More than 200 employees at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, have voted to join the Communications Workers of America union. The move, aimed at addressing concerns over management practices and fostering a more open and collaborative environment, comes amid growing competition from AI chatbots and a decline in volunteer editors.

One of the main drivers of the union drive was frustration over how the organization handled hiring and firing decisions. For example, the disbanding of a team responsible for developing tools for volunteer editors and the removal of France from a list of approved hiring locations were cited as key incidents. Lauren de Lench, a lead technical program manager, explains, “I want us to be loud and debate freely up and down the organizational chart because that’s how we move quickly, address challenges, and come up with the best collective solutions.”

The Wikimedia Foundation, with an annual budget of more than $200 million, is in a strong financial position but faces challenges from increasing server costs due to AI companies using Wikipedia data to train their models, and a declining number of human visitors to Wikipedia articles, as more people rely on chatbots for information. This shift has raised concerns about the long-term sustainability of the volunteer editing model.

Wikimedia workers in the UK are also seeking to organize, hoping to band together with the US group given their shared leadership, projects, and goals. The foundation’s next step will be negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with their bosses, with key provisions expected to include requiring the employer to demonstrate just cause before firing someone.