Wikimedia Foundation has fired its proto-union organisers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A few workers at Wikimedia Foundation had started to form Wiki Workers United. This was not yet a union in the legal sense. The foundation let 90 days elapse so that it wouldn’t be called retaliation, and in May 2026 it closed the section (Community Tech) where most of those workers worked, and fired the remaining organiser who wasn’t in that section.

So now everybody’s unhappy, except maybe for MAGA people.

Big Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia

2

I’m going to try to document some of the primary discussion sources here because the Wikimedia/Wikipedia history is very difficult to track on their discussion system (which isn’t a linear timeline like here, but a series of continuously-edited documents that have since been edited, moved, and merged several times).

  • 04:35, 21 May 2026 (UTC) - First allegation of union-busting, from user Tamzin’s public comment

  • 06:29, 21 May 2026 (UTC) - Unofficial/personal opinion denying union-busting, from WMF-employed developer Hashar

    I am confident there is no connection between Comm Tech disbanding (which I qualify as a product decision) and TheresNoTime having created meta:Wiki Workers United.

  • 16:04, 21 May 2026 (UTC) - SCherukuwada (Sai Suman Cherukuwada, WMF Deputy Chief Product and Technology Officer) providing context about the situation. Notes affected staff may go through internal process for other open WMF rules. Does not mention union in this comment.

    I want to address some of the questions being raised here. I cannot go into specifics about individuals but can confirm all five engineers and a manager impacted by the change are encouraged to apply for existing and upcoming roles at the Foundation.

  • 16:38, 21 May 2026 (UTC) - Official denial from Suman Cherukuwada:

    I can also unequivocally confirm this decision is not connected to discussions staff are having about unionising, or terminating staff who have participated in those discussions. We respect staff’s right to have these conversations.

  • 16:42, 21 May 2026 (UTC) - User 2601AC47 responds to Suman’s first comment and asks about the union

  • 23:41, 21 May 2026 (UTC) - Another official denial from Slaporte (Stephen LaPorte, WMF General Counsel)

    There are several questions emerging about how the Foundation is approaching the current conversation about unions, and I wanted to address these questions directly. We respect the right of our staff to unionize if they vote to do so. […] No such vote has been requested at the Foundation. We respect the rights of all eligible staff to vote and if the majority of eligible staff vote in favor of representation, we would proceed to negotiate in good faith

  • 14:41, 23 May 2026 (UTC) - User 2601AC47 banned from Wikipedia

And some current links:

(Edits: Fixed timeline order, clarified ban, inline quotes)