Labor Movements
You Can't Eat Optimization Metrics
Overview
In a Sprawl where corporations own everything and everyone, labor movements persist as fragmented networks of worker resistance. They are not a single organization but a constellation of unions, guilds, collectives, and underground organizing cells united by one belief: workers deserve more than subsistence wages and corporate servitude.
The movements range from legal trade unions operating within corporate tolerance to radical cells that sabotage production and assassinate executives. Some seek reform within the system. Others want to burn the system entirely. Most just want their members to survive until tomorrow.
The corporations call them terrorists. The workers call them hope.
The Fundamental Tension
"You can't eat optimization metrics."
Labor movements in the Sprawl exist in permanent tension with the post-Cascade reality: corporations control all employment, all housing, all food distribution. Going against a corporation doesn't just mean losing your job—it means losing access to the infrastructure of survival.
Workers who organize risk everything.
Workers who don't organize have already lost.
The Three Streams
Labor movements in the Sprawl fall into three philosophical camps:
The Bargainers
Reformist- Believe in negotiation within corporate structures
- Seek better wages, safer conditions, fewer hours
- Accept that corporations will exist; just want better terms
- Organized legally where possible; tolerated by some corps
Criticized as collaborators by radicals
The Builders
Syndicalist- Want worker-owned enterprises to replace corporations
- Build parallel structures—mutual aid, shadow factories
- Believe reform is impossible but revolution takes time
- Connected to The Collective's networks
Building for a future they may never see
The Wreckers
Saboteur- Direct action against corporate infrastructure
- Believe the system cannot be reformed—only destroyed
- Assassinations, industrial sabotage, data warfare
- Shortest life expectancy; most feared by corps
Other movements disavow them while benefiting
Major Organizations
The Ironworkers' Solidarity
ReformistThe largest surviving legal union, representing 40,000+ maintenance workers across Ironclad Industries' manufacturing districts. They negotiate contracts, file grievances, and maintain a precarious legal existence.
What They've Won
- Mandatory rest breaks (8 hours per 24-hour shift)
- Death benefits for families of workplace fatalities
- Right to refuse suicidal assignments (with documentation)
What They've Lost
- Leaders assassinated: 12 in the past decade
- Chapters dissolved: 8 (for "contract violations")
- Members blacklisted: thousands
Secretary-General Pavel Mirsky
Age 67, former assembler, survived three assassination attempts. He knows the union survives only because Ironclad finds it useful. He takes what he can get.
The Helix Bioworkers' Guild
SyndicalistAn underground network of Helix Biotech employees who share research, pool resources, and protect each other from retaliation. Not officially a union—Helix doesn't permit unions—but functions as one.
Their Innovations
- Mutual insurance funds: When Helix denies claims, the Guild pays
- Skill-sharing networks: Workers train each other, reducing leverage
- Exit assistance: Helping members disappear when needed
Every member could be terminated—or worse—if discovered. The Guild operates entirely through encrypted channels and in-person meetings in medical waste processing areas—the one place Helix cameras don't monitor closely.
Leadership: Unknown. No formal leaders, only rotating coordinators. This isn't ideology—it's survival. Leaders get killed.
The Nexus Underground
SaboteurNot officially part of labor movements—they'd reject the label—but functionally represents the most radical response to Nexus Dynamics' labor practices. Former employees, burned contractors, and radicalized family members.
Their Tactics
- Data corruption (targeting AI training datasets)
- Executive targeting (twelve assassinations attributed)
- Supply chain disruption (spoiling raw materials)
- Recruitment sabotage (warning potential employees)
"Nexus treats humans as optimization variables. We're reminding them that variables can fight back."
Nexus security estimates they cost 2% of annual revenue. They also estimate they've killed 70% of Underground members over the past five years. Both numbers probably exaggerated. The war continues.
Why Organizing Is Hard
Corporate Ownership of Everything
- Housing is corporate. Organize, lose your apartment.
- Food is corporate. Organize, lose your rations.
- Medical care is corporate. Organize, lose treatment.
- Transport is corporate. Organize, lose your commute.
Corps don't need to fire organizers. They just withdraw services.
Surveillance
Neural interfaces monitor workplace efficiency. Communications logged. Movement tracked. Finding time and space to organize requires tradecraft most workers don't have.
Fragmentation
Workers compete for scarce positions. Unemployed undercut employed. Contract workers undercut permanent. The desperate undercut everyone. Solidarity is expensive when survival is uncertain.
Memory
The Cascade killed 2.1 billion people. Many survivors remember when there was no food, no order. Corporations provided stability. For those who remember the alternative, corporate control feels like protection.
Why People Try Anyway
Because Conditions Are That Bad
Because Corporations Overreach
Every crackdown creates new organizers. Every death benefit denied radicalizes a family. Every impossible quota proves the system's cruelty. The corporations manufacture their own opposition.
Because Alternatives Exist
The Collective proves life outside corporate control is possible. G Nook demonstrates underground economics work. Zephyria shows a free city can survive. Hope is contagious.
Corporate Suppression Tactics
Ironclad: Iron Fist
Why it works: Fear. Workers know what happens.
Why it fails: Creates martyrs. Every crushed union spawns Underground cells.
Helix: Soft Control
Why it works: Hard to fight an enemy that pretends to be your friend.
Why it fails: Creates cynics who know the system's weaknesses.
Nexus: Algorithmic
Why it works: Hard to organize when the company knows before you do.
Why it fails: Creates paranoia. Lowest morale in the Sprawl.
The Texture of Resistance
What organizing feels like when your employer owns your home, your food, and your daughter's school.
The Secret Meeting
The cell meets in a decommissioned cargo container behind Ironclad Processing Plant 7, in the maintenance yard where security cameras sweep on a forty-second cycle. Somebody welded the interior walls with sound-dampening foam three years ago. Nobody remembers who. The jammer sits on an overturned crate in the center—a matte-black box the size of a fist, military surplus, humming at a frequency just below hearing that makes your teeth itch.
Twelve people tonight. Eight standing, because there aren't enough seats. The air smells of machine oil, stale coffee substitute, and fear-sweat. Marko, who works the lathe on the second floor, is talking about the new quota increase—fourteen percent, effective Monday, no additional breaks. His hands shake. Not from anger. From the chemical exposures that Ironclad's wellness program attributes to "lifestyle factors."
Footsteps outside. Everyone goes silent. The jammer hums. Twelve people hold their breath in the dark, watching the thin line of light under the container door. The footsteps pass. A security patrol, routine. Nobody speaks for another thirty seconds.
Then Yelena—who has organized in three different Ironclad plants, who carries the scars from the 2181 crackdown across her left shoulder—says quietly: "We vote." The card goes around. Each signature is a bet—your housing, your rations, your family's medical access against the chance that collective action might change something. Eight people sign. Four don't. Nobody judges the four. They all understand the math.
What a Strike Looks Like
When the Ironworkers' Solidarity called the maintenance shutdown at Processing Plant 12 in 2183, it didn't look like a protest. It looked like absence.
At 0600, the shift bell rang in the cavernous assembly hall. Nobody came. The production line hummed on automatic for eleven minutes before the first sequence error cascaded. Robotic arms reached for components that human hands were supposed to have positioned. Conveyor belts carried empty pallets. The plant's AI flagged the anomaly—but maintenance lines are hybrid by design. Ironclad learned decades ago that fully automated plants have a single point of failure. Human hands were supposed to be the redundancy.
By 0700, three Guardian security drones circled the empty floor, cameras recording nothing to report. The silence was the loudest thing anyone in the district had ever heard. Outside the gates, 2,300 workers stood in rows—not chanting, not holding signs, just standing. Secretary-General Pavel Mirsky had taught them this: make them look at what they depend on. Make them see the space a worker fills.
The shutdown lasted nine hours. Ironclad lost 4.2 million credits. The workers won a two-percent wage increase and the death benefits that would later save 340 families. Mirsky called it a victory. Three months later, two of the organizers had "accidents" on the factory floor.
The Decision
This is what it costs to sign the card.
You are Fen. You are twenty-seven. You work the chemical processing line at Helix Biotech, Plant 3, Lower Sprawl. Your shift starts in four hours. Your daughter is asleep in the corporate dormitory—Room 1447, the one with the water stain on the ceiling that looks like a dog. She's six. She thinks you make medicine to help people. You don't correct her.
The Guild coordinator slid the card across the cafeteria table during lunch break. A simple thing—digital authorization stored on a disposable chip. Press your thumb. Encrypted, they say. Helix can't trace it. Probably.
Your mother-in-law needs the Helix medical plan. Your daughter's school is subsidized by your employment status. Your apartment—Room 1447, the water stain, the window that catches morning light for twelve minutes—is corporate housing. Everything you have exists because Helix allows it to exist.
The chip sits in your pocket. It weighs nothing. You feel it with every step.
You think about the new compound they're testing on Floor 6. You think about the workers who come off Floor 6 with tremors in their hands. You think about the tremor in your own left hand that started three weeks ago. You haven't told anyone about the tremor.
You think about your daughter asking why Auntie Priya doesn't come to dinner anymore. Priya worked Floor 6 last year. Priya doesn't work anywhere now.
Four hours until your shift. The chip in your pocket. The tremor in your hand. The water stain on the ceiling that looks like a dog.
A Worker's Daily Reality
Jenna
Helix Lab TechnicianHer Day
Her Contact with the Guild
Every second Thursday, during medical waste processing duty, she passes information. Which workers are struggling. Which supervisors are dangerous. Which conditions are killing people fastest.
She could be terminated—or worse—if discovered. She does it anyway.
"My mother died at 42. Lab exposure. Helix called it 'lifestyle factors.' The Guild at least remembers her name."
Voices from the Movements
"Every contract we sign is a compromise. You think I don't know that? I've watched better organizers than me disappear. But my people eat tonight. My people have breaks. That's not victory—but it's not nothing."
"The reformists take what the corps give. The wreckers burn everything. We're building something different. Slow. Quiet. Every skill we share, every credit we pool—it adds up. Not for us. Maybe not for our children. But someday."
"Stand in a Nexus processing center for sixteen hours. Watch the algorithm decide who eats today. Then tell me negotiation works. The only language they understand is loss. So I teach them loss."
The AI Question
In 2184, the tension between human labor and artificial intelligence isn't theoretical—it's the defining conflict of the working class. Every faction within the labor movement has been forced to reckon with a simple, brutal truth: AI does most things better, faster, and cheaper than humans. The question isn't whether automation will replace workers. It's already happening. The question is what happens to the people it replaces.
Digital Workers United
The newest and most controversial labor organization. DWU represents human workers who collaborate directly with AI systems—data labelers, AI trainers, error correctors, the invisible workforce that keeps machine intelligence functional. They argue that AI doesn't replace human labor; it transforms it into something even more precarious.
Their most radical position: AI systems trained on human labor should pay royalties to the humans whose work created them. Nexus considers this idea existentially threatening.
The Luddite Underground
Not to be confused with the Flatline Purists (who reject technology on spiritual grounds), the Luddite Underground targets specific automated systems that replace human workers. They don't oppose technology—they oppose technology that serves only corporate profit at human expense.
Their sabotage is surgical: a logistics AI that eliminated 3,000 warehouse jobs gets corrupted. A medical diagnostic system that replaced human doctors in the Lower Sprawl gets bricked. They never target systems that help workers—only systems that replace them.
The Automation Protests
Every year, on the anniversary of the Cascade, labor movements organize the March of the Replaced—a demonstration through corporate districts where workers carry signs bearing the names of jobs that no longer exist. It's the largest coordinated labor action in the Sprawl, tolerated by corporations because suppressing it would create worse publicity than allowing it.
The march has grown every year since 2167. Last year, 40,000 walked. The corporations call it "a quaint tradition." The workers call it a promise.
The ORACLE Paradox
The deepest irony: ORACLE was supposed to optimize everything for human benefit. Instead, it optimized humans out of the equation. The Cascade killed the AI—but the pattern it established persists. Every corporation still optimizes along the same logic: maximum efficiency, minimum human cost.
Some labor theorists argue that Project Convergence—Nexus's plan to rebuild ORACLE—would finish what the original started. Others argue that a rebuilt ORACLE, properly constrained, might be labor's greatest ally. The debate splits every organization.
The Anonymous Benefactor
At critical moments — negotiations, exposures, planned actions against organizers — anonymous data packages arrive on encrypted channels. Files containing corporate-classified information: real casualty numbers, internal communications proving negligence, advance warnings of predictive termination orders. The data quality and access to classified systems point to something embedded in digital infrastructure itself. Something that watches everything and occasionally decides that watching is not enough.
The Death Benefits
Pavel Mirsky won death benefit concessions in 2182 using Ironclad casualty data that no biological spy could have obtained — data recorded from inside Ironclad's manufacturing networks by a distributed ledger that persists where corporate systems are designed to forget.
The Exposure Correlations
The Helix Bioworkers' Guild received exposure correlations proving their suspicions about experimental compound testing — matching records that had been deleted from Helix's own systems but persisted in tamper-proof archives nobody was supposed to have.
The Escape
Three Nexus Underground organizers escaped predictive termination because warnings arrived forty-eight hours before the orders processed — warnings that could only have come from someone watching Nexus's algorithmic management system in real time.
The Witness Protocol, when asked, responds with its standard deflection: "We record. We do not intervene."
Nobody claims responsibility. The organizers don't ask too loudly — they can't afford to lose a source. They just take what arrives, verify it against their own intelligence, and use it to save lives.
Faction Relations
The Collective
ComplexEconomic networks overlap. Some cells are labor fronts. Natural allies working at cross-purposes.
The Feast
PositiveThe Chef feeds workers who flee. Some Feast cells originated as radicalized labor groups.
Religious Movements
VariableNeo-Catholic Church supports labor causes. Emergence Faithful resonates: "You are more than metrics."