Techie Congress

With a job loss that some estimate at over 70 percent in the last decade and a dramatically declining pool of freelance opportunity, techies have become one of the American working class's most battered sectors and those who continue to work are among its most exploited.

Yet most of the techie gatherings have functioned on job-tool development (how to do this or that piece of software) or almost sadistic "career networking" gatherings which do little more than rub the salt in the unemployment wound.

In this context, the progressive movement which should be in solidarity with techies has sought to take advantage of our plight by paying less, making project hiring more competitive and using part-time or freelance labor rather than hiring people.

This "don't practice what we preach" activity is made possible, in part, because techies have no advocacy or political voice. And we're one of the few organizations capable of giving one to them.

We're proposing that MF/PL call a national techie "congress" which would take place during the USSF 2010 whose purpose it would be to draw up a Techie Bill of Rights and present that to the entire movement during the Social Forum and to get as many organizations as possible to "pledge" to the observance of those rights in their work. The gathering would also make plans for recruiting signators to this document after the Forum and also to make it a document for International outreach to techies world-wide.