当Google工人大批走出去时，要求改变他们的工作场所如何处理从性骚扰到歧视的问题时，Google员工Liz Fong-Jones即使他们面临报复，也呼吁并最终创建某种基金来支持这些工人并允许他们继续工作场所行动主义。与COODORKER.org合作，这是一个工人倡导组织，可帮助人们改善工作生活，基金成形，并为整个技术行业提供支持工人行动主义的新方法。
Out of that work came the Solidarity Fund, “designed as a mutual aid infrastructure for people who are engaging in workplace organizing and activism,” says Jess Kutch, cofounder of Coworker.org andthe Solidarity Fund‘s executive director. Funded by tech workers—some of whom have signed up to give recurring donations—for tech workers, the fund gives no-strings-attached monetary stipends and mentorship to workers engaged in some form of workplace organizing. The first funds were dispersed in January 2021, and in the last year, the Fund provided more than 68 workers with stipends, totaling nearly $200,000.
“Workplace activism has evolved quite a bit over the last 20 years,” says Kutch. When she began Coworker, which launched in 2013, the organization focused on providing digital tools like petitions which workers could create to campaign for changes, such ascalling on Uberto allow in-app tipping. But workplace activism began to grow and change, with walkouts at places like Google and workers sharing salary transparency spreadsheets.
Coworker.org supported them, providing “know your rights” trainings and promoting petitions, but they realized workers needed more than those digital tools. “Workers are reaching for things more complex than a one-off petition, and in doing so, the stakes are higher,” Kutch says. “They’re up against more, and facing more opposition.” The Solidarity Fund, the winner of the workplace category ofFast Company’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards, helps workers both navigate their activism—something many are doing for the first time, and alone—and receive support through those sometimes tumultuous times.
Workers need to apply, and the application asks for people who have been engaged in some sort of activism or organizing in their workplace. But the fund is open to all sorts of tech workers—from software engineers to ride-share drivers—and the funds can be used in a variety of ways. Some have used the stipend to hire graphic designers to make pamphlets that educated their coworkers on the burdens of “megacycle shifts,” extra-long shifts that are mandatory at Amazon during busy times, and other funds went to provide workers with rides home from those shifts, because they ended so late it often wasn’t safe for people to take public transportation alone.
工人已经使用资金来组织心理健康课程，专门针对黑人和拉丁裔工人进行治疗师。其他人则使用津贴来支付租金或健康保险；库奇说，一位这样的演出工人写信给该基金，说这挽救了他们的生命。她说：“它不需要人们在某些事情上花费它。”“如果他们需要将其用于杂货和租金，那没关系。”同事希望继续发展团结基金，因此它可以使2022年授予的津贴数量增加一倍，而Kutch希望很快就可以为其他行业推出资金。