Organizing Indie Labor

Feeling powerless in the face of platform companies with billion-dollar valuations? This is the story of one organization doing something about it.

Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash

The labor market has undergone a sea change in the last twenty years. The independent workforce now makes up 30-45% of US workers—including gig workers, contract workers, freelancers, and sole proprietors.¹ Yet, critical provisions in US labor regulations do not cover independent workers.

Independent workers are not entitled to unemployment benefits, workers’ compensation, or employer-sponsored health insurance. Minimum wage and overtime regulations don't apply to them, nor do provisions like the Family Medical Leave Act. In many ways, being “independent” means being on your own when it comes to life’s inevitable ups and downs.

What's more, platform companies like Uber, DoorDash, Amazon, and Etsy have further changed our idea of work. If you sell your labor or the product of your labor to a third party on a platform, you're not an employee of the platform—you're an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur means making your own decisions, working a flexible schedule, and enjoying the upside of business ownership. Or does it?

Well, those entrepreneurs are starting to ask questions. I am, too. And those questions haven't changed as much as you might think since the dawn of the labor movement.

Here’s the story of one organization's attempt to organize the indie workforce—and the incredible precedent set by textile workers in the 1930s.

Keep reading or listen on the What Works podcast.

Nothing to lose

In the spring of 2022, more than 82,000 people signed a petition protesting increased fees and harmful policies at Etsy. Then, 30,000 Etsy shops temporarily closed their doors. And it all started with a Reddit post.²

In her post, Kristi Cassidy, who makes intricate corsets and period costumes, declared that Etsy sellers needed a union. And plenty of others agreed. After the strike (and some minor concessions from Etsy), the organizers decided to keep pushing. It was time to organize that union.

"Oh, that's exactly the combination of things that interests me," Chiarra Lohr, now executive director of the Indie Sellers Guild, told me. "I love handmade stuff and crafting, and we're a very pro-labor, pro-union household." Chiarra contacted Kristi on multiple platforms to see how she could help.

Chiarra studied theater costume design in college. "After I graduated, I did some work sewing for someone who ran an Etsy shop. And then I opened my own little business selling custom corsets and lingerie," she recounted. She recognizes now that the price points for the goods she created made them ill-suited for Etsy. After becoming a mom and navigating the pandemic, she focused on other endeavors rather than restarting the Etsy shop.

And one of those endeavors happened to be organizing Etsy sellers. Within a few months of the April 2022 strike, the Indie Sellers Guild opened its doors to members.

Labor organizing has been in the news a lot over the last couple of years. The pandemic highlighted many ways work wasn't working for many people anymore. Public support for unions is higher than it has been in decades. While union participation is still dismally low, unions are making inroads in workplaces that have been difficult to unionize in the past.

While the language that Chiarra and the ISG use is steeped in the labor movement, it's important to note that the Indie Sellers Guild is not a labor union—not in the way that's covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

The NLRA, passed in 1935 as part of FDR's New Deal, protects workers' rights to organize, establish a union, and collectively bargain with employers. It's these rights that workers all over the US are exercising in exciting ways—from Starbucks to Amazon to even REI.

However, the NLRA does not protect independent workers—including gig workers, freelancers, contract workers, or other nontraditional employment relations. Independent workers, like Etsy sellers, are welcome to organize, but the labor regulations provide neither a mechanism for bargaining nor prevention of retaliation.

At the beginning of the labor movement in the United States, there were no protections for workers who organized strikes—there weren't protections for workers at all—much like Kristi and Chiarra, union organizers figured things out as they went. One place organizers were figuring things out was the Lowell textile mills.

Organizing the mill girls

In 1814, the first of the Lowell mills was built in Massachusetts. These mills revolutionized textile production in the United States by combining spinning and weaving to facilitate the mass production of cloth.

The Lowell mills were known for something else, too—their workers. The Lowell system employed young women, ages 15-35, as machine "operatives." Women workers were cheaper than men and more reliable than children. Win-win, amirite?

The Lowell mill girls became significant players in early worker organizing in the United States. They became a potent political and economic force at a time when women couldn't vote and often couldn't manage their own finances or own property.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Working conditions in the mills

The "mill girls" regularly worked from 5 am to 7 pm five days a week, with another "shorter" 6-8 hour shift on Saturdays.

You wish to know minutely of our hours of labor. We go in at five o’clock; at seven we come out to breakfast; at half-past seven we return to our work, and stay until half-past twelve. At one, we return to our work, and stay until seven at night. Then the evening is all our own, which is more than some laboring girls can say, who think nothing is more tedious than a factory life.
— Harriet Farley, June 1844 (published in The Lowell Offering)

They lived in boardinghouses run by the mill and overseen by a head woman or married couple. While conditions were, let's say, not ideal, the mill girls had certain privileges that they didn't have in the rural areas of New England from which they came.

First, the mill operatives could learn from each other and the community. They came together for reading groups on self-improvement, used the local library, and organized lectures. In 1845, Dr. Benjamin Colby of Nashua, NH, offered two lectures on the "Allopathic, Homeopathic, and Hydropathic systems of medical practice," as advertised in The Voice of Industry newspaper. Another lecture featured Dr. C. V. Smith of Boston teaching on "the senses," and another featured Mr. S. P. Andrews, also of Boston, lecturing on the "phonographic system of writing."

Second, they had opportunities to express themselves in ways staying on the family farm would have made difficult. In 1840, a publication called the Lowell Offering began circulating and featured essays, poems, and short fiction contributed by mill girls.

And third, their close quarters in the boardinghouses opened the door to labor organizing. And organize labor they did.

Early organizing

In 1834, the mill operatives organized a strike to protest significant wage reductions.

This cutting down wages IS NOT what they cry it up to be. I wonder how’d they’d like to work as hard as we do, digging and drudging day after day, from morning till night, and then every two or three years, have their wages reduced. I rather guess it wouldn’t set very well.
— Josephine L. Baker, 1845 (published in The Lowell Offering)

That effort failed, but in 1836, the operatives formed the Factory Girls' Association and organized another strike, this time against rent hikes. This strike, involving 1500 workers and widespread community support, succeeded. The rent hike was canceled.

In 1845, Sarah Bagley and 11 other mill operatives formed the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, the first union of working women in the US. They organized throughout the region and had strong support from working-class men's associations, too.

Their most significant initiative was the push for a 10-hour workday. They worked with other labor associations to send petitions to the Massachusetts legislature, one amassing 2500 signatures and another 4000 signatures. Ultimately, the push for a 10-hour workday failed—though eventually, the average day was lowered to 11 hours.

They do not regard this measure, (the reduction of the hours of labor) as an end, but only as one step, towards the great end to be attained. They deeply feel, that their work will never be accomplished, until slavery and oppression, mental, physical and religious, shall have been done away ... “Onward" is their watchword, and “WE'LL TRY AGAIN;" their motto; and they are resolved to “try again" and again, and yet again, until the work shall be accomplished or their work on earth shall cease.
— unsigned column in The Voice of Industry

Eventually, the mill girls proved a little too "troublesome" for mill managers. What was once a compliant and inexpensive workforce was becoming an independent and vocal workforce that wasn't thrilled about being "inexpensive." By the late 1840s, Irish immigrant women and children had largely replaced the original Lowell workforce. Fleeing the Irish famine, they were willing to work longer hours for less pay. By the 1890s, most textile milling had moved to the South. Cloth production was now closer to where the cotton was grown and in a good position to exploit the labor of formerly enslaved people.

While the Lowell system failed and the women operatives went on to other careers as librarians, teachers, and telegraph operators, their activist spirit continued. Many of these women—and many more to come—became involved in the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements.

Platforms are bosses, too

Etsy is a platform. What is a platform? Well, Nick Srincek, author of Platform Capitalism, puts it this way:

At the most general level, platforms are digital infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact. They therefore position themselves as intermediaries that bring together different users: customers, advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers, and even physical objects.

As a platform, Etsy brings together people who want to buy handmade, vintage, and small-batch goods with the people who produce those goods. It facilitates listing items for sale, accepting payments, and communicating with buyers.

Srincek also points out that platforms rely on 'network effects' to solidify their position relative to users. Platforms become more valuable and harder to leave as more people use them.

Etsy also benefits from network effects. As more people set up shop, more people came to buy. Once Etsy became synonymous with buying handmade, it became difficult to set up shop elsewhere. On the buyers' side, as the number of shops on Etsy grew, it made shopping elsewhere seem inefficient—no other marketplace could compete with the diversity of goods on Etsy.

Finally, Scrincek points out that platforms seem to be mere neutral engines of trade. However, "the rules of product and service development, as well as marketplace interactions," he writes, "are set by the platform owner." Their policy, algorithm, and design choices impose pressure on platform users, much like a boss puts pressure on workers.

When Facebook announced its infamous "pivot to video" in 2015, media companies responded by building in-house video production teams and cutting costs on written journalism. The media being produced transformed, the structure of the companies shifted, and the people who did the work changed.

When Google adjusted its algorithm to privilege longer articles and penalize content trying to game SEO, marketers simply responded with longer articles that continued to game SEO. Oh, and food bloggers responded by burying recipes under 1000-word articles.

"As Etsy puts in new policies," Chiarra told me, "it changes who's on the platform, how it's seen, what people end selling, and how they change their business to try to adapt." For instance, Etsy influences shipping times by limiting the number of weeks a seller has to get an item out the door. That's fine for some items and makers, but it's a big problem for many high-end custom products like furniture or hand-knit items.

So, shop owners have to be strategic about their product selection and business operations. They might design simpler products to make or less customizable. They might hire less-skilled production workers. In other words, Etsy shop owners had to think like mass manufacturers rather than the cottage industrialists that Etsy purported to support.

Another significant policy change was when Etsy opened its doors to "production partners." This new policy meant that, for example, an illustrator who wanted to sell t-shirts with their art on them could partner with a company like Printify to do the production and fulfillment. That makes great sense for an illustrator who wants to expand their products into wearables. But it also means that anyone with a Canva account can turn pre-made graphics into print-on-demand t-shirts and take a small cut of the sale.

"What you see now is that people who do what you think of with Etsy—really artisan, one-of-a-kind, handcrafted items—are struggling to be found," observed Chiarra.

To Scrincek's point, platforms aren't neutral. Their policies and design are value judgments about who they want in their marketplaces and how they want those sellers to behave. And those value judgments are always going to solve for shareholder value.

A golden opportunity

Let's return to the Lowell mills for a bit.

The mills represented a new opportunity for women who wanted (or, more often, needed) to work. They could earn a relatively decent wage all year round and avail themselves of additional education and enrichment.

Other work options for women rarely, if ever, matched those benefits.

That gave the mills a monopsony on women's labor in the region. A monopoly refers to a single powerful seller, while a monopsony refers to a single powerful buyer.

A labor monopsony is a market in which there is only one employer to buy available labor power. Labor monopsonies can then keep wages low, set unreasonable quotas or productivity goals, and forgo basic accommodations in working conditions. Since there's nowhere else to sell your labor, you have to accept the deal—or starve.

The Lowell mills set wages jointly, meaning that even when different people owned them, the mills all paid the same wage. Workers couldn't "shop around" when it came to which mill provided the best pay or benefits; they were all the same.

Etsy operates much like a traditional labor monopsony, albeit with a significant twist, considering shop owners are not employees of Etsy. While there are other options when it comes to selling handmade or vintage goods online, Etsy remains synonymous with handmade and vintage goods in the minds of consumers. Etsy dominates Google search rankings. It runs major advertising campaigns.

Etsy, in effect, created a labor monopsony by capturing an immense market share. Sure, sellers could go elsewhere—but it's a steep uphill battle.

Not only does this allow Etsy to wield its monopsony power over labor with unfair policies, but monopsony power also allows Etsy to blame sellers when they fail. After all, they're providing a golden opportunity.

Chiarra explained that if you "start Googling how to make my Etsy shop work better ... you're inundated with how to make your Etsy shop bring in six figures a month, how to improve SEO, how to make your listing titles more searchable." Sellers learn to play the platform game. And if they fail, well, there's always another blog post or YouTube video to help them try another trick.

Few people mention that the rules of this game aren't fair to begin with. "It completely ignores the ways that this is a platform-wide problem," Chiarra told me. "This is not you individually failing at a business. It's because the platform is structured in a way to make this difficult for you."

Platforms bank on individuals doing whatever they need to do to succeed—often without considering others who are also trying to succeed. This internal competition makes it harder for users to see the common struggle they share with other users.

Etsy sellers are alienated from each other. Substack writers are alienated from each other. Instagram influencers are alienated from each other. And that alienation makes it challenging to see how much power the users actually have as a group.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Solidarity now!

"It's such a weird thing to try and build a new kind of organization from scratch," Chiarra explained. Some wanted to create a cooperative marketplace—they split off and founded the Artisan's Coop. Others could join existing trade associations like the Craft Industry Alliance. However, the ISG leaders had a different vision.

"We need something to advocate for sellers on the platforms that already exist, to put pressure on those platforms, to deal with those issues," she told me. ISG leaders set out to serve the people who showed up. That means what they're doing today looks pretty different from when they started. They have made a habit of listening to members' needs and concerns and molding the organization's projects to fit.

One of the ISG's core strategies is working with other organizations to expand their reach and counter the power of platforms through solidarity. By recognizing that each organization serves a unique purpose, it can leverage its strengths and expertise to achieve bigger goals.

The ISG also counters harmful platform policies by directly putting pressure on Etsy. They filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission and the Small Business Association Office of Advocacy to oppose a policy allowing Etsy to deem certain sellers "high risk" without notice and hold most of their revenue for 45 days. Etsy responded by walking back that policy and reserving a smaller percentage of sales.

They worked with Senator Tammy Baldwin on the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) Online Act. This legislation would require goods sold online to carry the same labeling that goods sold in person must, indicating the country in which they were manufactured.

The ISG is also working on a Marketplace Accreditation Program based on their research with their members. This program would establish parameters for fair marketplaces, accredit those that meet the parameters, and gather those accredited marketplaces into a searchable database to make finding an alternative to Etsy easier.

Like the Lowell mill girls, the ISG also invests in education and member enrichment. Their first convention will be held online on April 13-14. All events are being recorded so that they are accessible to people from all over the world. "It's a chance to build up our community and share with our members what we've been doing," Chiarra explained. The event is open to everyone, with live tickets for $1 and recordings for $5.

Don't moan, organize!

The tech industry believes that it's succeeded in disrupting worker solidarity. After all, if we don't think of ourselves as workers but as entrepreneurs, not coworkers but competitors, how could we come together to demand a fairer social contract? We have little power as long as they keep us voicing our frustration on their platforms rather than working together to press for change or create alternatives.

Unfortunately, the tech industry is right. For now.

However, organizations like the Indie Sellers Guild and leaders like Chiarra Lohr and Kristi Cassidy represent the tip of the spear regarding change. Delivery workers are organizing city by city. Writers are forming cooperatives.

There's a real opportunity here—an opportunity for grassroots change and for pressuring lawmakers to recognize how far out of step the contemporary labor market is with labor regulations that have been on the books for almost a century. It's time for new organizations, new policies, and new worker rights for the 21st-century economy.

1. The data on this is a bit all over the place. But this range is consistent with most of the reports I surveyed. See one breakdown by McKinsey here.

2. I also wrote about the Etsy strike in 2022.