• partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    For example, in Italy, the workforce is highly fragmented due to numerous small and medium-sized consultancy firms working for the same client. Each company might assign only a few workers to a project, scattering employees across different locations. Since workers serving the same client have different legal employers, it’s unclear whom to address with demands, making organizing particularly challenging. This dynamic doesn’t exist in the same way in the US.

    Ouch. This absolutely exists in the US too. It is concerning that organizers that claim to be experts in tech organizations don’t have this awareness.

    • chobeat@lemmy.mlOP
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      11 hours ago

      In Italy they are probably above 90% of the workforce. They are the defining form of IT sector. In the USA way less, and also individual contractors are legal, while in Italy they are not, so there’s a whole issue of illicit dynamics (“body rental”) which in the USA are equally a problem, but they are not illicit and nobody cares about them.

      Shitty, exploitative consultancies exist wherever there’s an IT sector, but in certain countries, like Italy, Brazil, or Romania, they are the only form and this shapes the union landscape a lot. Romenia proves that this is not a blocker to achieve high union density though.

    • batmaniam@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      isn’t that a lot like the film industry though? Maybe thats the model that makes sense.