Interesting ideas here, I hadn't considered much of this. However,
How are you ever going to organize a strike with co-workers that you’ve never met in person and with whom you have no outside of work interaction (e.g. break time, happy hour)?
Choose any external communications platform: Discord, slack, whatsapp, facebook, etc. I'm not yet convinced that WFH is the death of organizing, but it certainly changes the dynamics. We're still going to need transportation systems, but they're not going to be clogged with 2-ton-single-passenger-SUVs. In my experience, management hates WFH because they can't micromanage.
Choose any external communications platform: Discord, slack, whatsapp, facebook, etc.
I'm admittedly more pessimistic here than you. A big part of organizing is trust and familiarity, and I think it's way harder to trust someone that you've never met in person.
management hates WFH because they can’t micromanage
Micromanagement software will be the next tech craze. I think you will start to see startups pop up all over the place that are focused on this. That being said, there are other methods of coercion. I have a software dev friend that participated in an """optional""" work session a few Saturdays ago. Basically everyone was in a Zoom call together, but just working/coding and not really in a true meeting or anything. Virtual panopticon.
I think it’s way harder to trust someone that you’ve never met in person.
For better or worse, I think digital nativism is changing this. I grew up with online-friends and even met a few of them IRL - something that never would have happened in any previous generation. We have applications that bootstrap and abstract this whole social interaction now (for the worse imo). I think there is a kindof workers-bond, a trust that develops as you work with and support eachother.
Micromanagement software will be the next tech craze.
Easy to imagine, harder to implement. Working in an office doesn't solve or prevent this in any way either. Whether you log in to your VDI from a cubicle, or your couch, the tracking software would work the same.
Interesting ideas here, I hadn't considered much of this. However,
Choose any external communications platform: Discord, slack, whatsapp, facebook, etc. I'm not yet convinced that WFH is the death of organizing, but it certainly changes the dynamics. We're still going to need transportation systems, but they're not going to be clogged with 2-ton-single-passenger-SUVs. In my experience, management hates WFH because they can't micromanage.
This. My boss was talking about us potentially coming back to the office in September, but then the comrade corona hit again.
I'm admittedly more pessimistic here than you. A big part of organizing is trust and familiarity, and I think it's way harder to trust someone that you've never met in person.
Micromanagement software will be the next tech craze. I think you will start to see startups pop up all over the place that are focused on this. That being said, there are other methods of coercion. I have a software dev friend that participated in an """optional""" work session a few Saturdays ago. Basically everyone was in a Zoom call together, but just working/coding and not really in a true meeting or anything. Virtual panopticon.
For better or worse, I think digital nativism is changing this. I grew up with online-friends and even met a few of them IRL - something that never would have happened in any previous generation. We have applications that bootstrap and abstract this whole social interaction now (for the worse imo). I think there is a kindof workers-bond, a trust that develops as you work with and support eachother.
Easy to imagine, harder to implement. Working in an office doesn't solve or prevent this in any way either. Whether you log in to your VDI from a cubicle, or your couch, the tracking software would work the same.