Founder & President Spotify Workers Unionen
Founded Spotify Sweden's first employee organisation and led it for six of the most emotionally intense and meaningful months of my life.
Member Support
The employer surprised us with a large round of layoffs one day before the announced date of our union election. As a result, there was a surge of member support work to deal with right from the start. As an inexperienced new club operating outside the standard operating framework of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) this was a challenging time.
I'd spent much of December studying Unionen's e-learning material for new union reps in preparation for events like this, and as I was on the inside of the layoffs due to receiving a buyout offer of my own, I took the lead on the member support work during this time. I was in near-constant contact with members for much of January and February, answering enquiries about work permit deadlines, income insurance eligibility, the employment protection available under Swedish law, and more.
Organizing
Before the campaign, a learned helplessness had prevailed among Spotify's Sweden-based workforce about the prospect of ever securing a CBA. Unionen had never been able to break that spell from the outside. Even the deportation crisis of 2017 – where material harm was attributable to the lack of a CBA – hadn't roused us.
Organising was not my area of expertise, so I read widely about the topic, attended an organizer training session offered by Malmö's Left Party, and later the Organizing For Power training course. I put the things I learned into practice in a social media campaign, podcast, and lots of 1:1 meetings with colleagues. I worked deliberately to build a community around the movement and set up the digital infrastructure necessary for that community to thrive. We hadn't yet achieved our CBA by the time of my exit, but a significant change in mindset had occurred. It took a fairly well-resourced campaign of union avoidance tactics for the bosses to stalemate the first round of CBA negotiations.
Networking
Coming into this campaign, networking might not have been something I would have described as a natural instinct of mine in my everyday life. A software engineer working remotely can get very comfortable in the familiar bubble of the same close contacts every day. But solidarity doesn't magically appear on its own, and networking is a key element of its manufacturing process.
I had some early luck with cold outreach which transformed my perspective on networking. By the time the club was officially formed, networking had become a high priority for me - something I made time for on a regular basis. I ensured the various organizing efforts within Spotify internationally were in contact with each other, as well as with parallel efforts in other companies and with key people within trade union organisations, news media and politics.
Media Work
An ongoing dilemma for me during the campaign was that while media work was incredibly beneficial for morale, speaking to the press was initially terrifying for me. At first, experience made it more frightening rather than less because I learned how easily a story can be misinterpreted before I learned how to ensure it was communicated correctly.
Through a combination of study, advice from friends, and the sheer amount of experience I accumulated in such a short time, I learned how to control my nerves, stay on message, and improvise with confidence.