Sarah Fox

The tech worker movement and the rise of the tech oligarchy Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2026)

New commentary by @cellllla.bsky.social, @perhaxis.bsky.social and myself: "The tech worker movement and the rise of the tech oligarchy". www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

What’s augmentation-washing? In a new piece out at @techpolicypress.bsky.social, we argue that “augmentation” language reframes automation as empowerment—masking real shifts in control, workload, and labor relations.

GOOD LUCK!!!

It’s the last day of #CSCW2025! Come by at 2:30pm at the Perspectives on Data Privacy session to watch me discuss the resistance tactics that workers use to circumvent surveillance and how they build towards collective action

👋 Hello #CSCW2025! I’ll be presenting my paper on tech worker organizing on Monday at 4:30pm in the Advocacy Work session and my dissertation work “From the Future of Work to the Future of Labor: Centering Worker Resistance in Age of AI and Automation” at the demos/posters reception! Please say hi!

Don't miss this chance! Cella is a force and any department would be lucky to have her.

🎉 Thrilled to share that @samshorey.bsky.social and I have signed a book contract with @ucpress.bsky.social through their Co-Opting AI Series! "Reparative AI" is about what happens when AI breaks, and how repair becomes resistance, sabotage, and a challenge to whether AI is worth saving at all.

Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Couldn’t be prouder of Franky Spektor, who successfully defended her dissertation today: "Documentation as Direct Action: Alternative Data Practices for the Labor Movement"! 🎉Her work surfaces the risks of data-driven evidentiary standards that too often obscure, rather than reveal, workplace harm.

Screenshot of the CSCW 2025 paper "The Future of Tech Labor: How Workers are Organizing and Transforming the Computing Industry" CELLA M. SUM, Carnegie Mellon University, USA ANNA KONVICKA, Princeton University, USA MONA WANG, Princeton University, USA SARAH E. FOX, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Abstract: The tech industry’s shifting landscape and the growing precarity of its labor force have spurred unionization efforts among tech workers. These workers turn to collective action to improve their working conditions and to protest unethical practices within their workplaces. To better understand this movement, we interviewed 44 U.S.-based tech worker-organizers to examine their motivations, strategies, challenges, and future visions for labor organizing. These workers included engineers, product managers, customer support specialists, QA analysts, logistics workers, gig workers, and union staff organizers. Our findings reveal that, contrary to popular narratives of prestige and privilege within the tech industry, tech workers face fragmented and unstable work environments which contribute to their disempowerment and hinder their organizing efforts. Despite these difficulties, organizers are laying the groundwork for a more resilient tech worker movement through community building and expanding political consciousness. By situating these dynamics within broader structural and ideological forces, we identify ways for the CSCW community to build solidarity with tech workers who are materially transforming our field through their organizing efforts.

What can #CSCW learn from tech workers who have been involved in collective action and unionization about how to make transformative change within our field?

My new #CSCW2025 paper with Mona Wang, Anna Konvicka, and Sarah Fox seeks to answer this question.

Pre-print: arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12579

Out now in the AI Hype special issue in Digital Journalism, "Automating Essential Work:"
📰 10 years of news stories
📈 tech company execs become sources when the industry shifts from traditional automation to robots
👷🏻‍♀️ 0 quotes from on-the-ground workers

doi.org/10.1080/2167...

* STS folks! * CMU is hiring up to 2 tenure track faculty focused on: the intersection of tech & social change, the environmental and social impacts of science, tech, and medicine. They will be housed in History, a department of both historians and anthropologists.

apply.interfolio.com/170040

I did an interview w/ Pittsburgh's NPR station to share some of my views on the topic of the McCormick/Trump AI & Energy summit at CMU tomorrow. Despite being hosted at the university, there will not be opportunities for our university experts to contribute viewpoints at the event.

Text on a pink background that shows the title of the new primer: "Gear Shift: Driving Change in Public Sector Technology through Community Input" by Meg Young, Sarah Fox, Vinhcent Le, and Oscar J. Romero Jr. It includes a quote: "The path forward for equitable government technology requires a fundamental gear shift."

New! Govt tech purchasing has never been more high stakes, yet decisions about it rarely include public input. @megyoung0.bsky.social‬, w Sarah Fox, Vinhcent Le, & Oscar J. Romero Jr, explain why such input is essential, and outline specific opportunities & tactics. datasociety.net/library/gear...

moral crumple zones as a service

Fantastic news, congratulations!!

Hooray, congratulations!!!

Apply to work at the UCSD Labor Center as a Program and Communications Manager! Applications close in about a week. laborcenter.ucsd.edu/get-involved...

Salvage Anthropology and Low-Resource NLP: What Computer Science Should Learn from the Social Sciences | Interactions This forum focuses on the conditions and futures of the labor underpinning technology production and maintenance. We welcome standalone articles as well as interviews and conversations about all tech ...

New pub out from @davidthewid.bsky.social and me. We suggest that computer science should learn from anthropology’s critical examination of its colonial roots. AI for good projects like low resource NLP resemble early salvage anthropology projects, where anthros tried to preserve “dying” languages

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.