Google employees unite

Washington, January 4 (EFE). – About 200 employees of Google and other Alphabet-owned companies today announced the formation of a union in the company, after a year of covert organization, the Communication Workers of America (CWA) reported.

The union, called the Alphabet Workers Union and affiliated with the CWA, will be the first to be open to the affiliation of all employees and contractors in an Alphabet company, for which members pay dues, elect a board of directors and have permanent representatives.

In Puerto Rico, the CWA represents union workers who work for AT&T, now Liberty Puerto Rico.

“Our union provides a sustainable structure to ensure that the values ​​we share as Alphabet employees are upheld,” said Nicky Anselmo, a program manager quoted by the CWA.

Anselmo added that for years, employees have fought with their employers and protested “the blatant multi-million dollar payments made to executives guilty of sexual harassment.”

Don Trementozzi, president of the local CWA region, said his organization is “a democratic union, led by members, with experience educating and maintaining the power of workers in some of the largest companies in the United States. States. United “.

Representing workers in the telecommunications, traditional and digital media fields, the CWA is one of the largest trade unions in the country with over 700,000 members.

Alphabet currently has approximately 260,000 employeesBut nearly half of the 120,000 Google employees at Alphabet companies are agency workers, contractors or subcontractors who don’t have the benefits given to full-time employees.

Membership of American workers has fallen from 35% in 1954 to 20% in 1984 and 10% in 2019, while conditions and outlook for the middle class have deteriorated.

The absence of union representation and collective bargaining is even more noticeable in high-tech and The New York Times reported that the new union “opens a rare beachhead for union organizers in Silicon Valley, a decidedly anti-union environment.”

In recent years, employees of companies such as Amazon, Salesforce, Pinterest, and others in the digital universe have gathered around issues of diversity, wage discrimination, and sexual harassment.

“Our goals go beyond the question, ‘Are people getting well paid?’” Chewy Shaw, a San Francisco-based Google engineer and vice chairman of the organizing committee, told The New York Times. “Our concerns are much broader,” he added.

Alphabet continues to sanction those who dare to speak up and prevent employees from speaking up on sensitive issues of public interest, such as monopolies, he added.

According to the CWA, Google employees who have now organized themselves have been subject to “blatantly illegal” harassment and layoffs, something the Labor Relations Board recently confirmed.

“Rather than listening to its employees, Google hired IRI Labor Relations, a notoriously anti-union firm, to hinder the organization,” he added. “This is how Google executives chose to interact with employees.”