Kickstarter Staff Form Union, a First for Major Tech Startup

(Bloomberg) -- Employees at the Brooklyn, New York-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter PBC voted to unionize on Tuesday, making them the first direct employees of a major U.S. tech company to do so. The vote, with 46 in favor and 37 against, came almost a year after the company’s employees announced their plans to unionize.

“It’s an important win, it’s an important battle. This has already started a lot of conversations among other tech workers and tech companies,” said Grace Reckers, a union organizer with the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents Kickstarter’s employees. The union plans to start negotiating a contract with Kickstarter “as soon as possible,” Reckers said.

Aziz Hasan, Kickstarter’s chief executive officer, said in an emailed statement: “We support and respect this decision, and we are proud of the fair and democratic process that got us here.”

In September, Kickstarter employees criticized the company for firing two employees involved in union organizing over a span of eight days. The union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of the fired employees. The case is still pending.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nikitha Sattiraju in New York at nsattiraju@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Molly Schuetz at mschuetz9@bloomberg.net, Joshua Brustein, Mark Milian

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.