A group of Google engineers and other workers announced on Monday that they have formed a union, creating a rare mainstay for the labor movement in the tech industry.
About 225 employees at Google and its parent company Alphabet are the first dues-paying members of the Alphabet Workers Union. They represent a fraction of Alphabet’s workforce, well below the threshold needed to gain formal recognition as a collective bargaining group in the US.
But the new union, which will join the larger Communication Workers of America, says it will serve as a “structure that allows Google employees to actively push for real changes within the company.” Members say they want a greater voice not only on wages, benefits and protections from discrimination and harassment, but also broader ethical questions about how Google pursues its business ventures.
The union action is the latest signal from employees who do not believe the company is living up to its professed ideals, as expressed in the original slogan “Don’t be evil”.
Google said Monday it has tried to create a supportive and rewarding workplace, but suggested it is not negotiating directly with the union.
“Of course, our employees have protected the labor rights we support,” said Kara Silverstein, the company’s human resources director. “But as we have always done, we keep in direct contact with all our employees.”
Trade union action has historically failed to gain much traction among elite tech workers, who receive hefty salaries and other benefits, such as free food and shuttles to work. But workplace activism at Google and other major tech companies has increased in recent years as employees advocate for better handling of sexual harassment and discrimination and avoid harmful use of the products they help build and sell.
Many employees began to see the strength of their workplace activism in 2018, when an internal outcry prompted Google to discontinue its work to provide the Pentagon with artificial intelligence services for conflict areas. Later in 2018, thousands of Google employees left to protest the company’s handling of allegations of sexual misconduct against executives.
Google software engineer Chewy Shaw, who has been elected to the new union’s executive council, said he and others decided to form the group after seeing colleagues pushed from their roles because of their activism.
“We want to have counter-power to protect workers who speak up,” Shaw said.
The latest examples came last month, when prominent AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru said she was fired about a research article that Google wanted to get rid of; and when a federal employment agency filed a complaint accusing the company of spying on employees and subsequently firing several of them during a 2019 attempt to form a union. Google has denied the allegations in the case, which is scheduled for a hearing in April.
The union’s first members include engineers, sales associates, clerical workers and the workers testing self-driving vehicles at Alphabet’s Waymo automotive division. Many work in Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, while others work in offices in Massachusetts, New York, and Colorado.
“One of the reasons it took the workers a while to get to this point is because the leaders of these companies did a good job convincing the workers that they were these benevolent people who would take care of them, sort of. of paternalistic model, ”said Beth Allen, communications director at the CWA.
“That has brought them a long way,” Allen said, but workers are increasingly realizing that they “need to come together to build power for themselves and have a say in what’s going on.”
The National Labor Relations Board typically recognizes petitions to form new unions when they receive an interest from at least 30% of employees in a particular location or job classification in the US; a majority of affected workers must then vote to form one. Alphabet has a global workforce of approximately 130,000.
Allen said the Alphabet Workers Union currently has no plans to pursue official recognition as a collective bargaining group. Instead, she said it will work in a similar way to public sector unions in states that don’t allow government employees to bargain collectively.
“We would like to have direct legal representation, but the focus at the moment is that we will not depend on it,” said Shaw.