Tech companies have seen a rise of labor disputes in the last decade. The struggles of gig workers (delivery, ride-hailing) and warehouse workers have been most visible in this regard. However, labor struggles have also been taken up by white collar workers in tech. Conflicts on payment, sexual harassment and corporate responsibility have led to mobilizations and unionization of office workers in tech companies. White-collar organizers in tech have also called for cross-class alliances in the industry, although the feasibility of such alliances has remained unclear.

Valentin Niebler describes how tech worker organizing has unfolded in Berlin in the last years. It also discusses to what extent cross-status organizing has become viable in this case. The research is based on an ethnography of a grassroots collective of organized tech workers, as well as interviews with tech workers, gig workers and union organizers in the city. I argue that tech worker organizing in Berlin revolves around three interrelated conflict lines: (1) the challenges of recent arrival and migration, (2) the difficulties of utilizing German labor law in the startup context, and (3) frustration with German trade unions. These conflict lines, he argues, are also shared by many low-paid gig workers in the city and have made cooperation between tech workers and gig workers possible.

Valentin Niebler is a visiting scholar in the Sociology Program, the Graduate Center, CUNY, and a doctoral candidate at the Institute for European Ethnology and the Berlin Institute for Migration Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin. His research is focused on conflicts and regulation in the tech industry.

This talk is moderated by John Torpey.  Sharon Zukin will serve as discussant.

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