PassengerJumping in here as a union organiser who's also been trying to organise tech workers.
You and I are working class, because we survive by selling our lives an hour at a time, and if we don't we'll starve.
Our work generates value. We are then paid a part of that value back as a salary, which is basically the same as a wage. The rest goes to owners, to help them survive without selling their lives an hour at a time. The reason we let owners do this is because they have the keys to the systems and without them we can't work.
We do this work with computers rather than welding torches, but we're really no different from any skilled worker like a plumber or an electrician. By and large our pay tends to be close to theirs, too. An experienced data scientist and an experienced plumber make about the same.
The division between the two, and the "pink collar" service workers, is something we have to learn to erase. Once we do, I think we'll find it easier to unionise - most of the tech workers I've tried to organise have stumbled not just for fear of bosses, but because they don't see themselves as "that sort of worker."
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