Remote & Organized

General
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Big companies are leveraging EoR (Employee of Record) companies** to broaden the pool of employees, some to get the best talent from a global pool and others to undercut their local markets, looking for cheaper labour.
Yet in both cases this ideologically and legally splits the workforce up into smaller pieces, undermining the ability to organize and any sense of solidarity.

Traditional approaches to labour rights don’t seem to have adapted. Even venerable institutions like the IWW, which has “international” in its name, is entirely based on the idea of each member being in a specific geographic location. And are only setup to support workers in the specific countries they are established.

On top of which, these EoR companies are abusing the fact that they aren’t your true employer, and your true employer vice versa that they are beholden to the processes of the company.

Anyone aware of any resources or groups trying to tackle this gap?

I’ve seen #rwwx:matrix.org (Remote Workers of the World) but it’s currently a ghost town.

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You might be interested in this: DMs Open (Zine) - Collective Action in Tech

In Tech Workers Coalition, this is an ongoing topic and more generally the viability of traditional strategies of organizing and striking within a fragmented, dispersed, digital workforce.

I would say every tech workers union discusses this topic but I would say nobody really found a reliable strategy they are willing to bet on and circulate, so that might explain the scarcity of material.

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Thanks for that link, lots of great content. I had actually come across an issue of theirs specifically about remote organizing before. In retrospect, it may have been a reason I didn’t progress further in trying to organize my coworkers as it is written from what seems a US perspective. And paints a picture of secrecy etc, whilst where I am based currently, I’d actually be less fireable for openly discussing union membership than not.