Union vote is a big move in tech sector

SAN FRANCISCO — Employees at crowdfunding platform Kickstarter voted Tuesday to unionize, the first well-known technology company to take the step toward being represented by organized labor.

The decision, which was formalized by a vote count at the National Labor Relations Board, came down to a narrow margin, with 46 employees voting in favor of the move and 37 opposing it.

The debate over a union — and whether such representation was appropriate for highly paid tech workers — had been a source of tension at the company for many months.

The pro-union vote is significant for the technology industry, where workers have become increasingly activist in recent years over issues as varied as sexual harassment and climate change.

Behemoth companies such as Google and Amazon have struggled to get a handle on their employees, who have staged walkouts and demanded that their firms not work with government entities and others.

But large-scale unionization efforts have faltered. Only a group of contractors at a Google office in Pittsburgh unionized last year, and a small group of Instacart workers managed to do so this month.

Kickstarter’s chief executive, Aziz Hasan, said what he now was “engaged in and thinking about is the ability for us to move forward.”

Kickstarter’s employees will be affiliated with the Office and Professional Employees International Union and begin negotiating a contract with management over equal pay and inclusive hiring practices. The bargaining committee will include employees who opposed the union as well as those who supported it.

“The tech sector represents a new frontier for union organizing,” said Richard Lanigan, the union’s president.

Kickstarter, which was founded in 2009 and has raised less than $15 million in venture capital, gives people a way to raise money for their creative projects — such as a film or a new gadget — from the public instead of through traditional investors, a model known as crowdfunding.

The privately held company, which is based in Brooklyn, N.Y., and has 145 employees, long has positioned itself as altruistic. In 2015, it reincorporated as a public benefit corporation, meaning it also focused on providing a benefit to society rather than merely on generating profits for shareholders.