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 Communication 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...
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