A Designer’s Case for Collective Power
Ethan Marcotte is best known for coining “responsive web design” and for a long career spent making the web more accessible. His latest book, You Deserve a Tech Union, takes on a different kind of systemic problem. On the Smashing Podcast, Marcotte spoke with Drew McLellan about why he sees labor organizing as a natural extension of his work in design and accessibility, and why he believes tech workers are uniquely positioned to benefit from collective action.
From Responsive Design to Workers’ Rights
Marcotte draws a clear parallel between his two most prominent projects. In 2010, he looked at an industry moving rapidly toward mobile and argued for a different approach—one that embraced the web’s flexibility rather than fighting it. He didn’t invent responsive design; he brought existing tools to wider attention. The union book, he says, follows the same pattern: workers at companies like Alphabet, Apple, Code for America, and Kickstarter are already organizing. His goal is simply to make the topic more accessible and to show that unionizing is a real option for people in the industry right now.
That framing matters because the tech industry has long treated itself as an exception. Marcotte describes growing up in a field that believed it didn’t need unions or worker protections, that it was somehow different from every industry before it. Recent waves of layoffs and the rapid rise of generative AI have eroded that confidence. The premise of his book, he explains, is built on two questions: what do you like about your job, and what would you change if you could? Working through those questions reveals how little individual leverage most workers have over the answers.
What a Union Actually Does
Marcotte defines a union simply: a group of workers fighting for a better life in the workplace through collective action. He acknowledges that the legal context varies by country—his book has a U.S. focus—but the underlying dynamic is universal. Individual workers have limited influence; two workers, twenty, or four hundred, have far more. The math changes quickly once you organize.
In the United States, unions provide a path to what Marcotte calls one of their most powerful tools: collective bargaining, where workers sit down with management to define the actual terms of their employment. That can cover wages, benefits, hiring practices, and working conditions. Crucially, a union is not just about protecting your own interests. Marcotte points to a salary-sharing exercise by members of the New York Times Tech Guild, where a spreadsheet revealed wide pay disparities among colleagues. The lesson, he says, was that the problem wasn’t any individual worker’s fault—it was a haphazardly designed, unfair system that union members could address together.
Inside a Modern Tech Union
Tech unions are not hypothetical. Marcotte cites Kickstarter United as an early and instructive example. Kickstarter’s staff formed a union specific to their company, affiliated with the national OPEIU. In the U.S., he explains, the structure is a bit like a nesting doll: workers form a union at their company, which affiliates with a geographically distributed branch, which bubbles up to a national union.
The union operates as a small democratic body. It has bylaws; members vote on contract proposals. Kickstarter United recently ratified its first contract, a process that involved hammering out language with management and then circulating it for a formal majority vote. The result was a binding agreement that defined terms of employment—critically, including protection from termination without cause, a rare safeguard in a country where at-will employment remains the default for most tech workers.
Between contract negotiations, the union also enforces the existing agreement. If a member faces a potentially disciplinary meeting with a supervisor, they can bring a union representative to act as an advocate and a witness. Marcotte notes that similar roles exist in the UK, and advises workers at companies where a union presence already exists to start by having a conversation with the rep on staff.
Negotiating for a Future With AI
Marcotte addresses the question of whether unions can protect entire industries by pointing to the current Hollywood strikes. One of their driving causes is anxiety about generative AI that can produce text, code, or imagery in seconds. Marcotte is candid about the concern: it keeps him up at night. He is quick to criticize the term “artificial intelligence” itself, arguing that it conceals how deeply the technology relies on human labor—both the human-produced content ingested by large language models and the underpaid content moderation workers who clean up their output.
Unions have a long history of enshrining protections against automation in contracts, since it has a direct impact on wages and the value of work. But Marcotte warns that the threat of AI is not a sudden overnight disappearance of jobs. The real danger is a slower process he calls “de-skilling,” where technology that produces roughly decent work at a fraction of the cost begins to undercut wages well before it eliminates positions outright. He believes this is the beginning of that process now, and argues that a response is needed from both a regulatory and a labor-organizing standpoint.
For engineers wondering if specializing in AI is the one safe path, Marcotte offers little reassurance. “Right now, I don’t know. We’ll give it six months and we’ll see what happens.”
Confronting the Reality of Organizing
Marcotte is open about the risks. In the United States, he says, organizers need to be cautious: have conversations outside company Slack, use encrypted messaging apps, start with trusted colleagues before expanding reach. The book’s guidance, he notes, is ultimately about safety.
He also acknowledges a nagging question he faced while writing the book. Would existing members of a union find themselves with fewer opportunities when applying for jobs, particularly when facing employers who might be biased against them for any number of reasons? His advice is grounded in reality: workers have to feel safe in what they are doing. But he points to a recurring sentiment from everyone he interviewed. The work is demanding, especially in countries like the U.S. with messy labor law, but it is also rewarding because the goal is concrete—“to leave your job better than you found it.”
That sense of shared improvement extends to how Marcotte thinks organizing itself should be done. In the U.S., much of the work happens after hours or on weekends, which can exclude parents or people with second jobs. He suggests that organizers can approach their work more equitably by writing newsletters for coworkers who cannot attend meetings or by over-communicating those who want to participate but cannot. For Marcotte, the opportunity mirrors the principles of accessibility and inclusion that have guided his entire career: build a better system by bringing everyone in. 
