Announced Monday morning, the Alphabet Workers’ Union will be run by employees and open both to full-time workers and contractors at the tech giant.
But the Google workers have opted for a third approach that, at least for now, does not anticipate formal recognition, said Beth Allen, communications director at CWA. That’s because traditional collective bargaining agreements “almost always exclude contractors,” Allen said, which was a nonstarter for many of the Google organizers.
That doesn’t rule out the union seeking formal recognition later on. But until then, union members won’t enjoy the backstop of a collective bargaining agreement with Google. Instead, Allen said, the union will likely need to pursue other tactics to push for changes at Google, such as pushing for outside media coverage, pressuring Congress for new legislation and oversight, or filing complaints to the NLRB.
Google workers could also theoretically mount a strike, though that would be a challenge and there are no current plans to do so, Allen said.
In response to the union effort, Google pledged to engage with workers.
“We’ve always worked hard to create a supportive and rewarding workplace for our workforce,” said Kara Silverstein, Google’s director of people operations, in a statement to CNN Business. “Of course our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we’ve always done, we’ll continue engaging directly with all our employees.”
“For far too long, thousands of us at Google — and other subsidiaries of Alphabet, Google’s parent company — have had our workplace concerns dismissed by executives,” the workers wrote in the Times op-ed. “Our bosses have collaborated with repressive governments around the world. They have developed artificial intelligence technology for use by the Department of Defense and profited from ads by a hate group. They have failed to make the changes necessary to meaningfully address our retention issues with people of color.”
The organizers made special mention of Timnit Gebru, a top AI researcher who recently departed from Google after she criticized the company’s diversity efforts — sparking an outcry over Google’s workplace practices.
