Back in February, Etsy announced that in April, the site's transaction fees would be increasing from 5% to 6.5%, a 30% increase.
Not surprisingly, many of Etsy's sellers were not pleased. And to show their displeasure, sellers have called for a strike to take place the week of April 11th.
The sellers are not just upset about the fee increase.
They have a series of complaints against Etsy, including their mandatory marketing fees, unfair deactivations, and the growing number of sellers who aren't selling handmade products.
The Verge's Etsy sellers will go on strike in April and want customers to boycott provides more details on the demands of the sellers. Key quote on what the organizer of the strike thinks might happen:
"What would happen if on April 11th, so many sellers put their shops on vacation mode that Etsy starts shitting bricks."
We hope they'll at least be handmade bricks.
The strike's organizers hope this is the start of a broader set of collective action by sellers. Again from the Verge article:
"The strike is just action number one," she says. "What we want to really do for the future is form a solidarity support movement — peer support, artisans supporting each other."
At a minimum, the strike has caught the attention of Etsy executives.
Key quote on Etsy's response to the strike from Gizmodo's Etsy Sellers Are Going On Strike to Prevent It From Becoming 'The Next Amazon':
"We're committed to supporting our community of 5.3 million sellers around the world by helping them grow their businesses," an Etsy spokesperson said. "Sellers have consistently told us they want us to expand our efforts around marketing, customer support, and removing listings that don't meet our policies. Our revised fee structure will enable us to increase our investments in each of these key areas so that we can better serve our community and keep Etsy a beloved, trusted, and thriving marketplace."
Collective action by independent workers is hard to organize, and successes in doing so have been rare.
But we see more and more signals that workers of all kinds are looking to band together and collectively fight for their rights. This is yet another example.
