Red Emma’s

After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the tech industry sprang into action to oppose his right-wing agenda, with workers and CEOs alike joining mass mobilizations against the new president’s anti-immigrant policies. But it wasn’t long before the tech bosses started to fall in line with the new administration.

In response, tens of thousands of tech workers protested against their own employers for betraying the progressive values that once defined the industry—including organizing against military contracts, walking out to protest sexism, and even launching a wave of union drives. By the early 2020s, these workers had sparked what observers were calling the tech worker movement, one that seemed capable of checking the industry’s reckless growth and reactionary drift.

But as their struggle grew, so did the employers’ backlash. A new class consciousness took root among tech's billionaire owners. Hell-bent on stamping out any and all dissent, tech executives embraced Trumpism, fired organizers, and began lashing out against the “woke” ideology they blamed for turning their once loyal employees against them—and replacing the good tech jobs of the 2010s with incessant layoffs, grind culture, and a management style that treats workers as disposable.

Against Tech Oligarchy  provides a gripping account of this inspiring workers' movement and the rise of the hostile labor politics that define Silicon Valley today.

JS Tan is getting his PhD at MIT and formerly worked in tech. His work has been featured in The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Dissent, Jacobin, Foreign Policy, The Baffler, _and The Guardian_, among other outlets.

Clarissa Redwine helped organize the Kickstarter union and cofounded the tech organizing conference Circuit Breakers. Her organizing work has been featured in The New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian, The Verge, TechCrunch, and elsewhere.

Maximillian Alvarez is the Editor-in-Chief of The Real News Network and the host of Working People, “a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today.” Prior to joining The Real News, he was an Associate Editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work has been featured in a range of outlets, including The Nation, In These Times, Boston Review, Truthout, and The Baffler. He has a book of interviews with OR Books, The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.