Daniela Vaccaro and Simone Robutti adapt a movement-ecology and organizational-materialist framework to argue that Western tech workers must pursue Democratic Control of Technology (DeCoTech): wresting technological production, maintenance, and governance from capital and placing it under democratic, worker-centered institutions. They define the target as unions, collectives, cooperatives, NGOs and research groups in the USA and Europe and set a winning condition of tech labor becoming a primary force for DeCoTech. Strategic principles prioritize capacity building over singular outcomes, functional diversification to cover all necessary political roles, and strategic diversification to allow multiple experiments without mutual harm. Power is framed as embedded in affordances available to people and organizations rather than discrete policy wins.
The piece traces the movement from early sector-specific unions through a 2016-2020 acceleration - Google, Microsoft, Kickstarter, Amazon - into a 2026 adulthood that must scale ambitions amid rising authoritarianism, layoffs, return-to-office pushes, and AI-driven devaluation of cognitive labor. It calls for new organizing practices tailored to remote, high-turnover workplaces, a developed theory of striking in tech, and deliberate filling of missing ecosystem functions. The argument insists on expanding organizational capacities, coordinating diverse tactics, and converting positional leverage into durable democratic institutions that can counter tech elites.
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