Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

spindump8930

Commenters in these discussions always confuse wikipedia editors with Wikimedia employees - this is the latter!

echelon

Is Wikipedia a bad place to work or something? I'd imagine it must be pretty relaxed/cushy, albeit probably at the lower end of market comp for software jobs in particular. Does the union stipulate the workers cannot be replaced with AI?

tux3

Short statement from the WMF in response: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/09/03/us-staff-uni... They seem to say they'll accept the outcome and pledge to engage in good-faith. Which is the only correct response, really, so time will tell if these words are more than generic PR.

NoImmatureAdHom

It looks like WMF employs about 700 people worldwide. "On 3 September 2026, the WWU–US NLRB election was successful, with 158 of the 172 ballots cast supporting unionisation" My read is this is privileged kids play-acting their political fantasies. You could just...get a job that pays 2-5x as much elsewhere if you actually want fair exchange of labor for money? I would be shocked if anyone but the janitors was working at WMF in an "exchanging labor for money" sense. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Workers_United

iamnothere

As long as they don’t attempt to force the editorial side of Wikipedia to implement an ideological slant, or otherwise interfere with the NPOV policy, more power to them.

pwillia7

Hell yeah -- and on labor day weekend too.

dbingham

Lots of people asking "Why?". They say so right on their site: There are big changes happening in the technology industry and they are acting pro-actively to ensure the workers have a strong collective voice in the ways the foundation chooses to respond to those changes. "The Wikimedia Foundation and the broader technology and nonprofit sectors are navigating a period of significant change. From rapid advances in artificial intelligence to evolving organizational priorities and external pressures, and changing patterns of readership and discovery, the decisions being made today will shape our workplace for years to come. Our union members believe this is the right moment to establish a lasting, legally recognized voice in those conversations. Rather than waiting until difficult decisions are made, we are organizing now to help build a stronger Foundation that can meet future challenges through collaboration, transparency, and shared stewardship." https://wikiworkersunited.org/faq/

cm2012

Everyone wants a piece of the wikipedia gravy train. In 2010: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses were about $20m In 2025: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses are about $200m The story of Wikipedia of the last 10 years especially is endlessly higher spending for a very stable number of monthly users (1.5b or so). You can make the case that 80% of this spend is not necessary to what the average users donating to Wikipedia think of as "wikipedia". It makes sense for the employees to want to lock in their share of the bag.

tracerbulletx

Unions should just rebrand as employee owned corporations that sell labor.

gilliethefoil

Great! That should be the last nail in that coffin

pessimizer

Lot of people discovering the value in having a union after they've lost all of their leverage. There's nobody more replaceable than the maintainers of a collaborative encyclopedia. A lot of AI will fail where the rubber meets the road. For wikipedia, the rubber never meets the road. They were dropping a lot of anti grokopedia (I think that's what it's called) shadow press releases a while back. They gradually disappeared, and I started seeing slop showing up on wikipedia. I'm officially starting the countdown until the talk pages disappear. edit: first stage is that they go behind a registration wall. This will be justified by AI-written comments.

piloto_ciego

I love to see a successful union drive. Pretty cool!