> If workers trust that "We, the people" are still in charge on the big picture then it doesn't make sense to bring politics at work. Just vote.
This is a bizarre, ahistorical sentiment. Go read about the history of labor struggle in the US. Even when everyone could vote, the organizing of workplaces and response by their employers was far more contentious and violent than anything that’s going on today.
Part of Coinbase's purpose is to provide its workers with a safe environment and fair compensation, even if it's not explicitly written in their mission statement. As such, protesting dangerous work conditions and collectively asking more pay is directly related to a company's mission. What happened at Coinbase was that workers walked out because their CEO didn't want to Tweet about the latest social issue du jour. It's very difficult to imagine what anyone seeks to accomplish with this.
Can you give an example of what you have in mind? I must admit that, being
European, I don't really have a good grasp of the history of American worker
struggles.
Here in France I can't quite think of something really similar to Silicon Valley
activists. When I think about worker-led revolts I think of Germinal or Mai 68,
when the proletariat (and, in the case of Mai 68, the students and then the
proletariat) fought for better working conditions and more rights.
I don't think that's very similar to the time of activism we're talking about
here. For one thing IT workers are not exactly the lowest dregs of the
proletariat, it's a very privileged position with much better working conditions
that most. Beyond that the fight is not usually for the direct benefit of said
workers ("higher salaries!" or "fewer hours!" or "better food at the corporate
restaurant!") but more ideologically motivated. An obvious instance of this is
the very polarizing firing of Brendan Eich from Mozilla (that's still making
waves all these years later). Doing that didn't directly change anything
material for Mozilla's employee, it was motivated by ideology. The only thing that comes close I think is videogame devs complaining about their bad working conditions, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here.
Conversely the 1984's UK miner strike wasn't triggered because the National Coal
Board had said something homophobic. It's just not comparable, IMO.
The lack of violence is also easy to explain: violence is the weapon of those
that have no other way to be heard. Developers in the silicon valley can make
themselves heard without having to burn their company-provided MacBooks and
taking their managers hostage at the next SCRUM Sprint planning.
There was all kinds of trade union opposition to the Vietnam War, which is really no different from tech workers protesting against collaboration with the military and other violent state forces. Many of the leading figures in the Civil Rights Movement also came from labor organizing backgrounds, and while unions like the AFL-CIO have mixed records, support from organized labor was crucial to it success.
The cleavage you’re describing between ideological and material concerns is one that was introduced as part of the neoliberal ideology of the 1970s, in which Capital intentionally carved out a narrow space for identitarian claims to better defend itself from the multi-constituency groups that were attacking it in the 1960s. But it doesn’t reflect the real history of how solidarity functioned in the period.
There is certainly a shift in white-collar workers beginning to understand themselves in terms more akin to their working class predecessors, especially as it relates to hierarchy and power dynamics in companies. But this is not too terribly surprising given that massive wealth inequality has produced an even greater degree of proletarianization, even among the highly educated workforce. Google has more contract employees than regular employees now, for example.
I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam War and the AFL-CIO of the day was staunchly anti-communist and pro-war. Most of the opposition to the war before Nixon became president came from the pacifist left and student led organizations like the SDS.
I already cited the AFL-CIO’s conservatism. Under McCarthyism, most real leftists had been purged from the leadership of large unions. What you say about the students is true, but an incomplete picture. If you want a better one, check out Philip Foner‘s US Labor and the Vietnam War.
Most of the current tech activism is for things like salary transparency and employee representation/governance.
These are progressive ideals pushed usually by people who share other progressive ideals, but employee representation is not itself ideologically motivated.
> I don't think that's very similar to the time of activism we're talking about here.
I think that was exactly the OP's point. The kind of activism we're talking about here is low-key activism by privileged people. I can't think of any examples either - that didn't mean they didn't happen, it just means they weren't important enough to make the history books because they were settled without any violence.
This is a bizarre, ahistorical sentiment. Go read about the history of labor struggle in the US. Even when everyone could vote, the organizing of workplaces and response by their employers was far more contentious and violent than anything that’s going on today.