[kiliantics]

Why not? Workers have a lot of power when they are organised as groups. Tech workers especially, since it is such a valued industry right now. If you organised with other tech workers, you could push for change with a lot more success than with other groups, so it makes sense to use that power to get change in every sphere of society you care about. Would you have the time/energy to work as part of all the different groups you care about? Would all those separate groups ever have the same size and power as one big group of combined interests? No. This is a terrible strategy to get the changes you want.

All the important social changes of the past - workplace safety, worker benefits, weekends, overtime, maternity leave, etc. - were achieved not individually by specially focused groups of organised workers. They were done through the actions and demands of mass movements of workers across industry lines. When you say "such-and-such group should only focus on the specific issues that affect them" then you are playing into the divide-and-conquer strategy of the ruling class and ensuring that you will gain less overall in the struggle against them.

[chimeracoder]

> All the important social changes of the past - workplace safety, worker benefits, weekends, overtime, maternity leave, etc. - were achieved not individually by specially focused groups of organised workers.

So were a lot of other not-so-great things, like per-country immigration quotas (which we still have to this day), Puerto Rican colonialism (vestiges exist to this day as well, though at least the genocide stopped in the 1970s), - heck, even internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Organized labor lobbied heavily for all of those, because they protected the interests of white workers.

The problem with talking broadly about "solidarity" is that it's all contextual - who are you standing in solidarity with, and who are you standing in solidarity against? For people in minority groups and historically marginalized and disenfranchised people, it's not always clear that "solidarity" means solidarity with their interests - historically, it often means the exact opposite.

I'll probably get downvoted for pointing this out in a thread that's literally a PR piece advocating unionization of the tech industry, but it needs to be said.

[kiliantics]

You're totally right. There are huge problems with some of the things that happened in the labour movement and with how it turned out. Look at how unions in the traditional union industries like construction are just gatekeeping excellent jobs while other workers in these industries are being extremely exploited. That's a very blatant lack of solidarity.

This is not necessarily an argument against unions though. It means we need to stand for unions that are engaged in real solidarity with the workers and other oppressed groups. And that we must put pressure on any that are engaged in bad practices to change.

[crdoconnor]

Since democracy also causes not-so-great things to happen, are you ok with it being overturned and replaced with a dictatorship?

[thescribe]

Well for one thing, I am an extreme conservative by American standards. I would be more than willing to join a trade advocacy group, but I would never give money to an organization that was going to push for "progressive" causes. The changes I want outside of trade advocacy are more than likely not the ones you would want.