Wikipedia Workers Unionize for the First Time

More than 200 staffers at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind the encyclopedia Wikipedia, have voted 158-14 to join the Communications Workers of America labor union. The US National Labor Relations Board counted ballots on Thursday.Three Wikimedia employees tell WIRED they will now have a mechanism to challenge management as the organization faces growing competition from AI chatbots and a drop in volunteer editors. The 25-year-old, San Francisco-based foundation employs nearly 700 people across 39 countries, most of them working remotely. The contingent joining the union includes employees in functions such as software engineering, finance, communications.Lauren de Lench, who has been a lead technical program manager at the Wikimedia Foundation since 2021, says she voted to unionize because she had seen too many colleagues decline to speak up during internal meetings out of fear of retaliation for raising issues or proposing far-out ideas.“I want us to be loud and debate freely up and down the organizational chart because that’s how we move quickly, address challenges, and come up with the best collective solutions,” de Lench says.The foundation said in an unsigned blog post on Thursday that it will “approach this next phase constructively, lawfully, and with care for the staff whose work makes it possible for us to serve people everywhere.”Concerns about pay and benefits were not major motivators for the union drive, according to Wikimedia employees. Instead, they say, frustration over how the organization explained several hiring and firing decisions in the past year provided the final push the union needed to win the vote.That included when the foundation chose to disband a team responsible for developing tools volunteer editors use to make additions to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, such as the image library known as Commons. In a separate move, management removed France from a list of approved hiring locations for product and technology roles.In a sign of solidarity, some volunteer Wikipedia editors organized a campaign to improve entries about labor unions and related topics this month.“I want to get to a place of mutual trust and there is a big gap,” de Lench says. “There are pockets within the foundation where it’s healthy, and I want everyone to have that relationship.”In an organization-wide email seen by WIRED, Wikimedia Foundation CEO Bernadette Meehan called unionization the start of a new chapter that she was “optimistic” about. “The concerns many of you shared about management practices, organizational planning, staff departures, and making facts clear and available matter as much as ever, and we will continue to work together to make meaningful improvements or all staff,” she wrote.Growing PainsWikimedia workers have discussed unionizing off and on for a decade, but they had never gotten as far as holding an election before. Workers say momentum for the organizing effort began picking up after the foundation grew its workforce by hundreds of people during the Covid pandemic, introducing bureaucracy that left some rank-and-file employees feeling powerless.“Management has had to walk back certain decisions,” says Nico Aramayo, a senior paralegal who joined the Wikimedia Foundation during the expansion phase. “Wouldn’t it be better if we could all have a seat at the table?”The foundation is generally in a strong financial position, with an annual budget of more than $200 million and net assets of around $300 million and growing. But AI companies are increasingly scraping Wikipedia for information to train their models, driving up its server costs. Meanwhile, human traffic to Wikipedia articles is declining as more people rely on chatbots for information. Staff worry the trends could diminish interest in contributing to Wikipedia, damaging the quality of content.As Aramayo and de Lench put it, Wikipedia needs to make a bold push to become more attractive than AI—and shaping that strategy shouldn’t be left to management alone.“The importance of collaborating early and often, even if we don’t agree, is so crucial to moving forward on some of these bigger existential challenges,” de Lench says. “We need to embrace each other and the different skills and perspectives staff and volunteers bring to the table.”Meehan, the former US ambassador to Chile under the Biden administration, joined in January. The one-time union member publicly told staff she encourages “dissent, good faith disagreement, and new ideas, as long as discussions are respectful.”In the following months amid the personnel decisions questioned by workers, 70 percent of those eligible signed union cards and the group partnered up with CWA’s Local 9415, which represents staff at other nonprofits and telecommunications providers.The foundation declined to voluntarily recognize the union, contending that a vote would be a more democratic process in line with its principles. But the foundation’s leaders stayed neutral through the voting process, workers say.Wikimedia workers in the UK are also seeking to organize, and they hope to band together with the US group given that they generally share the same leadership, projects, and goals.For the US union, the next step will be negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with their bosses. The foundation has hired Littler Mendelson, a prominent law firm known for combating labor groups, leaving workers to believe the company wants to put up a fight, says Aly Marino, a union member who is an attorney at the foundation. Dropping the firm, they say, could demonstrate Wikimedia is “committed to turning the page and working together.”On Thursday, Meehan said management would work in “good faith” to reach a “timely agreement.”Key provisions the union is expected to seek include requiring their employer to demonstrate just cause before firing someone. There are also some “pie in the sky” ideas that may be discussed, like shifting to a four-day work week, Aramayo says.