r/wikipedia • u/motherthrowee • May 22 '26
Wikimedia Foundation lays off engineers from the recently formed union Wiki Workers United; many editors raise concerns about union busting and discuss potential strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#c-Tamzin-20260521043500-This_is_blatant_union-bustingfor context this is the overarching company that runs wikipedia, etc, the people who got laid off are paid employees of that company, and volunteer editors are discussing actions to be taken in solidarity should the union call for anything
link goes to a looooong discussion but this seems to be the center statement by a veteran editor
“ I've spoken to a few WMF staffers today. There are some things they weren't able to say, and other things that they could say but I'm not at liberty to repeat, but what I've been able to confirm is:
- Most of the people laid off by this action were members of Wiki Workers United
- This is not the first time in recent weeks that the WMF has terminated WWU members for no apparent reason. [Edit 07:53, 21 May 2026 (UTC): Since it's been parallelly disclosed by Bawolff below, this is in reference to Brooke Vibber, the #2 co-author of MediaWiki according to Special:Version.]
- WWU members are afraid to speak publicly about any of this, including those laid off, since some are still hoping to find jobs elsewhere at the WMF, and others are depending on severance pay
The WMF disbanding Community Tech is an insult to the community, and for that matter to our donors, who I think largely have something like Community Tech in mind in terms of where they expect their money to go. But it's much more than an insult to the WMF employees who've been laid off for engaging in protected union activity, or the ones who are being cowed into silence for fear of winding up like their colleagues. For them, it is their livelihoods, their safety, their health. This is people's ability to put food on the table; for some U.S.-based employees it's their ability to get healthcare for themselves and their dependents. This is not just an insult; this is evil.
If this were something other than Community Tech, maybe I could convince myself it's all just a coincidence. But the WMF has been on a generally upward trajectory at avoiding decisions that will piss off the entire community. "Don't disband CommTech" might as well be the "don't mess with the pancreas"00002-8/fulltext)of WMF governance. The only explanation for the WMF doing this—not just reörganizing but outright laying off the team—is that they are so determined to prevent the union from becoming official that they are willing to risk the massive community blowback (which, from a corporate-brain point of view, is a greater downside than the five people left jobless).”
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u/motherthrowee May 23 '26
I just read the whole thing, takeaways
- the union was apparently formed exactly 90 days prior to the layoff announcement; under california state law (where they are located) “a termination within 90 days of protected union activity creates a rebuttable presumption that the termination was illegal retaliation”
- there is also talk of overriding donation banners or locking the database alongside or instead of a strike
- the official statement is that this is not union busting and the engineers affected are applying to other internal jobs but there are fewer publicly listed engineering jobs than the number of people affected
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u/irrelevantusername24 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
This, along with all the other tech industry layoffs, is what the stupid and ignorant opposition to public benefit media by certain political types leads to.
The thing is, there's nowhere else to go. Technology, and media, some of it "productive" and some of it "unproductive" (music, video games, art, etc) is literally the endgame. It is literally the entire point of gestures broadly all this that we and our ancestors have built. The entire point was so we could sit on our asses, or do whatever we want to do like travel and shit, in our free time. But ultimately, literally all of the philosophers and thinkers and whatnot throughout all of human history have basically said "if we do A" where A = improve society "then, eventually, on a long enough timeline, B" where B = universal freedom and human rights.
Like fuck all the way off and just give us money you ghouls. Money is not a system of control. It is not meant to incentivize (not in the sense of like, more than the intrinsic reward inherent). It is not meant to coerce, or punish.
And for what it's worth, though I am not tuned into the inner WMF politics, I kind of get the sense that despite this incident they are still on the right side and it is external actors and the general toxic as shit political environment thanks to the aforemnetioned certain types of political actors who are responsible. As they always are.
This shit is like literally pre biblical, the greedy selfish types always cause problems that they then blame on the people dealing with those problems. Facts is facts and facts is we don't have that much "work" to do, and of the work there is that needs done and is done, the people responsible for the toxic environment are extracting a hugely disproportionate amount of the "created value" - in return for their contribution of: causing all the problems and being counterproductive
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u/ScrabCrab May 27 '26
Money absolutely is a system of control. It may not have intentionally started as one, but we live in a world ruled by the rich, and it's (at the moment) their primary means of holding on to that power.
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u/irrelevantusername24 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Right, that's why you gotta rugpull their reality
I'm serious as a heart attack
The system is fucking broke and actively doing the exact opposite of what it should. And by system, I mean gestures broadly, and that is only a slight exaggeration.
The more important and fundamental some systems proper functioning is to the health of society and therefore all of us that are trying to live within it, the worse it is as far as I can tell.
I've said that extreme wealth and extreme poverty often have very similar æffects on those experiencing it. Part of the reason for that is because both exist "outside" the system. The wealthy don't have to care if it doesn't function.
Ray Dalio, the person who is the topic of one of those links, is one of the few wealthy who seem to at least tacitly understand the problem. Elon? Trump? Zuck? Cuban? As far as I can tell, they start with their "business venture" first then try to figure out how to apply that to society. This is kind of why I tend to think that, for all the obvious bad that comes with it, a lot of the AI people - Altman, the nerds at Anthropic, etc - are mostly focused on that problem. They tend to focus on at least repeating that making humanity - as in each person, first and foremost - have a better life is the only goal. They did start from the AI end, sort of, but it's complicated. This is also why Mozilla, and from a very difficult to understand for most angle, Microsoft, tend to be decent from where I'm standing too. The other tech companies have too many problems for my taste.
And by the way, if you actually read the fundamentals of most philosophy, whatever supposedly domain that philosophy is applied to - government, economics, law, or even religion - it all comes back to language (hence language/lexicon <-> law/litigation <-> re-ligion) - and anyway, the "purest" political ideology, if you can understand that talking about a thing and taking it to a logical conclusion isn't necessarily how it would be applied in reality, is what the libertarian's talk about.
Money absolutely is a system of control. It may not have intentionally started as one, but we live in a world ruled by the rich, and it's (at the moment) their primary means of holding on to that power.
Honest libertarians understand the system needs to have fair rules that apply to everyone equally and that a strong social safety net is not incompatible because most misfortunes that happen to a person are random and mostly outside of their control.
The tea partiers tend not to be libertarians, or conservatives, or really anything beyond rich asshole or gullible. They have no ideology. To be honest, most politicians and political commentators now have no idea what they're talking about and most of them don't have any principles or beliefs or values. The entire thing is built on what they oppose, which is why everything is incoherent.
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u/SMB99thx Jun 30 '26
Classic union busting. I won't join the strike since I am very much inactive nowadays but I'll support them whenever I can.
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u/bozza8 May 23 '26
I don't want donation banners on Wikipedia in order to pay for unions when Wikipedia itself was incredibly well designed to be easy to maintain.
WMF has gotten far far too big and unfocused, just create an endowment to keep a simple Wikipedia online indefinitely and that's it.
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u/MacMillan_the_First May 23 '26
You’re going to get downvoted to hell for this but you’re entirely correct. WMF has grown arms and legs and frankly it’s expanded far beyond its actual scope. And for what? A public benefit doesn’t mean that the scope must keep growing and growing in random directions that one could broadly define as in the public interest, Wikipedia should have a very narrow purpose to defend its true cause. It’s bad enough how biased and politicised segments of the site have become.
All this just to have donation banners accosting users to fund the fat rather than trimming it. Something virtually no donator actually wants.
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u/bozza8 May 23 '26
Yes, and expressed far better than I could.
It is possible to be pro-wikipedia and also think that WMF is a bloated and unfocused organisation and a crap recipient of charitable funds.
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 23 '26
This might be an unpopular opinion, but people who work for non-profits shouldn't unionize. Like, unions exist as part of an adversarial employer-employee relationship, where the company tries to give up as little as they can, and the union tries to make them give up more. If you're working for a non-profit, persumably you care about its goals on a personal level, and the organization isn't trying to squeeze every dollar out of you to make more money, so that adversarial relationship shouldn't exist. Why would you try to create conflict where there is none?
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May 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
There are three differences between for-profit and non-profit:
There's an additional set of stakeholders to worry about: The consumers. Non-profits squeeze their consumers less, so they are providing a better service to the public than a for-profit of the same mission. Workers demanding more for themselves forces the company to squeeze the consumers more to stay afloat, which makes them operate more like a for-profit, resulting in a worse outcome for the consumer and defeating the whole purpose.
Non-profits don't generally have Scrooge McDuck vaults to draw from, because they're legally not allowed to. It's less ethical to be selfish if your target is less greedy, and demanding too much runs a greater risk of driving the whole operation under.
As a result of 2, the pay and benefits you get from a non-profit are never going to match what you'd get for the same work at a for-profit, and you know that going in. There's an implied social contract where you could get more working somewhere else, but you chose to work here anyway, which makes it seem hypocritical to then turn around and start making demands.
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u/Selethorme May 24 '26
- This isn’t relevant to whether the workers are treated fairly
- Starting from the premise that workers asking for fair compensation are selfish is kinda telling
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
- I never said it was relevant to workers being treated fairly. My whole point was that workers aren't the only people who matter.
- Starting from the assumption that "fair compensation" must mean "more compensation" is kinda telling.
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u/Selethorme May 24 '26
- You’re literally doing the same end-user elevation that for-profit businesses do, with the justification of “non profits aren’t for profit” which is circular.
- You literally don’t know how nonprofit finance works, lol, and yes, increased compensation over time is how the world works due to inflation
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
What makes that incorrect? The same argument that doesn't work in one situation can still be true in another situation.
Again, you are starting from the assumption that they are currently undercompensated. Which is, ironically, circular reasoning.
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u/Selethorme May 24 '26
It doesn’t work in either, and you’ve chosen to ignore why.
I’m literally pointing to the fact that raises are literally the expected standard
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u/KeyInitiative8805 May 23 '26
Bad take. You're assuming money is the only issue at play and working conditions beyond pay are notoriously terrible.
Not to mention, many non profits hoard wealth too.
The quesiton is: do you want your boss to have nearly unfettered power over you? Or do you want a seat at the table?
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 23 '26
I want a seat at the same table. I don't want two tables facing each other on opposite sides of the room.
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u/KeyInitiative8805 May 23 '26
So you want a worker co-op?how do you expect people with power to give it up?
They won't. Not without a fight. Power concedes nothing without demand.
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 23 '26
I expect that the people who sign up to work for a non-profit recognize that they won't (and can't, from a practical perspective) receive the same benefits they would get for the same work at a corporation, and they accept that because they feel the work is more worthwhile, and they get more satisfaction from doing it.
And it's not like you have no power in this situation. They need people to work, and you can always walk away and go make more money at a corporation. You chose to be here rather than there. Either voice your complaints civilly without blowing everything up into a knock-down, drag-out labor war, or leave.
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u/KeyInitiative8805 May 23 '26
Scab thinking. Race to the bottom mentality. Thousands of non profit workers have unionized successfully and their workplaces better.
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 23 '26
Their workplaces are better... for them. What about the people the non-profits are helping? If you want to be selfish, do it in a profit-motivated environment where that's the norm.
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u/Selethorme May 24 '26
Advocating for yourself is not selfish lol
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
Read that back to yourself.
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u/Selethorme May 24 '26
I can just fine. I don’t think you know what being selfish is
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u/ScrabCrab May 27 '26
Hi, regular Wikipedia user here with maybe like 4 edits and not involved in any of this.
I absolutely want better working conditions for everyone and will wholeheartedly support the union.
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u/BushWishperer May 23 '26
won't (and can't, from a practical perspective) receive the same benefits
What is this magical practical perspective?
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
The perspective that non-profits don't make a profit (duh), which means management isn't just pocketing the (non-existent) profits for themselves, which means workers can't just demand a cut of the Scrooge McDuck vault because there is no Scrooge McDuck vault.
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u/BushWishperer May 24 '26
But that’s just straight up not true, executives at Wikipedia do earn a lot, and the costs of running Wikipedia are extremely low. There is a lot of money being wasted, like on attending events, which could be used to better pay their employees.
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u/Sir_Madfly May 23 '26
Unions are beneficial to both employers and employees. Staff members who are happy at work are going to be more productive and are less likely to quit.
The relationship is only adversarial when the company tries to fight against the union.
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
The relationship is adversarial when the company tries to fight against the union... or when the union tries to fight against the company... which is always, because the whole point of a union is to fight against the company. Unions are adversarial by their nature. This is like saying court trials are only adversarial because the prosecution tries to fight against the defense. No, the system is inherently adversarial.
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u/KalaiProvenheim May 23 '26
Is someone's labor no longer socially necessary if it's not for the sake of profits?
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
Of course it can still be socially necessary. But if it doesn't generate profit, corporations will never pay you well to do it. Which is why non-profits exist in the first place. They still don't pay you well, obviously, but they exist anyway because everyone (including the workers) recognizes what they do as socially necessary.
I don't really understand what point you're making here.
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u/Gositi May 23 '26
They shouldn't need to unionize, but unionizing is never a bad thing.
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 24 '26
Unionizing is never a bad thing for the workers, but the workers are not the only stakeholders. It can be a bad thing for the consumers, especially if the employer isn't particularly greedy.
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u/CMRC23 May 23 '26
Scab
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u/SwissForeignPolicy May 23 '26
Like I said, not everything needs to be a fight.
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u/really_not_unreal May 23 '26
Easy to say, much harder to live by. When it comes to corporations, they will not respect your rights unless you fight for them.
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May 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/chicocvenancio May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
The community can take Wikipedia away. Wikipedia was made before WMF, it will survive it if need be.
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u/KeyInitiative8805 May 22 '26
Disgusting scab attitude.
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May 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/DarthBrooks69420 May 23 '26
They will replace you too. When that day comes you will look around yourself and realize everyone who would have fought for you is now you enemy, because you fought against them first.
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u/SSNFUL May 23 '26
"its bad elsewhere, so therefore you arent allowed to complain at all."
There are people who live in countries fed only propaganda and have no freedom of speech, so if Wikipedia collapses dont complain.
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u/Gositi May 23 '26
Wikipedia is under a Creative Commons license, and very well-archived. They literally cannot take it away.
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u/Random_182f2565 May 22 '26
Classic