What message does China’s digital grassroot actions have for the US labor movement?

In an era when union density continues to decline and traditional workplace organizing is under siege, the US labor movement is venturing into new territory: social media. To capture public attention and mobilize support, unions are adopting social media strategies used by political campaigns and digital marketing. Campaigns like Fight for $15, OUR Walmart, and #RedforEd demonstrate the power of digital platforms to amplify worker voices. Yet many labor activists are questioning the effectiveness of this new approach. Do digital campaigns translate into tangible gains for workers?  And how do they interact with sustained, on-the-ground organizing?  

Simply stated, we don’t yet know. Despite growing excitement, there isn’t enough empirical evidence to tell us whether social media alone truly enhances workers’ organizing capacity – particularly given the significant resources required to run a successful online labor campaign. To better understand what makes digital organizing work, we need more evidence about the structural conditions that shape how these efforts play out. 

China offers a fascinating case, with the potential to tell us a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of social media as an organizing tool. China is home to one of the world’s largest labor forces, but formal labor organizing is tightly restricted by the authoritarian government. Studying digital organizing in such a constrained political and institutional environment can offer critical insights. The Chinese “stress test” of digital organizing helps clarify what social media can and cannot do – here and elsewhere. In fact, exploring how Chinese workers use digital platforms to navigate constraints provides valuable lessons not only for the future of labor activism in restrictive settings, but also for understanding the broader global dynamics of organizing in the digital age. 

Can digital campaigns advance labor rights in a context without traditional voice and organization options?  We examined this question in a recent study by analyzing a grassroots online movement protesting the grueling work culture in China’s tech industry. Specifically, we looked at the normalization of the “996” schedule, where tech employees work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. The Anti-996 movement gained international recognition for its bold critique of overwork. Our analysis drew on data from social media posts, interviews with tech workers, and coverage in state media. We found that even though independent labor organizing is actively suppressed in China, digital platforms can provide workers with a powerful channel for expressing grievances and demanding change.  

The Anti-996 movement began when an anonymous developer launched the “996.ICU” GitHub project. The project warned that extreme hours risked sending workers to intensive care units. The project triggered widespread online debate, public outcry, increased coverage of overtime issues in state-run media, and ultimately contributed to a formal ruling by China’s Supreme People’s Court declaring the 996 schedule illegal. 

However, when we spoke with tech workers, we realized the gains were mostly symbolic. While worker voices on social media generated awareness of labor practices and attracted temporary policy attention, they failed to produce lasting workplace reforms. Most workers reported little to no improvement in their working hours following the online movement. This gap between digital visibility and material outcomes highlights the limitations of online activism in the absence of formal collective bargaining power, legal protections, or sustained grassroots organizing. A powerful social media movement alone was not enough; without strong unions or institutional backing, companies were able to quietly revert to the status quo once public attention faded. 

This dilemma is not unique to China. The US labor movement faces a similar challenge.  In a case similar to the Anti-996 movement, over 20,000 Google employees staged a global walk-out in 2018 to protest the company’s poor handling of sexual harassment and workplace equity. The movement was coordinated largely through social media and internal digital tools. The company initially responded positively and implemented policies to address the issues immediately after the collective action, but key organizers later reported retaliation, and the long-term structural reforms were limited. OUR Walmart – the campaign pushing for better wages, scheduling practices, and respect in the workplace – leveraged social media and digital apps to connect union organizers, current and former Walmart workers, and community members. The campaign’s Black Friday walkouts gained national visibility. Despite the significant media attention and initial successful digital mobilization, the campaign ultimately failed to unionize any Walmart stores. The campaign was quietly rebranded and redirected strategically.  

The lesson is not that social media organizing is futile – far from it. Rather, digital labor campaigns must avoid mimicking the fast and furious model of political campaigning. On social media, tragic events, provocative language, or strong emotions can rapidly capture public attention, but that attention often fades just as quickly.  

The Fight for $15 campaign – which succeeded in raising the minimum wage in dozens of states and cities boosting pay for more than 26 million workers – offers important lessons for building a successful digital labor strategy.  A successful campaign must be grounded in a clearly defined issue and supported by a well-crafted strategic plan; it requires dedicated leadership to shape public discourse; it depends on a coordinated network to manage messaging; and it must invest in long-term relationship building. The key takeaway is that digital campaigns must be planned and executed over a much longer time horizon. It may take years to achieve the same level of connectivity and commitment as traditional, on-the-ground organizing. As the Anti-996 movement warned us: when digital organizing grows organically without sustained strategic coordination, it tends to be neither durable nor impactful.     

More important, digital platforms must be understood as complements to, not substitutes for, traditional organizing and legal protections against employer retaliation. The most successful recent labor campaigns in the US, such as the Starbucks and Amazon union drives, demonstrate the value of integrating digital visibility with on-the-ground organizing methods, such as workplace committees, negotiations, and community coalitions. 

Movements need orchestrators – whether unions, worker centers, or hybrid organizations – to frame demands, mobilize allies, and push for enforcement. China does not have this kind of orchestration. In contrast, the US legal and institutional context, while imperfect, offers labor organizers an opportunity to build the organizing infrastructure, legal leverage, and offline engagement that movements like Anti-996 can only gesture toward.  

Building a sustainable labor movement requires sustained effort, both online and offline. Traditional organizing provides a stable foundation for leadership development, accountability, and trust-building. Digital tools can extend the reach of campaigns, generating public pressure, and connecting dispersed workers and activists to achieve greater breadth. But neither can succeed in isolation in today’s labor movement. Efforts must be anchored in ongoing struggles to protect and expand the right to unionize and collective bargaining – rights that make sustained organizing possible. 

Social media gives workers a voice, but without representation, that voice risks becoming just noise. The real challenge is to transform visibility into durable labor power.