LaborDAO: Fund the Labor Movement

Please note: In order to receive your credit on the website, you must join our Discord server to receive directions about how to link your name to your contribution address.

NFT Holders:

All NFT Holders will be featured on TheLaborDAO.com name as the "LaborDAO Supporter. Please note: In order to receive your credit on the website, you must join our Discord server to receive directions about how to link your name to your contribution address.

Holders will be able to participate in governance and vote to approve changes to the DAO. Our governance structure has yet to be decided and will be determined at a later point with community input and guidance.

Solidarity Tokens

Supporters of this crowdfund receive $Solidarity token according to their contribution tier. We will experiment with using NFTs and/or non-financial tokens for on chain voting. The $Solidarity token will be provided to anyone who purchases an NFT.

All proceeds distributed to the LaborDAO’s budget will go directly towards the cost of building LaborDAO and fulfilling its mission. In terms of how we will use those tokens in the future, we have heard from members of our very new community and core team that financializing LaborDAO governance tokens would create a number of technical and organizational issues.

Recently a concern was raised that LaborDAO users will be incentivized to sell their tokens rather than remaining a part of our community.

To solve this and other issues we will research solutions and you can read more about our intentions around tokenomics and governance / voting in the “Research and Education” section of this document.

Your contribution does not provide you with control or ownership of LaborDAO but we will be distributing governance tokens to early supporters partially based on participation in this crowdfund.

All Mirror crowdfund supporters will receive an airdrop of tokens equivalent to the amount they contribute to crowdfund.

$SOLIDARITY tokens should only be used to access the private Discord chat. We discourage the resale or speculation of this token.

The LaborDAO team has the right to return funds if we believe the patron’s values are misaligned with the project.

LaborDAO as an Influence on the Future of Web3

We understand that everything we do must be community driven and with an eye towards intentional growth. Simultaneously, a DAO, like any organization, must have a plan to be financially solvent. One of the key areas of pushback I get when mentioning labor in the context of Web3 is concerns about volatility, speculation and aspects of marketization. We are looking to balance those concerns with the real need to create a sustainable method of funding our Treasury and our Solidarity Fund.

LaborDAO is developing small scale experiments based on interests we’ve heard from our community and Web3 folks. We will act as an incubator for new systems that radically improve labor’s ability to build solidarity across borders. We’re bridging the gap between workers and the Web3 world by building an economically sound and self-sustaining protocol that provides a safety net for workers. Perhaps most interesting to those who work in the crypto world, we are exploring ideas for a protocol that will improve labor practices within DAOs. We’re interested in experimenting with technology created by Kleros such as UBI, Proof of Humanity and dispute resolution in our efforts to help workers.

Our plan for the LaborDAO development goals include:

1. Creating smart contracts, Treasury, multi-sig wallets and more
2. Hiring developers to build smart contracts for LaborDAO
3. Create governance and delegate system

Supporting A New Powerful Emerging Labor Movement

Recently the world has seen a surge of high profile union organizing by workers at many corporations and organizations including Starbucks, Amazon, Kellogg’s, Apple, John Deere, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace to name a few.

In order for this burgeoning independent labor movement to be successful in the long term it will need financial stability. This is because most unions are funded by worker dues and existing union treasuries. Since these workers are starting new- and sometimes independent - unions, they do not have a huge financial backing to build their unions.

The LaborDAO has been created with the explicit goal of funding worker movements to create independent unions.

LaborDAO Governance

Part of the process of “progressively decentralizing” means creating a governance, proposal and voting structure and putting the power to decide the direction of LaborDAO in the hands of its members. LaborDAO will be managed by the “LaborDAO Core Team” and controlled by contributors via a delegate voting system.

Initially the LaborDAO will be responsible for:

1. Reviewing and approving proposals submitted by contributors and community members
2. Solidarity Fund: Choosing  which strikes or organizing campaigns to support.

Treasury

• Hire developers to maintain, secure and grow LaborDAO
• Create advertisement campaigns for the LaborDAO
• Hire a community manager to grow the LaborDAO online community

Solidarity Fund to support worker power: Strikes and independent union organizing

On the first official LaborDAO Twitter Space we heard from our special guest Seth Goldstein, - OPEIU labor attorney and Labor lawyer for Amazon Labor Union - that workers who want to organize are severely underfunded in their efforts.

Over the past few months we have been building a community of workers, activists, artists, labor lawyers, engineers and more across the globe who will join our DAO and start working collaboratively with other members.

Our goal is to consistently fund labor struggles by workers who want to organize their workplace around the globe. To do so, we’ll need you to become a community member and contribute whatever skills you have to support workers.

Together we hope our DAO will reshape how workers finance their organizing and strike efforts. Meanwhile we have been building relationships with Independent Labor Unions and people in the Web3 community as we plan out our governance structure.

Research and Education for workers about Web3

Our MirrorDAO crowdfund will also help us to begin to build a body of research on best practices for voting and development to ensure that our governance structure is fair and that our platform is safe from exploitation from would-be bad actors.

Possible research and education projects we intend to carry out include:

1. Collaboration with other DAOs and leaders in the crypto space like PactDAO, Blockchain Socialist and Crypto Lefitists.
2. Exploring sustainable and responsible business and investment models for the LaborDAO.
3. Examining the leading ideological underpinnings of the Web3 space, and tensions these pose to power-building efforts in the labor movement.
4. Comparing DAO governance models, such as delegation models and quadratic voting;
5. Investigating integrations with other public good protocols, including, Kleros, Universal Basic Income(UBI) and Ethereum Name Service.
6. Public goods serve a tremendously important role both in the Crypto / Web3. We intend to create a clear definition of public goods as it relates to LaborDAO. Identifying current definition of public goods as defined by the crypto / Web3 community in conversation and colloquially as well as the traditional economics definitions.

Create educational content for workers and others new to Web3:

1. Creating content to educate workers on how to organize a union.
2. Proposing delegation and ownership channels for labor and worker organizations.
3. for people who are new and want to join LaborDAO.
4. People who want to get funded or organize, strike.

A note from the NFT Artist

Workers and labor are central to a thriving economy and society. Unions continue to be one of the best tools for worker and political organization.  I love the LaborDAO’'s vision; supporting and innovating labor power in this new web3 age.

My experiences in Congress and in the corporate media were eye opening.  I realized that rather than relying on these institutions we need to organize ourselves politically, and develop new methods for quality information sharing.

I’m a self-taught visual effects artist & animator, with a passion for philosophy and good conversation. After four years as a Capitol Hill Staffer, I got a Masters degree in International Relations and Ethics, and started my animation company, BBDigital, in 2010.

Billy Buntin

Billy immigrated from Guadeloupe at the age of 5, and was raised in Brooklyn, NY. Billy studied Ethics and Internationalism at American University when he moved to Washington D.C. in 2004 and ended up working for a member of Congress and becoming a producer at CNN. Those experiences awakened him to Grassroots Activism and the Arts.

About LaborDAO Core Team

Larry Williams Jr

Larry Williams Jr. Is founder of UnionBase.org, the first secure social networking and education platform for unions and union workers. UnionBase has been covered in Forbes, Fast Company, Lean Startup, Salon and many labor publications around the globe for their efforts to support workers. Prior to founding UnionBase, Mr. Williams led organizing campaigns in the Teamster Organizing Department and served as Labor Coordinator for Sierra Club, the largest environmental non-profit in the United States. Mr. Williams is also co-founder and former President of Progressive Workers Union (PWU). PWU is a powerful Washington, D.C. based union for non-profit representing employees at Greenpeace, 350.org, Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club and more.

@Nev3rLack

Full-stack developer, with 2 years using Solidity and over a year using Typescript React. Prior to working in Web3 he had 3 years of experience in the UK working as a Software Developer in the Gambling Industry, building back office applications using Go, .NET Framework and SQL. Focused on agile environments, building on top of big infrastructures, and building start ups from the ground up.

Yonathan Micael

Yonathan received a B.S in computer engineering in 2013 while attending Old Dominion University. After graduation he worked at a small consulting firm to build and maintain both a web-application and I-pad integration to do onsite security assessment for numerous fortune 500 companies. NASA's climate simulation department recruited Yonathan to rebuild their customer facing website from the ground up.

Danielle Twiss

Danielle Twiss (she/her) is a researcher with an interest in the intersections of labor and tech, a recent graduate of Oxford University with a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

Charlie Lefcowicz

Charlie is a student at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He is passionate about leveraging technology to bolster the labor movement. He is interested in fundraising, governance, and organizing trends.

Special thanks to our new community supporters and the following counselors who have guided us in invaluable ways over the last few months:

UnionBase as initial supporter of LaborDAO

Founded in 2015, UnionBase is a tech firm that leverages web development, publishing and subscription based educational content on behalf of workers unions, union leaders, and worker organizations. UnionBase has been the initial supporter for the DAO but will maintain no control over LaborDAO and will only offer support as requested by the community.

You can see more about UnionBase and their mission here.

LaborDAO Roadmap

PHASE 1

• Launch LaborDAO Website
• Social Media Launch: Discord, Twitter, and Reddit
• Launch Mirror Blog to build an audience for LaborDAO
• Talks to labor groups about Web3 and LaborDAO

PHASE 2

• MAYDAY: LaborDAO Crowdfund Launch
• Airdrop NFTs and % of LaborDAO tokens to backers of mirror campaign
• Funding Plan for first LaborDAO Awardees announced and distributed
• Educational video and written content for people on smart contracts, Metamask, Discord and more related to Web3 onboarding.

PHASE 3

• Hire Developers for LaborDAO SmartContract and Governance
• Hire Researcher for content related to LaborDAO
• Hire social media manager who can set goals for sharing content and research findings Create plan for identifying global labor struggles to support with Solidarity Fund

PHASE 4

• Launch LaborDAO and Build LaborDAO Protocol Demo
• Receive Community proposals on which labor struggles to support
• Share LaborDAO Mission with media
• First Community vote on funding Independent Unions from Solidarity Fund:

Example: Starbucks Workers, Amazon Workers, Apple Workers