AI coding manifesto, flatlining wages, and more | September 2026

New resources #

A Manifesto for Responsible Agentic Coding #

Should you boycott generative AI? But what if your hyped-up boss starts pressuring you? Worry not, there’s a middle ground. A tech worker shares their manifesto for responsible agentic AI coding.

Read the manifesto.

If you’re 10x more productive with AI, how come your wage is flatlining? #

Some workers claim they’re 10x more productive with AI. But are they also getting 10x their regular wages? A tech worker offers ideas to avoid exploitation.

Check out the advice.

Upcoming events #

Want to meet other tech workers? Join one of the upcoming events:

• 7 Sep, 7:00-08:00 pm - SWOT analysis (Techwerkers), online
• 9 Sep, 0:00 am-11:59 pm - Public transport strike, Nederland
• 11 Sep, 3:00-3:30 pm - Friday coffee chat, online
• 12 Sep, 12:30-4:30 pm - Techwerkersblok @ Klimaatmars 2026, Amsterdam
• 14 Sep, 7:00-8:00 pm - Organizing meetup, online
• 15 Sep, 7:30-8:30 pm - AI regulation brainstorm, online: https://meet.jit.si/TechwerkersAIBrainstorm
• 16 Sep, 7:30-08:30 pm - Beyond the Layoff: Rebuild Your Confidence, Wellbeing & Career, online (registration required)
• 17 Sep, 12:00-1:00 am - Brainstorm: Tech Worker Code of Ethics, online (registration required)
• 17 Sep, 7:00-10:00 pm - Leiden Software Meetup, Café De Keyzer, Leiden
• 18 Sep, 3:00-3:30 pm - Friday coffee chat, online
• 19 Sep, 1:00-4:00 pm - Bijeenkomst Schrijfmaand Vakbonden en Arbeidersgeschiedenis op Wikipedia, Wikimedia Nederland kantoor, Utrecht
• 19 Sep, 7:30-10:30 pm - Techwerkers rennen Damloop by Night, Zaandam
• 24 Sep, 7:30-8:30 pm - Vrij Socialisme, an introduction to the Federatie voor Vrij Socialisme (FVS), online: https://meet.jit.si/VrijSocialisme101
• 25 Sep, 3:00-3:30 pm - Friday coffee chat, online
• 28 Sep, 7:00-8:00 pm - Organizing meetup, online
• 4 Oct, 9:00 am-12:00 noon, Techwerkers rennen Singelloop, Utrecht

Also feel free to add any interesting events to the calendar.

On the radar #

Some news items that caught tech workers’ attention this month:

• “Everything is too expensive nowadays.” Workers in the cleaning sector went on strike for better wages.
• Port workers in the Rotterdam harbour went on strike on 4 September to pressure the Dutch government to withdraw a proposacuts to social security and pensions.
• Uber workers in the Netherlands, together with coworkers from Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Romania and the UK, file a class action suit against the company. The workers claim compensation for missed earnings (on average €7,500 a year in lost income) and breaches of data protection laws due to Uber’s allegedly manipulative pay-setting algorithm.
• Workers at Swedish contact centre company Transcom reject its proposal for mass layoff arrangements (‘social plan’). Transcom wants to fire around 150 workers and shut its site in the Netherlands after 26 years, to expand operations elsewhere.
• Airbus staff strike for remote work options and win.
• Incidentally (not incidentally), it turns out that fully remote workers report the highest levels of well-being, and are less likely to quit, compared to partially remote or fully on-site workers, a survey among 7k+ healthcare workers found.
• Anna’s Archive calls on people to scan and upload books, to prevent AI companies from destroying physical copies in the process of feeding the hungry LLM monsters.
• Google search is dying. The AI summaries replacing it are worse.
• A short answer from a human is worth more than a wall of text from a robot, even if the robot is right. Don’t paste the AI. Really. Stop pasting the AI at me.
• From security workers to the world: “You cannot do age or identity verification safely. It always creates some sort of record and that set of records will always become a target.” This after supposedly ‘secure’ processor IDScan turns out to have been leaking a live feed of a total of 153 million identity documents to hackers for over a year.
• Twitter uh sorry X issues a cease-and-desist notice to open source tools Nitter and XCancel that allow you to bypass the company’s registration wall. End of an era? Not so fast.
• Norway’s Forbrukerrådet (Consumer Council) describes a day in the life of an ensh*ttificator (ensh*ttifier?).
• LOW←TECH MAGAZINE is a solar powered website. Bad weather? Then the site’s offline.