Professionalism/Labor Organizing at Google

Motivation

Unionization efforts in Big Tech are often met with confusion: “Why would employees at a company famous for high salaries and free lunches want a union?” While workers in retail typically unionize to improve wages and working conditions, workers in Big Tech often unionize to demand stronger policies against sexual harassment and discrimination and accountability for their company’s unethical uses of technology. The most prominent unionization efforts in Big Tech have come from Google employees. Several of these employees recall joining Google with the simple mantra and founding slogan “Don’t be evil,” which motivated them to create technology to benefit society and make the world better and more equal. As Google poorly responded to sexual harassment charges and engaged in controversial business decisions, many Google employees realized their pledge was not consistent with the decisions made by their company’s senior executives.

Walkout for Real Change

In 2018, The New York Times reported that Google had protected several senior executives accused of sexual misconduct, including Android founder Andy Rubin, who was paid $90 million in severance after he left the company. A week later, Google employees organized a “Walkout for Real Change” in protest of sexual harassment and Google’s history of pay discrimination and systemic racism. Around 20,000 Google employees from across the globe took part in the protest and compiled a list of five demands: end Forced Arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination, a commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity, a publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report, a clear, uniform, and globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously, and to elevate the Chief Diversity Officer to answer directly to the CEO. Claire Stapleton, then marketing manager at YouTube, lamented that Google “did not ever address, acknowledge, the list of demands, nor did they adequately provide solutions to all the five." Stapleton mentions Google “did drop forced arbitration, but for sexual harassment only, not discrimination, which was a key omission. Nothing was addressed regarding TVCs [contract workers] ... I think we didn’t see accountability in action.”

Union Organization and Retaliation

The Thanksgiving Five

Google Chrome logo, the web browser Katheryn Spiers modified to alert coworkers of organizing rights.

In late 2019, five employees were fired by Google directly after their involvement in the organization and participation in petitions or protests against the company, most notably the Walkout for Real Change. One of these employees was Katheryn Spiers. She was fired just three hours after she published a piece of code that notified employees of their organizing rights without keeping to the Google code approval process. When interviewed about why she did it, she said “I had been involved in other workplace organizing in the past, but the reason I wanted to push this change was a combination of Google hiring IRI and four of my co-workers being fired the same day... I thought a lot of my co-workers could use a reminder of their rights.”

IRI Consultants

Shortly after the Walkout for Real Change, Google hired IRI Consultants, an anti-union consulting firm known for shady tactics such as "collecting data on workers' personality, motivations, and work ethic to bust unions." While it is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 for companies and managers to spy on workers' labor organizing activity, IRI consultants train managers to gather and use data to advise managers on how to best manipulate workers into harboring resentment towards unions. A Google spokesperson told reporters that “No-one at Google, nor any consultant or firm who we've ever engaged or worked with, has done what you've described."

Alphabet Workers Union

History

On January 4, 2021, Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) formed as a local chapter of the Communication Workers of America Union (CWA). Standing at 1400+ members as of 2023, AWU advocates for equality among full time employees and contract workers, a welcoming environment, project transparency, democratic decision-making, and overall ensuring that Alphabet, Google's parent company, acts ethically, referencing Google's founding slogan: "Don't Be Evil."

Challenges

Unlike traditional unions, minority unions cannot enroll a majority of a work force and petition a state or federal labor board like the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election. Therefore, they legally cannot bargain with their employer on a contract. Instead, the AWU can use other tactics to pressure Google into changing its policies, labor experts said. According to Kate Conger, a technology reporter at the New York Times, "Minority unions often turn to public pressure campaigns and lobby legislative or regulatory bodies to influence employers."

Controversial business decisions

Google also has a history of engaging in controversial business practices. In 2015, Google hosted applications of the Saudi government, including an app called Absher that allowed men to track and control the movement of their female family members. Google received backlash from human rights activists and lawmakers for carrying the app, but it is still available on the Google app store. In 2017, Google secretly developed a censored search engine for users in China, code-named “Dragonfly,” catering to the Chinese government’s censorship demands. About 1,400 Google employees signed a letter to company executives requesting more details about the project and demanding employees get more transparency and input on future decisions. In a senate judiciary hearing in 2019, Google confirmed the project had been terminated. Google employees, enraged that their executives prioritized profits over human rights, felt the company’s slogan “Don’t be evil” was no longer a reflection of the company’s values; it had become nothing more than another corporate marketing tool. Workers looked to unionize to hold Google accountable for unethical uses of their technology.

AWU Organizing Efforts

In a survey conducted of 1,853 Alphabet contractor's workers AWU discovered that Alphabet's wages and benefits standards were provided to contracted workers, unlike what Alphabet promised. As part of AWU's mission to "ensure Alphabet acts ethically" AWU has pressured Alphabet and their contracted companies to provide promised worker privileges and protections.

Modis

In 2021 Shannon Wait, a worker at a Google data center, was suspended from her job after posting on Facebook about worker condtions including not receiving hazard pay and water breaks. The AWU filed cases to the National Labor Relations Board on her behalf and overturned her suspension with Alphabet confirming that employees "have the right to discuss wage rates, bonuses, and working conditions". This success allowed unionized Modis data center workers to organize an emailing campaign forcing Modis to resume paying their promised $200 bonus for each full week they worked.

BOLD Internship Program

Tyrese Thomas and Jacob Ngai, interns under Google's BOLD internship program, were concerned with their ability to work remotely in their houses with Ngai "sharing a room with [his] brother" and having "constant Wi-Fi issues". They, with the advice of AWU organizer Raksha Muthukumar on how to write and convince interns to sign their petition, secured a $5,000 stipend for interns to use "however they deem best, including their WFH experience".

Cognizant

Google Maps workers, concerned by the "unsafe working conditions" from Cognizant's June 6th 2022 return to office order, worked with AWU to pressure Cognizant to extend the deadline. After over 70% of workers signed a petition and threatened a strike, Cognizant extended their return to office deadline by 90 days.

RaterLabs

In May 2022, RaterLabs workers, who responsible for rating Google search ads' quality, and the AWU petitioned Google's vice president to increase their pay to Alphabet's basic pay standard of $15 per hour. Through this petition and repeated meetings with RaterLabs management, the AWU was able to secure a pay raise to $14-$14.50 per hour from $10 per hour.

YouTube Music

YouTube Music workers became the 2nd fully AWU unionized workplace in October 2022 preceded by 10 Google Fiber workers unionizing their workplace in March. After unionization, the AWU alleges that Cognizant tried to break the union by requiring all workers to return to their office by Febuary 2023. To resist the order, YouTube Music workers organized a strike with the AWU offering support and spreading the links to the strike's GoFundMe and fundraising album.

Google's 2023 Layoffs

On January 20th, 2023, Alphabet announce that 12,000 Google employees were fired, with many of them first discovering their firing when they tried to log in. Google workers in countries with workers councils, like France and Germany, were able to prevent the firing of their employees while other European workers organized walkouts with their respective unions in response to Google's layoffs. The AWU, being a minority union, was not able to negotiate with Alphabet to prevent Google's layoffs, but they were able to increase their notoriety through public campaigns. On the same day as the layoffs, the AWU protested in front of Google's New York office, hosted good-bye card write-a-thons, and created a discord server which offers financial and work related advice. As a result of the layoffs and the increased union noteriety, Google employees in Europe and United States have increased unionization resulting in the AWU growing to over 1,400 members as of May 2023.