargain on. Um, because, so, um, with him, we had a lot of conversations, um, about like the importance of a union and the problems that Kickstarter. And he was very, um, he was very on board with like, yeah, that's a problem or ya our harassment reporting procedure doesn’t work. And it led to like some really intense conversations about like trauma and ability to trust groups, um, which was like, um, like for me, right, as a, as a trauma survivor, like I was able to go there and like meet him on that level and really talk about like, no, I hear you, right. Like people have never protected you before. Why would you, like, why would you trust them to protect you now? Um, as, as, um, and I'm super familiar with, like, I need to know all of the details in order to know whether or not this situation is safe for me. Like, I, I get that. Um, but it w it became really, um, like this ha these conversations happened over the course of like many, like maybe like two or three months of just like getting more information and like checking in and being like, Hey, do you have capacity to have this conversation and getting into like, getting really deep into it? Um, and eventually, like, I did not get his signature, um, like he did not sign a union card. Um, and, um, and it came down to like putting a lot of time into this conversation on a lot of emotional labor into this conversation. Um, and not coming out with like a tangible win, um, if we were to break it down in terms of like signature equals good and good outcome. Um, and it was really interesting, like, it was really difficult to reconcile, like not being able to win somebody over, um, while also feeling like in, like, by even just having those conversations over the course of months, like, um, like I had built trust with my colleague, but not enough trust for him to trust me when I was like, Hey, this is what I need to feel safe at work. - RV
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Conversations like these, full of tension, and rejection, and disappointment, were grinding down the spirits of organizers. As the power dynamic in the office shifted and management’s strength became more visible, the No Committee gained confidence and became increasingly vocal.
There was this kabal of middle managers and very prominent No votes. What we call the No Committee. And they all shared information and strategy and plans. They wanted to cast doubts. Right, so, what they really wanted to do was to make it seem like what we were doing wasn’t necessarily the best idea. That’s all they have to do. That’s all they had to do right. - Taylor
The No Committee played an increasingly impactful role in management’s anti union strategy and it was getting harder and harder to ignore. OPEIU strongly suggested organizers save energy for people on the fence - but that number was dwindling. Despite the advice of our seasoned OPEIU organizers, some Kickstarter workers continued to reach out to coworkers who were vocally anti-union, desperate to bridge the divide.
I felt like it was really important to talk to the people who no one to talk to in a while, or who had been had expressed staunch opposition. I felt like it was really valuable for like me as a human as like a compassionate person. And also, as I hope a strategic union organizer to understand where The objections were and where everyone was coming from.To like cross those divides. So it was at least People understanding that like we were having perhaps a fundamental disagreement, but not to lose our fundamental humanity and our ability to relate to one another. - Oriana
But, these conversations often went nowhere. Building solidarity had become incredibly difficult and it was becoming harder and harder to get to the root of why someone wouldn’t join. Management had built a wall between us and our coworkers and it was reinforced every single day the union failed to regain momentum.
I would get the impression frequently of, like, oh I you did not move an inch from the beginning of this conversation. You know, like you Talk about you had an issue that we have been talking about that. The real issue is more emotional. It's more personal. It's more about like how you have perceived this effort, so far as it relates to you and like it has to do with your feelings. - Karlee
You know we we act like we have these conversations and that people make decisions all based on reason and evidence and argument and cost benefit and cost benefit analysis, all that stuff. In my experience of both my experience with just living in my own head from my life and then working with the people. It's extremely rare that people make decisions for those reasons, extremely rare. Most of the time people choose a side or make big decisions like this for complex... hard to understand... complexes of identity, and personal narrative, and emotion… how you feel about your own life and how you feel that people around you see you. And i can’t pretend to understand any of that but I think that the person that we're talking about. I think that a lot of times, insecurity and fear leads us to siding with whatever authority, we can find you know, it's innate in us. To, when we're scared and unsure to look for someone who can protect us. And a lot of times it. That means that people will run and hold on to the apron strings of management and try and win their favor by turning against the Union and showing management that they'll defend their interests over their own co workers and I think it's extremely tragic and sad. I think that that's what happened. - Taylor
We've also been brainwashed to get our identity and our sense of ourselves from our employer and from our career so It only benefits people to be aligned with with their bosses and to trust their bosses. iIt seems to be just like a very American thing to be so individualistic and to focus on yourself. So it's like Oh, if you can get benefits for yourself. Like, why, think about your neighbor. So I think like all of those things come together to just make it really easy for people to trust leadership and to distrust their peers... - AnonA
And I think people's imaginations have been really limited because the idea of collective action or something like some way that we could get a better deal for everyone, without anyone having to compete with their coworkers. Is sort of like it's something that we don't, we're not brought up to think that way really. It took a long time to kind of To kind of explain from first principles. The idea of You're not alone at work or like, you don't have to be alone. Like, you can have this entire support structure that that has been very well tested throughout like generations of labor activism. - Patrick
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Aziz’s Birthday Party
Management’s rhetoric and the challenges of tech culture were not the only things organizers struggled with in these summer months. As the union persisted, Kickstarter’s management began to ramp up targeting of union organizers. Some of the most visible union organizers were crushed by a wave of formal criticism and antagonism from management. We had been reporting back in union meetings about how our relationships with management had significantly changed. Targeting organizers with increased scrutiny and pretextual discipline is a classic union busting tactic. Management will often begin to build cases against organizers to create the appearance of just cause. And because New York is an at will employment state, organizers could be fired for almost any reason, at any time, without due process. Enduring this treatment from management was incredibly stressful and organizers were getting burnt out.
When you're in the toxic environment. It's kind of like how long can you hold your breath. You know, like, how, how long can you put up. And I just couldn't hold my breath very long. I can hold my breath. About a year and then it was just like I couldn't take it anymore. And I felt extremely stressed by the level of like performance. I felt like I constantly had to maintain and the level of like insecurity in my job and active. Fear of what would happen to me. - Karlee
Sharing strategy to combat this targeting was one of the few ways we could support and fortify the collective at this point in the drive. But management was winning and organizers knew it was only a matter of time before management would come for us. One day... in July... one of the union’s most dedicated organizers, Alex, was pushed to the brink… What most workers didn’t know was that for months Alex, a highly visible and vocal organizer had been fighting a secret battle with management that started with a clear issue of pay inequity and bloomed into retaliation for her union organizing. This was the day she decided to let everyone know she was leaving Kickstarter after months of mistreatment.
It was a strange day, staff had been invited to the kitchen for a surprise and as we gathered, we learned that we were assembling for a surprise birthday party for the CEO. This was not something Kickstarter did for every member of staff, or even long time members of staff, or even past CEOs. It was a very odd and almost surreal experience for organizers. Workers were fighting to dismantle the structure that gave the CEO an inordinate amount of power over our working lives and, right in the heat of the struggle, we had been enlisted almost as props for a celebration of the CEO. But this was another moment in the union drive where a surface of harmony and joy was betrayed by a crack that showed the turmoil underneath. Just as staff began to sing happy birthday to Aziz, Kickstarter’s CEO, our phones start to light up. As the cake is cut, we’re glued to our screens, reading Alex’s farewell address.
I have not felt valued or respected in my position for quite some time. Although I'm sad to be saying goodbye to some incredible people here I am relieved and proud that I finally made the decision that was best for my own mental health and my own quality of life. - Alex
She goes on to say that she’s experienced troubling sexism at Kickstarter specifically from the head of HR and her manager, the Head of Trust and Safety and that it has made her working environment untenable.
Fuck yeah, Alex! - Brian
Honestly, what a shining star of truth. When I saw Alex's email I it totally blew me away because it was this moment of like radical honesty right like radical transparency and also to your Point like someone having an incredible standard a line in the sand. That was so reasonable is how they would allow themselves to be treated and that just blew me away and inspired me. - Karlee
As she was walking out, several coworkers let her know how much her farewell address meant to them.
As I was leaving office. I'd say one of my colleagues. Who is organizing committee with me like ran up and gave me a hug. Rather loudly their enthusiasm about it and upgrade, obviously, and like what a what a fitting illustration of my experience with Organizing in stark contrast to my experience working for the company. I mean, we have like just extravagant celebration for the CEOs birthday happening one room over but then You know, out, out here in the in the trust and safety corner. One of my colleagues like running up to me, embracing me explaining it to be isolated like worth noting like A woman is a woman who are often don't live to be quieter and do less and and here was one who is unabashedly loud in the attic and loving in in her in her enthusiasm for, for me and for the contents of that email. - Alex
Organizers and union supporters relished the raw honesty in this letter and felt it was a crack in management’s artificial facade. A window into the individual struggles and inequity that had become harder and harder to talk about within the walls of Kickstarter. We knew organizers were becoming more and more vulnerable. Alex’s exit was part of a larger anti union retaliation plan management had been fine tuning for months. We’ll dive into Alex’s experience of retaliation and how it was related to her union activity in the next episode dedicated to the organizers who were forced out of the company. This was one of the first clear signs that management was mounting a plan to not just demoralize, distract, and incapacitate organizers through retaliation… but to cleave them from the company entirely.
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XOXO
Alex’s farewell address stoked new energy and commitment in organizers. It was a small glimpse of the challenges we knew were still here, just under the surface of management’s anti union strategy to make Kickstarter feel like one big happy family. What we didn’t know was that everything up to this point had merely been a prelude to management’s full strategy. In just a few days, management would reveal just how far they were willing to go to bust the union. We’re now in September. The union drive is still moving along, slowly but surely, and a few organizers are gearing up to attend one of the biggest gatherings of the creative community, XOXO.
At that festival, me and Travis are representing Kickstarter, or I am and Travis was there because XOXO is really fun. - Taylor
This was a gathering of creators who shared Kickstarter’s core stated values. Organizers were excited to connect with like minded folk and find a much needed respite from the tense environment at Kickstarter HQ. Along with a handful of organizers, Kickstarter CEO and the Senior Director of Communications were in the crowd.
This event is a collection of inspiring talks and at one point… one of the most outspoken proponents of unionizing tech, Emma Kinema, takes the stage to speak on the importance of organizing.
So the answer to us in Game Workers Unite is unions. [Cheers] - Emma
And then, Emma stops to speak about the organizing effort at Kickstarter.
I want to specifically shout out a group of workers who have been an endless inspiration to me and so many workers in our industry who are laying the foundation for workers to organize in unprecedented ways in tech and software that are not historically founded at all. So when organizers of their campaign went public, the organizers of Game Workers Unite just lit up. Our conversations and our messaging apps were electric for weeks. So I specifically want to thank the workers of Kickstarter. [cheers] Their totally bravery in organizing unorganized people… Software and tech in this region has had a few notable attempts at organizing but never anything as concrete and tangible as the Kickstarter union. And the Kickstarter campaign, although it may seem small and a one off is actually by my analysis one of the most important campaigns happening in organized labor in the next decade. It’s going to lay the groundwork to organize information tech software basic web platform workers. And its success is going to chart the course for those of us coming into this. And I think it’s pretty poignant that Kickstarter’s mission is to democratize the way we make art and media and software on the internet. That’s a very noble pursuit. I think it’s only fitting that we’re seeing the first attempts to democratize not just the process of creating but also the workers who make the platform itself. [cheers] I frankly don’t know any of the workers at Kickstarter but what I do know is that they’re my brothers and sisters my siblings in labor. And they have the deepest support of me and everyone in our industry and I also know they have the deepest support of the creatives musicians and programmers and writers who are the community of Kickstarter as well. And I think that broad support is going to lend them a lot of weight and I’m very grateful for the work that they’re doing. - Emma
And it brought the house down. It was a huge hit, and Aziz was sitting center third row. - Taylor
Kickstarter’s CEO sat listening to Emma and the audible swell of support.
And I was up in the balcony and I was watching him watch it. - Taylor
What the organizers in the audience didn’t know, was that, while he was sitting in the audience listening to this talk, he and the Kickstarter leadership team had already put a plan in motion to crush the last vestige of the union drive. He sat there knowing that 3 of the most visible organizers at Kickstarter would be fired that week, two of whom were somewhere in the audience behind him.
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Next in the oral history of Kickstarter’s union, management takes a radical step to halt the union effort by firing a third of the organizing committee in just over a week. We’ll dive into each union organizer’s story and uncover the tactics management took to force them out of Kickstarter one by one.
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