for NPR: Change.Org Workers Form A Union, Giving Labor Activists Another Win In Tech by José A. Alvarado Jr.

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for NPR: Change.Org Workers Form A Union, Giving Labor Activists Another Win In Tech

josé a. alvarado jr.

Jun 30, 2021

Location: manhattan

Late last year, Erni Poché took a temporary job with the petition website Change.org. The gig involved scouring the Internet for grassroots campaigns with the best chances of going viral then tapping the company's resources to boost their reach.

"During the pandemic, I was just grateful to have a job," said Poché, who is 23 and lives in Manhattan. Her job was eventually made permanent. She now works full time, earning just under $50,000 a year.

"I live in New York City," she said. "That doesn't go a long way."

She had swapped stories with other colleagues who were at Change.org on short-term contracts. They, too, felt like their jobs were precarious and underpaid, she said.

There was one more thing that bothered her: Poché, who is a Black Latina, kept getting assigned to online petitions about race.

"Hiring BIPOC staff, we are not diversity, equity and inclusion specialists," she said, using the acronym for Black, Indigenous and other people of color.

These frustrations led Poché to join her colleagues in forming a union. This week, those efforts paid off. She and more than 70 others at Change.org became members of the Communications Workers of America's CODE-CWA Project, the same union that Google employees joined earlier this year.

Change.Org Workers Form A Union, Giving Labor Activists Another Win In Tech
The online-petition startup is the latest tech company where activism among workers has led to the formation of a labor union. Once taboo in Silicon Valley, unions are now on the rise.

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José A. Alvarado Jr.

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