Sharing a letter from within these circles for insight:
“As I am sure most of you have heard by now, this week brought an unforeseen air raid upon many of our engineering comrades with sirens sure to go off on others in the coming weeks and months. The assault was indiscriminate, claiming numerous high performing, exceptionally talented individuals. The rationale given was in line with the fashionable corporate word salad that seems to have set in across industry that accompanies the change in tone across our country. Since the raid, I have spent many hours talking with colleagues who were well and truly shell shocked by what happened. Many of these folks were reaching out to express their frustrations with recent events across our industry. I would like to share what I have heard, and hopefully use these events as a spark to ignite some, maybe only one of you, to consider the value of organized labor.
We are often told and exist in a structured environment that would lead us to believe that if you work hard and do good work, you will be rewarded. That is a lie, which much like a broken clock happens to be right some of the time. You, as a working class laborer are a means of value extraction. The contract you have signed is toothless. Don’t believe me? Please, allow me to put you in touch with individuals who have had the terms of their contracts revoked without an opportunity to renegotiate. If you think that it’s fine for a company to unilaterally levy new contractual terms on labor without negotiating then it’s likely that either 1) your salary depends on believing that is righteous or 2) you are deeply institutionalized and there is a long winding road ahead for you on this topic.
Why do I bring this up? The single most common thing I heard from my conversations was the shattered belief in meritocracy. Over 50% of those I spoke with had never seen high performing engineers kicked to the curb without notice. The minimum years of experience of those I spoke to was 8 with the most being 25. Most had been through RIF’s, but had not experienced this form of savagery. As I used to hold true, these folks were of the conviction that a highly productive, intelligent, and pleasant to work with person would be held onto - when layoffs occur it’s really just "trimming the fat”, as we are told. Wrong. It is more likely that the man who plays golf with and laughs at the senior directors jokes will be retained than the working level engineer who saves the company an incalculable amount of money through their labor. Our labor and contributions can be very hard for senior leaders to understand or quantify - laughs and time on the links? Priceless!
This brings me to the second and perhaps most disappointing observation I encountered during my conversations - indifference and/or aversion to the idea of organized labor. It is a real feat of the human condition to be treading water in the middle of the ocean, watching your peers go under and still refuse a life jacket. However, that is what we are faced with as working class labor. Instead of cooperating and looking out for one another we cling to the idea that if we are just fast enough we can outrun the other sucker and the corporate bear will eat them instead. This plays extremely well into the hands of business interests. We, as fools, undermine our own collective interests and willingly fuck each other over on their behalf! I can only imagine that for businesses it feels like running the hunger games and having an overflow of applicants on a volunteer basis.
Unions are not perfect. There will be corruption. In case you haven’t come to terms with it yet, it is a fact that humans are not perfect. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t do better. Our standard of work life in America is only where it is because it stands on the shoulders of those who fought for our rights in the past. While some folks would like to return to having children toil in the meat processing plants because they fit nicely in the sausage machines to clean them - most of us with a soul have agreed to protect children from this. That type of thing stems from organizing and looking out for one another.
Things are likely to get worse for us working class engineers going forward. The current climate is not favorable to labor. I realize that many of you will not change your mind on this topic and that is fine - just don’t expect a life vest. If we continue to fuck around we, as labor, will find out.”
