From the New York Times: Hundreds of Google Employees Unionize, Culminating Years of Activism
OAKLAND, Calif. — More than 225 Google engineers and other workers have formed a union, the group revealed on Monday, capping years of growing activism at one of the world’s largest companies and presenting a rare beachhead for labor organizers in staunchly anti-union Silicon Valley.
The union’s creation is highly unusual for the tech industry, which has long resisted efforts to organize its largely white-collar work force. It follows increasing demands by employees at Google for policy overhauls on pay, harassment and ethics, and is likely to escalate tensions with top leadership.
The new union, called the Alphabet Workers Union after Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was organized in secret for the better part of a year and elected its leadership last month. The group is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents workers in telecommunications and media in the United States and Canada.
(Featured image is “Baked alphabet crackers” by joyosity and is licensed under CC BY 2.0)
If you want your left eye to start twitching uncontrollably, please enjoy this tweet from venture capitalist Mike Solana:
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This response tweet retweeted by pillsy is fascinating in its own right; a document from it seems the 1920s characterizing mine workers as some kind of boutique bohemian collective.
https://twitter.com/gabrielwinant/status/1346176034429923335?s=20Report
Holy crap.
Now, there *IS* a criticism that I saw of the union that I did think was pretty good:
“These union demands are all highest levels of Maslow stuff. They’re not demanding safer working conditions. They’re already making six figures a year. They’re demanding that they be happier.”
Now that’s kind of an overstatement, I’m sure… because if Google is making money hand over fist and the guy who is pulling in $225,000/year is pouring 40% of the take-home of that into rent, wanting more money is absolutely understandable (if unlikely to be read sympathetically by people making 20% of that (even in places where rent is also 20% of what’s to be found in the Bay Area)).
But these are different union demands than the ones I grew up with.
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They don’t want money, but they do want compensation, in this case meaning the degree of job protection that lets you loudly and publicly say “all of my bosses are racist assholes” and not be fired for it.Report
Before social media, we could do this all the time.
Now we just want to hammer out that it *IS* appropriate for bosses to fire people for their social media but *NOT* for protected categories of social media offenses.
The question used to be “Under what circumstances is it appropriate to fire someone for the stuff they do off the clock?” but now we’ve skipped to “Should bosses be allowed to fire someone for calling them bigoted against neurodivergent people? While on the clock? On Twitter?”
If I wanted more companies to put more money into pre-screening applicants for “a good fit” intangibles, this is how I would do it.Report
I used to play a game where I’d read just a headline or a blurb and try to figure out why the right would hate it and then why the left would hate it and I could usually find good reasons for both to hate it.
This reminds me of that… because I genuinely have no idea who Mike Solana is or where he’d fall on the left/right spectrum because his comments here feel like they could have been written from either extreme.Report
Mike Solana is the billionaire, for what it’s worth. Venture Capitalism. It’s difficult to be more unsympathetic than that! Just not, you know, impossible.Report
Oh yes, I sensed he was wealthy. I’m just wondering is he…
A conservative who is blasting dainty liberals who dare compare their working conditions to real Amurican coal miners?
A liberal who is blasting privileged white rich folks who dare compare their working conditions to economically oppressed folks?
I mean… it could be either!
It’s got “appropriating”, “privileged”, and “exploited”… he must be a liberal!
Wait, no, it’s got coal miners and a shot at the press… he must be a conservative!
It’s a fun game… ya know, until it isn’t.Report
I think a good rule of thumb is the old “I haven’t seen that term in a while” rule.
Like, 6 years ago, if you saw “Check Your Privilege”, you knew that you were talking to someone on the left.
Today? Only reactionaries use that particular phrase. And they’re probably being sexist because they’re probably saying it to a woman.
The problem is that Team Evil is getting better at figuring out the Power Word phrasings used by Team Good and so the window for how long before a phrase is out of date gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
But in this case it’s pretty easy. Mike Solana is on Team Evil. He’s therefore abusing his privilege to appropriate these terms and exploit them for his own advantage.
Some might call it literal violence.Report
“But in this case it’s pretty easy. Mike Solana is on Team Evil. He’s therefore abusing his privilege to appropriate these terms and exploit them for his own advantage.”
So he’s a liberal… got it! 😉Report
Mike Solana needs to read up on his labor history because there have been several instnaces of privileged workers unionizing to great effect for them.Report
Oh, indeed. Baseball is probably the best example that I could think of.
But when watching a Millionaires vs. Billionaires fight, sometimes it’s difficult to not see it as a Heel vs. Heel matchip.Report
And, for context, this is what I got when I googled: “how many google alphabet employees are there”
Ahem:
Vikram points out:
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I have only a passing familiarity with labor law, but IIRC there are a bunch of protections that unions only get if their goals are improved pay and working conditions. Does a “union” like this actually get any protections at all?Report
It’s quite possible–and in my speculative opinion it’s likely–that most managers can say and do, with impunity, things that violate labor law.
That said, Vikram is right and any manager would do well to heed his advice.Report
My reading of US labor history is that skilled technicians are quite capable of forming strong unions and that they usually do so when their prerogatives are challenged and when their working conditions worsen. And they can do so with minimal help from the state, sometimes in the face of hostility from the state.
Lesser skilled technicians and so-called “unskilled” workers usually need much more help from the state in order to build strong unions with the hope of lasting more than a few years. One of the obstacles those lesser-skilled technicians face is often the more skilled technicians, who want to retain their special position. “Often” is not “always,” and if the more skilled technicians are a problem, they’re usually not the most serious problem the lesser skilled workers face.
That’s complicated. I’m not positing an iron law of labor organization in the US and elsewhere. I’m just suggesting that’s how it seems to shake out. Granted, it has probably “shaken out” that way due to contingencies which may or may not apply here.
From what (very little) I know of this “movement” at Google (and what I know is from reading what Jaybird has posted), it appears the unionizers are on the “more skilled” side of the spectrum. I guess it depends on what is meant by “engineer.” At any rate, that fact, if it is a fact, tempers my already ambivalent attitude toward unionizing Google. (To be clear, I’m ambivalent about unions in general and not only about unions of “skilled technicians.”)Report
I think the two biggest challenges are:
Does an individualistic, somewhat disparate group have it in them to build solidarity in the numbers required to make an impact?
Do they have the guts to risk mass outsourcing of their work?
It isn’t just scabs across town or workers willing to cross a picket line who can be intimidated or shamed. It’s also people in India and Singapore and places like that who don’t care about Americans and where there is no way to force them to care about Americans. Not unless the federal government steps in anyway.Report
Which likely means that absent Govt. support or some sort of Global Solidarity (and unicorns)… there’s really only room for worker’s movements at the tippy-tippy-irreplaceable-top and the un-exportable bottom.
The former usually have no need, and the latter usually have no means to do it. Plus… we the people don’t really like unions/solidarity… it’s a tax on our goods and services.Report
And that’s why industrial age approaches are doomed to failure. There’s no real leverage.Report
Agreed… I think there are post-industrial ways to do it, and have written a bit on it… but I kinda think Unions 2.0 is a bad tactical and strategic approach.Report
The animating principle of American labor law is “let’s you and him fight,” with the government’s role being to set up Marquis of Queensbury rules. Of course, there’s always a political fight over what the rules ought to be and whether the people in charge of enforcing them are hired to: (a) do their jobs; or (b) not do their jobs.
But when, to all appearances, the contending parties have played by the rules, fairly enforced, whatever they end up with is a matter for them to sort out. Kibitzers, however, gotta kibitz, I suppose.Report
I’m reminded of something a labor negotiator once told me. We always tell the folks who want a union that “you’re not going to get more added to your existing contract, we’re going to start negotiations at zero.” So, translating that to Google: “ok, you want these rules on how and when an employee can be fired. We will consider that. Our proposal is that all staff take a 25% cut in pay.” from existing rates in exchange.
Oh the humanity!Report