Why I’m Not Going To Work At Facebook On May 1st
In the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook to write a manifesto outlining his vision for a globally connected world. In the very first paragraph, he posed the question his essay would discuss: “Are we building the world we all want?”
On May 1, many subcontracted service workers at Facebook who work as janitors, security guards, food service workers, and others, will not go to work and instead take to the streets with many other workers across Silicon Valley, California, and the world, as well as immigrants and women, to answer Mr. Zuckerberg’s question. Spoiler alert: it’s a resounding No. We will not go to work or school and will not shop for one day to demonstrate what the world would look like if we stop participating for 24 hours.
If taking this action seems drastic, we didn’t decide that it was necessary overnight. Political reasons, our background as workers at Facebook, and my own personal story have all led me to decide to take this dramatic step, all of which I will share below.
Why are service workers at Facebook participating?
I work as a security officer at Facebook headquarters and, generally speaking, don’t have too many complaints about my job. I help people find their way, help make sure the workplace is safe and hazard-free, and keep an eye out for unauthorized visitors. I work for a subcontractor that provides security services to many large companies in the Bay Area, so I don’t get the benefits that come with being directly employed by Facebook, but the pay relative to similar jobs is decent and there are some nice perks, like free food of almost any type.
But I work at one of the wealthiest companies on earth and I live in a garage. And not the romanticized Silicon Valley garage where drive and ingenuity spark a world-changing idea. I’m talking about a garage that a landlord converted into what only barely meets the definition of a “two-bedroom apartment” so they can squeeze even more rent money out of their property. Two rooms, a small kitchen, and a bathroom: my roommate and I split rent of $1,650 plus utilities every month for the privilege.
And I’m one of the financially fortunate ones at my job, with no dependents and good health. Other coworkers and friends in Silicon Valley cram whole families into single rooms or commute 75+ miles each way every day to survive without going broke, and, again, these are Americans who work for some of the wealthiest corporations in human history. It’s an understatement to say that that’s just not right, and we decided to start fixing it.
In January, we officially formed a union and our subcontractor agreed to begin negotiating a written contract with us that will lay out new rights and better wages and benefits based on how hard we are willing to fight for them. But this union isn’t just for security officers at Facebook, it also includes almost 3,000 security officers across all of Silicon Valley working for 4 different subcontractors, who all became union at the same time. The California statewide union for security officers also includes tens of thousands of officers in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and other cities. And the janitors, shuttle bus drivers, and construction workers at Facebook have already formed a union. So we won’t be negotiating or taking to the streets alone.
While we will deal with many of our workplace issues through the contract negotiation process, we can also use the union as a vehicle to take public action, like participating in the Mayday protests, to solve the issues we all deal with outside of the workplace. Pressure has been building on the working people of Silicon Valley in all areas of our lives, not just at work, and Trump’s presidency promises to keep it rising. Housing costs are extremely high and still rising. Our wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living or health insurance. Immigration officials are harassing and deporting our family and friends. Donald Trump is trying to withhold money from our cities if we provide a sanctuary for immigrants trying to make a better life for themselves. Politicians continue to try to control women’s personal healthcare decisions, corporations won’t pay women equally, and our president brags openly about sexual harassment. So are we building the world we all want? It’s more like the rich and powerful are building the world they all want, on our backs.
That’s the bigger-picture political side of things. But I have personal reasons for participating in the Mayday protest and supporting my union, too.
My Story
I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin with my twin brother and our mom, who was a single parent. When we were very young, she worked an assortment of jobs like in the dishroom of a cafeteria and at the front desk of a hotel. We needed food stamps to supplement our income and survive.
After a couple of years of squeezing by, moving from apartment to apartment, my mom got a job as an administrative assistant with the State of Wisconsin. This was a good job that could support our family for one reason only: state workers had a union, and had had one since 1932. My mom’s job and many other sacrifices allowed the three of us to have stable housing while I grew up and, more than anything, allowed me to believe that I could be anything I wanted to be — I wouldn’t have to drop out of high school to help with money or skip college.
First and foremost I owe my mom for the sacrifices and hard work she put in for me and my twin brother, and later a second brother. I also owe the generations of state workers before us who turned state employment into a job that could support our family and my dreams. Blissfully unaware of the structural obstacles that exclude most poor people from a higher education and white collar jobs, I attended and graduated college.
But while I was in college, something unexpected happened: Scott Walker became governor of Wisconsin and immediately began attacking my mom’s rights and her paycheck. Walker was our state’s Trump before Trump came along, a man who took immediate and bold action to attack groups that did not vote for him. He proposed something called Act 10 that would take away collective bargaining rights and significantly reduce benefits for public workers like my mom. The response, much like the recent response to Trump, was massive. Tens of thousands of Wisconsinites poured into the streets, reaching over 100,000 at times in a city of 250,000 people. My family joined these protests because our livelihood was at stake. Walker was trying to reduce my mom’s take-home pay by thousands of dollars, but more significantly, he was taking away her right to the collective bargaining that had made her job able to support our family in the first place.
In protests similar to those at airports across the country against Trump’s Muslim ban, protesters rushed to the Wisconsin state capitol building to physically prevent Walker’s proposal from being passed. Fourteen state senators left the state pursued by Walker’s police so the legislature wouldn’t have enough members present to call a vote on the legislation, also known as a quorum. Some groups were putting out calls for a statewide general strike to stop the legislation; unions hesitated, but Madison school district teachers engaged in a sickout action that resulted in the school system having to shut down for days. Hundreds of students at my old high school walked out of class and marched downtown. Improbably, we were winning. We were taking on the most powerful politician in our state and winning. But then the movement made a mistake.
Walker and Wisconsin Republicans used a loophole to avoid the quorum requirement I mentioned above and passed the bill — the 14 senators who had left then returned. Led by the Democratic Party and major labor unions in the state, the movement then opted to voluntarily flee the field rather than escalate our action: the state senators told the protesters to leave the capitol building. The message was that we would regroup and seek to remove Walker through a recall election. Immediately the energy began to wane. Instead of being in the streets growing more confident about being able to protect our community and keep our government in check, we were at home waiting for politicians to save us. The recall failed when the Democratic Party ran the same candidate who had lost months earlier, and Walker was re-elected in 2014 when the Democrats ran a millionaire corporate manager as their candidate.
I fear the same thing will happen in the movement against Donald Trump. We are at a point where protests are growing and we are confronting the administration and its policies in the streets. And more than just confronting — even in this early stage we have won some victories. Direct resistance has delayed Trump’s Muslim ban and the Republicans’ attempt to strip poor Americans of their healthcare. Top advisers and officials have been forced out — we are winning, but, unlike in Wisconsin, we need to keep our foot on the gas.
Wisconsin is an example of our movement taking the wrong course, and it motivates me to this day to stand alongside others who are fighting for their rights. Staying at home or making a strategic mistake have real consequences: Walker is still in power and the cuts have only continued.
If Wisconsin is an example of a social movement taking the wrong approach, there are other recent examples we can look to that are getting it right. The two most encouraging and successful movements to pop up before the Trump resistance were Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter. Both movements have been successful because they have taken courageous direct action, disrupted business as usual, been brave enough to take on militarized police forces, and been led by those directly affected by the injustices they want to fight. We need to take lessons from these successful movements and continue to resist Trump’s policies directly, right where they’re being implemented.
These are the reasons I’m not going to work at Facebook on May 1 and hitting the streets with coworkers and friends instead. For my mom and my family; for myself and my coworkers; for the women and immigrants who have already taken this risky action; and for all the vulnerable people in our society now under attack by an actively malicious and vindictive government that threatens our livelihoods and often our actual lives. Not all of our problems will be solved on May 1st and not all threats will be neutralized. But if we keep building this movement, pushing ourselves and the organizations we’re a part of to take more and more direct action, to take more action together with other people and groups to build ties of solidarity, to recruit more people to our movement and our organizations, and to not back down or cede the field when the going gets tough, we can win. We can win safety for our families and community, we can win respect and dignity at work and a comfortable, secure life at home, we can protect our fellow man and woman and, eventually, if we develop enough power and courage, we can do what we only narrowly failed to do in Wisconsin: beat the politicians and take back control of this government for ourselves.
From Silicon Valley to Wisconsin to Mexico to the Middle East to Brazil, working people are connected across borders on Mayday. I believe that we will win. I’ll see you in the streets.
