If the myth of tech over the past decade has been one of constant innovation, algorithmic scale, and new products and devices that “simply work,” the truth is that all of those illusions were made possible by the obfuscation of labor: the contract content moderators who sanitize the feeds of Facebook and YouTube from violence and extremist content; the warehouse workers at Amazon fulfillment centers trying to meet the guarantees of same-day shipping; the gig workers of all kinds — Uber drivers, food delivery cyclists, Instacart shoppers, among them — all of whom are at the whims of increasingly efficient platforms and wayward legislation.
And that’s not even to speak of the white-collar tech workforce that, while better compensated, is still being taken advantage of by NDAs and mandatory arbitration clauses that keep hidden the realities of discrimination and harassment in the office. But now, some workers across tech companies are organizing for better treatment and pay. Others are making efforts to unionize. Most importantly, the movement will reach everyone who works in tech — and anyone who uses those platforms. The story of the tech industry over the next decade will be the reckoning brought on by its workforce.
Kotaku’s report is a nuanced portrait of a difficult subject to report on. Staffers filed a petition to unionize in early May, but withdrew it on May 20th.
As part of its reporting, Kotaku interviewed Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer, and it published a transcript of that conversation.
While Undead Labs is avoiding closing as Xbox’s assortment of developers continues to shrink, the studio announced on LinkedIn that “Unfortunately, today we are also saying goodbye to a significant number of our colleagues. It’s difficult to reach this moment knowing that not everyone who helped get us here gets to make the rest of the journey with us.”
Its blog post earlier said that State of Decay 3 development “remains actively underway,” targeting a 2027 release on Xbox, Game Pass, PC, and PlayStation.
As Comics Beat points out, 100 or so employees had until today to decide if they’ll move with the company out of New York City to Burbank, CA, the home of Marvel Studios and Disney.
It was announced in July, but the actual move will take place next year, bringing the bits of the MCU closer together under new EIC Stephen Wacker, replacing C.B. Cebulski, who is moving to Japan to lead a manga push and become the editor of Asia originals.
The terms of the contract apply to nearly 1,900 workers across Blizzard, including teams that work on World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, quality assurance, and more. The contract comes after two years of bargaining and includes new protections that give workers the opportunity to be “recalled” into open positions within 14 months after a layoff.
As reported by Wired, more than 200 US-based workers at the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, will join Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 9415 after management declined to voluntarily recognize the union in July.
Organizing committee member Bryan Davis called it a “huge milestone” and said:
We continue our petition for recognition in the U.K. and hope to see more jurisdiction-specific units call for voluntary recognition in the coming weeks and months. Solidarity will continue to drive our discussions, planning, and actions as we begin working on our collective goals for contract bargaining to support all WMF workers regardless of legal jurisdiction, job duty, or hours of employment.
The layoffs, which affect around 3,300 employees, comes as part of efforts to “make Uber simpler and faster,” according to a memo published by CEO Dana Khosrowshahi.
Khosrowshahi adds that Uber is removing management layers, with “the number of employees who sit 7+ layers from the CEO” reduced by 20 percent. Uber laid off 10 percent of its customer service workers in July.
A report from Reuters details Mark Zuckerberg’s “Project Organization Transformation” — a plan that involved having AI “take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees.” Though Meta went through with layoffs affecting 10 percent of its workforce in May, Reuters reports that the company called off further cuts in November as employees began to revolt.
Citing data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real estate firm CBRE found that New York’s tech talent workforce grew to 394,300 in 2025, compared to 375,730 in San Francisco. This marks the first time New York has topped the list in 13 years, CNBC reports.
Public-facing workers are being filmed, harassed, and creeped out by AI-powered smart glasses.
In a statement to The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Jackie Burke says the company is “eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI [artificial general intelligence] organization” as the company focuses on “initiatives that matter most for customers.” It’s not clear how many workers are impacted.
This is a story about how AI destroyed a long-running site of film data. It’s not just that search no longer refers traffic or that the site itself, The Numbers, is getting scraped. It’s also that there’s no way to defend 30-year-old webpages against malicious actors attempting to get the data early so they could win their Polymarket bets.
[Stephen Follows]
The ESPN, National Geographic, and Pixar divisions are among the most impacted according to Deadline, making this the second round of cuts this year since Josh D’Amaro took over the Disney CEO role in March. That Pixar blow comes despite Toy Story 5 earning almost $1 billion so far.
The petition, signed by more than 4,500 workers, calls for protections like guaranteed severance and offers of voluntary buyouts before the company does layoffs. You can read it on the Alphabet Workers Union website.
The petition will be delivered on Thursday to CEO Sundar Pichai and the heads of Google Cloud, platforms and devices, and Google Search.
[Alphabet Workers Union-CWA]
Rivian has had layoffs in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and now, within a week of launching the long-awaited R2 SUV, layoffs in 2026. The Wall Street Journal reports the cuts made Tuesday affected less than two percent of its employees, which the company confirmed, saying it “restructured a handful of teams,” as it attempts to turn a profit for the first time.
If you’ve ever wondered what the hell is going on with Bending Spoons’ “buy, do layoffs, ????” strategy, perhaps the statement it filed Monday with the SEC for a public listing will explain.
Named for the scene in The Matrix, it’s pulled this move with brands including AOL, Vimeo, Meetup, Evernote, Eventbrite, Brightcove, WeTransfer, Filmic, and many others, hoovering up and leveraging their accumulated 500 million users, data, and 9 million monthly paying subscribers to raise more money for more acquisitions.
Following Rockstar’s firing of more than 30 developers last year in a move accused of being “union busting”, developers at the studio have formed the Rockstar Game Workers Union. According to Game Developer:
Now, the union is preparing to take Rockstar to court over the firings. RGWU says that more and more workers are joining from every one of Rockstar’s sites across Edinburgh, London, Leeds, Lincoln, and Dundee.
[Game Developer]
After the Wikimedia Foundation abruptly dissolved a beloved team of engineers, Wikipedia’s volunteers are angry — and discussing how they can push back.
The new deal, still being voted on, ensures enormous bonuses for memory chip workers but much smaller payouts for everyone else. Two Samsung unions take issue with that: one says its members will vote against the deal, the other says it’s taking legal action after being denied the chance to vote.
The New York Times and Reuters report that a memo was sent to Meta employees on Monday reassigning 7,000 of them, and said that “As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures.”
The memo told employees to work remotely on Wednesday, when it will lay off about 10 percent of its workforce, roughly 8,000 people, with emails sent at 4AM local time.
All 42 “regular part-time and full-time employees” of the studio, behind games like Psychonauts and Kiln, will be part of the union, Aftermath reports.
[Aftermath]
Here’s what Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said about the decision:
Today’s actions are not a cost-cutting exercise or an assessment of individuals’ performance; they are about Cloudflare defining how a world-class, high-growth company operates and creates value in the agentic AI era.
That’s the question nine senators and members of Congress have asked in the wake of its decision to close Maryland’s Towson Town Center store. It was the first store to unionize, in 2022, but union staff say they’re not being allowed to transfer to other stores, while non-union employees can.
Japan Airlines will start trialling Unitree robots for moving luggage and cargo in May, with the experiment running until 2028. The airline is also planning to use the robots for cleaning aircraft cabins and eventually hopes to deploy them permenantly to help cope amid Japan’s labor shortage and rising tourism.
The job cuts could affect around 10 percent of Meta’s workforce, or around 8,000 employees, according to Reuters. This is reportedly the first of two waves of layoffs planned for this year, and follows an earlier report from Reuters that suggests Meta could cut as much as 20 percent of its workforce.
Iron Galaxy Studios, which has also helped support and port dozens of games, including BioShock Infinite, Diablo III, and The Last of Us Part I, is cutting around 90 employees, according to Kotaku.
The layoffs follow last year’s job cuts at Iron Galaxy Studios, and come as the developer works to “adapt to the climate of the video game industry,” according to a post on LinkedIn.
The stores are all located in struggling shopping malls. Employees at the non-union shops can transfer to nearby stores, but union workers from Towson, Maryland can apply for open roles. Apple says this is due to their collective bargain agreement, which the union disputes, threatening legal action.
The first-of-its-kind rest stop, which includes e-bike battery recharging equipment, was erected in record time thanks to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s request to get it done in time for his first 100 days in office. Workers had to improvise a crane-lift because they didn’t have the right permit, and also deal with a misplaced electrical wire. But in the end, they finished it. (Hopefully future shelters will include bathrooms, though.)
[New York Times]
The cloud giant has started notifying workers of the cuts, which are in the “thousands,” sources tell CNBC. Oracle reported employing 162,000 people as of May 2025, and has plans to raise between $45 and $50 billion this year for its AI infrastructure buildout.
