Over 200 employees at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia, voted 158-14 to join the Communications Workers of America labor union, with the US National Labor Relations Board tallying ballots on Thursday. Three staffers told WIRED they'll now have a way to push back against management decisions as the organization confronts mounting pressure from AI chatbots and a decline in volunteer editors. The San Francisco-based foundation, which turns 25 this year, employs nearly 700 people across 39 countries, with most working remotely.
The contingent joining the union spans roles including software engineering, finance, and communications. Concerns about compensation and benefits weren't the main drivers behind the union push, according to employees. Instead, frustration over how leadership explained several hiring and firing choices in the past year gave the organizing effort its final momentum. That included when the foundation decided to eliminate a team that built tools for volunteer editors to add content to Wikipedia and other projects like the image library Commons. In a different move, management struck France from the list of approved countries where it could hire for product and technology positions.
Lauren de Lench, a lead technical program manager at the foundation since 2021, said she backed unionization because she'd watched too many coworkers avoid speaking up in internal meetings for fear of punishment for raising concerns or pitching unconventional ideas. "I want us to be loud and debate freely up and down the organizational chart because that's how we move quickly, address challenges, and come up with the best collective solutions," de Lench said. The foundation posted an unsigned blog entry on Thursday stating it will "approach this next phase constructively, lawfully, and with care for the staff whose work makes it possible for us to serve people everywhere." CEO Bernadette Meehan called unionization the beginning of a new chapter she was "optimistic" about in an organization-wide email seen by WIRED.
Wikimedia workers have talked about forming a union on and off for ten years, but they'd never advanced to an election before. Employees say momentum began building after the foundation expanded its workforce by hundreds during the Covid pandemic, bringing in layers of bureaucracy that left some rank-and-file staff feeling without influence. The foundation operates with an annual budget exceeding $200 million and net assets around $300 million and climbing. But AI companies are increasingly harvesting Wikipedia for data to train their models, pushing up server costs, while human visits to Wikipedia articles are falling as more people turn to chatbots for answers. Staff fear the trends could reduce interest in adding to Wikipedia, hurting content quality. As Aramayo and de Lench framed it, Wikipedia needs to make a bold effort to become more appealing than AI—and crafting that strategy shouldn't fall to management alone.
The next step for the US union will be hammering out a collective bargaining agreement with their bosses. The foundation has brought on Littler Mendelson, a major law firm recognized for fighting labor groups, leading workers to think the company wants to mount a defense, says Aly Marino, a union member who works as an attorney at the foundation. Dropping the firm, they say, could show Wikimedia is "committed to turning the page and working together." On Thursday, Meehan said management would work in "good faith" to reach a "timely agreement." Major provisions the union expects to pursue include requiring their employer to prove just cause before terminating someone, and there are some "pie in the sky" concepts that may come up, like moving to a four-day work week, Aramayo says. The lopsided vote suggests that knowledge workers at mission-driven nonprofits may be rethinking the traditional bargain between purpose and voice, particularly when competitive threats demand faster organizational adaptation than hierarchical decision-making can deliver.