Google workers form union with 226 cardholder members: report

More than 200 Google employees have formed a union that aims to pressure the technology titan to follow its previous motto: “Don’t be bad”.

The Alphabet Workers Union, named after Google’s parent company, has attracted 226 card members who are fed up with bosses dismissing their concerns about discrimination, harassment and other workplace issues, group leaders say.

“Every time workers organize to demand change, Alphabet executives make symbolic promises, doing the least in the hope of placating workers,” wrote Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw, Google software engineers who serve as president and vice president New York Times union president op-ed on Monday. “It is not enough.”

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The union effort follows years of activism by Google employees, which has sparked criticism for failing to address internal problems, such as sexual misconduct and retaliation against demonstrators. And experts say it could inspire workers at other technology companies to do the same.

“This is a great chance not only for Google, but also for Silicon Valley,” Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities told The Post. “This could have a massive ripple effect with all the discontent we are seeing in the employee bases of who’s who of technology.”

The Alphabet Workers Union is affiliated with Communications Workers of America and represents a small fraction of the approximately 120,000 workers in the Silicon Valley company. But it is the stated mission of union leaders that they hope to include Alphabet workers of all stripes – “from bus drivers to programmers, from salesmen to caretakers” – that makes it something to watch.

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“We are not talking about monolithic demographics,” said corporate governance expert Eleanor Bloxham. “We are talking about engineers joining with less qualified workers in this effort.”

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Bloxham called the union a “monumental achievement” and said he could give workers at other companies like Facebook and Amazon a role model, because they “see how it can be done”.

CWA, which has been working quietly with the Google team for more than a year, certainly hopes to repeat its success elsewhere. The Alphabet union “will be a great example for other workers from other companies who may be interested in doing something similar,” CWA communications director Beth Allen told The Post.

Allen declined to name specific companies, but said there are “many different organizations going on in technology and elsewhere now”.

But Silicon Valley has a difficult history of union organization. Amazon, for example, fought an ongoing battle against unionizing workers with a November Motherboard report revealing that the e-commerce titan hired Pinkerton agency spies to monitor the organization’s efforts in Europe.

Meanwhile, Uber struggled tooth and nail to make sure it didn’t have to recognize its California drivers as full-time employees.

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And the National Labor Relations Board decided last month that Google illegally monitored and then fired several workers who were protesting its policies and trying to organize a union.

“Our employees have protected the labor rights we support,” said Kara Silverstein, director of personnel operations at Google. “But, as we always have, we will continue to engage directly with all of our employees.”

One of the group’s goals will be to deal with inequalities between employees and contractors, who receive less money and receive less benefits, although they often do exactly the same job.

“They are also more likely to be black or brown – a segregated employment system that keeps half of the company’s workforce in second-class jobs,” wrote Koul and Shaw in their article.

They criticized Google’s work with the United States Department of Defense and “repressive” governments in places like China, where the company dismissed plans to launch a censored search engine in response to domestic activism.

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They also cited Timnit Gebru’s dismissal in December, a black artificial intelligence researcher who said she was fired after criticizing Google’s diversity efforts. Google contested Gebru’s account of the ordeal and said she resigned.

“Our union will work to ensure that workers know what they are working on and can do their job for a fair wage, without fear of abuse, retaliation or discrimination,” wrote Koul and Shaw.

Despite the disclosure of dirty laundry, Google’s union effort could end up being positive for recruitment, as some workers will be attracted to a company where they have a more formal voice, said John Freeman, an analyst at CFRA Research, said the union could .

“Our story is that unions fight for people who are being exploited unfairly. It’s not exactly that, ”said Freeman. “It’s more because employees want a stronger voice in the kind of non-monetary things that they really care about.”

Shares in Google’s parent company Alphabet fell just 1.6 percent on Monday afternoon, trading at $ 1,724.64.