HACKER Q&A
📣 pomdevv

How Can We Build a Community for Workers to Coordinate Wage Increases?


Hi HN,

I’m interested in creating a platform or community where workers can openly discuss their wages and collectively strategize to improve them. The idea is to foster transparency and coordination—think workers agreeing not to accept any job offer unless it’s at least $1 above the local minimum wage. The long-term goal would be to gradually push companies into offering fairer wages across the board.

I see this as a grassroots approach to balancing the power dynamic between workers and employers. However, there are challenges:

    How can we ensure anonymity and safety for participants to avoid retaliation?
    What would be the best tools or platforms to use (existing forums, custom apps, etc.)?
    Are there successful examples of similar efforts I could learn from?
    How do we prevent this from being undermined (e.g., workers undercutting each other)?
I’d love to hear thoughts, advice, or resources from the HN community. Have you seen or participated in anything similar? How would you approach building something like this?

Thanks!

  👤 toomuchtodo Accepted Answer ✓
https://code-cwa.org/organize

https://join-a-union.github.io/

https://labornotes.org/

👤 codingdave
Sounds like you are trying to re-invent unions. I'd go learn how they work before you try to rediscover 200 years of knowledge on how to do this.
👤 talldayo
Developers are tough, because we aren't lumberjacks or auto workers. We don't exist at a real physical bottleneck for employment that can force negotiations like a union can, and as white collar professionals we can generally be replaced by any cheaper agency that offers the same talent.

I'm afraid it's just not a very solvable problem. Developers are thought workers, our capital faculty is knowledge of software. You can't effectively stop other people from learning how software works, so you can always be undermined at a lower price. Another aspect of the problem is supply and demand - programmers have been vastly overvalued for the past few decades and there are now more of them than ever. With America facing a minor recession it doesn't feel likely that tech businesses will accept wage negotiations.