The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) is in crisis after an international alliance was announced on Monday. The alliance, Alpha Global, was announced as a worker-led initiative, but union members in the U.S. say they didn’t know about it until The Verge published an exclusive. That article included a press quote from AWU executive board member Parul Koul, which she says she did not write.
The news was an unwelcome surprise for union members who expect the Alphabet Workers Union to function democratically. Now, several sources say The Verge that some AWU organizers are considering pushing the group to part ways with Communications Workers of America (CWA), a national union representing telecommunications and media workers. AWU also created a committee to investigate the CWA’s role in the announcement.
In a statement, AWU executive board member Auni Ahsan said: “We want to honor the concerns that have been raised, but our main focus as a union is not affiliation or disillusionment.”
The unrest points to the difficulties faced by AWU. As a so-called minority union, it is not recognized by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and cannot require Alphabet or its subsidiaries like Google to negotiate a contract for its members. Its power comes in part from the union of Alphabet workers and the increase of its member base to mount public pressure campaigns.
Since the union went public on January 4, it has grown from 230 members to more than 800. But some members raised concerns that Communications Workers of America pressured the union to go public prematurely. They also say that the CWA has a history of running big ads without first consulting with Google employees. Amr Gaber, a Google engineer who helped organize the 2018 shutdown, said The New York Times that the union has been more concerned with claiming territory than with listening to the needs of the organizers.
Alphabet’s rapid expansion has also underscored the need for clear rules and processes, including when the group makes statements and who controls the top ads. So far, AWU has asked YouTube to permanently ban Donald Trump and has expressed concern about the treatment of Margaret Mitchell, co-leader of the AI ethics team. Both statements involved significant contributions from union members.
This did not happen with the announcement of the global alliance.
Uni Global Union, a trade union federation based in Switzerland, organized the coalition and worked with at least one CWA representative on the deployment strategy. The idea was to bring together unions that represented Google workers around the world and make it easier for members to share information.
Uni sent a press release stating that “Alphabet workers” were “announcing a new global union alliance to build a more ethical and responsible company”. The press release included a quote from Koul talking about the importance of global solidarity, and CWA representative Wes McEnany said The Verge that the alliance was led by workers in a phone call about the announcement.
After the article was published, however, several AWU members said The Verge they were surprised by the news. A Google employee in Europe also said he didn’t know about the ad, but noted that he normally didn’t hear about the union’s news before it went public.
When asked why so many AWU members were left out of planning, a CWA spokesman said there was confusion in the messages.
On January 25, AWU called an emergency meeting. According to meeting notes reviewed by The Verge, Koul said the Uni announcement “happened [without] any of us being notified or warned that this alliance was being formed or that this statement was coming out. ”She emphasized that she had never said the quote attributed to her in the press release and noted that she was” burned “by the ad.
(Koul did not respond to a request for comment from The Verge.)
CWA organizer Tom Smith said he was unaware of the situation until that morning, claiming that CWA President Christopher Shelton sent an email “literally saying ‘WTF ?!’” He added that Uni had been invited withdraw the press release.
Uni said The Verge that McEnany was “very involved” in the alliance and, during the meeting, McEnany acknowledged that he was partially guilty – he told Uni to attribute the quote to Koul. He said the ad’s timeline was confused. (McEnany spoke to The Verge three days before publication of the article.)
Later in the meeting, Koul announced that McEnany would resign from his role in working with AWU, although he is not leaving CWA entirely.
On January 29, the CWA sent out a newsletter, which again falsely attributed the quote to Koul.
McEnany’s resignation has not abolished concerns for Google organizers like Kathryn Spiers, who says she sees the unsuccessful alliance announcement as part of a larger standard. In 2019, Google laid off Spiers and four other employees who were involved in organizing the workplace. When CWA offered to pay workers’ legal fees, the group agreed, on the understanding that CWA would not publish information about the case without first obtaining its approval, according to several sources. Despite this understanding, workers say the CWA issued a press release referring to Spiers, before she was fired and her name was made public, and without obtaining his approval.
During the emergency meeting on Monday, Spiers spoke about his experience with the CWA and said he wanted to recognize that the announcement of the alliance was not an isolated incident. Now, she is participating in a campaign to separate herself from the larger organization.
The campaign may threaten to destabilize AWU, a nascent union still in its first month of public life. But it can also be a sign that the organization is working as expected. Workers are meeting to press for change, even if it means breaking with a powerful ally.
If that happens, it will be a serious setback for Communications Workers of America. In 2020, the organization launched CODE-CWA, a campaign dedicated to the unionization of workers in the technology sector. The loss of Google could make it more difficult for the CWA to organize teams at other major technology companies.
For some employees who have been organizing with Google for years, however, affiliation may be the only option. If the campaign fails, they say they are likely to leave the organization.
“Google could not have paid for this type of union complaint,” says Spiers.