We are global first

Our goal is to form an international union that represents and serves all Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) workers, regardless of their location or contract type.
At this time, there is no way to form an international union that would have formal legal protections in the U.S. by itself. To overcome this challenge, we plan to form a US-based union and then expand it to represent all WMF workers globally. This way, forming a US-based union is a tool we use to get to an international union representation.

We ❤️ the Wikimedia movement community

We are forming a union because we want to make the Wikimedia Foundation better, both for the staff and the Wikimedia movement community we serve.

One of the core focus areas of Wiki Workers United is to improve the Wikimedia Foundation’s transparency and accountability toward the Wikimedia movement community. This issue has been a long-standing concern for many workers at the Wikimedia Foundation, and a key reason for forming this union.

As a union, we plan to support the Wikimedia movement community by ensuring that:

  • community voices are heard and considered in the Wikimedia Foundation’s decision-making processes
  • the Wikimedia Foundation lives up to the high level of transparency and accountability that the Wikimedia movement community expects and deserves

Union + Management FTW

We believe that a union need not be in constant opposition to management. We aim for collaborative and goal-oriented problem solving to be at the heart of our partnership with WMF management. Everyone at the Wikimedia Foundation is here because we care deeply about what we’re building together.

It’s likely there will be points of disagreements, where we differ over the relative importance of various factors. It’s precisely the voice of a union, with its ability to negotiate through duly-appointed representatives of the workers in general, that should enable management to better balance priorities from all relevant perspectives, especially those that can be harder to see from more distant vantage points.