A group of employees at tech giant Google has officially announced plans to unionize. While Google employees have formed other unions in the past, this will be the first union to be open to all employees at Google, regardless of their role or classification within the company. Called the Alphabet Workers Union, the organization will act as a voice for the company’s thousands of employees.
The Alphabet Workers Union is being supported by the Communications Workers of America, the largest communications and media labor union in the United States. The union will have dues-paying members, an elected board of officials, and paid organizing staff. In the announcement, the Alphabet Workers Union specifically calls out Google’s military contracts, executives receiving multi-million-dollar exit packages after documented sexual harassment incidents against fellow employees, and the firing of artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru for “no reason whatsoever.”
The Alphabet Workers Union states that prior attempts to stop such trends at Google have ended with “intimidation, suppression, and blatantly illegal firings.” The union is focused on pushing for tangible changes at Google to address these issues and creating an all-around healthier workplace for Google’s employees. The union’s statement mentions the previous success of a walkout that led to Project Maven, a contract Google entered with The Pentagon meant to improve targeting AI for drone strikes, being canceled. Google has not yet issued a response to the union’s formation.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, controls a large number of properties, and a significant part of the internet as a whole. Despite its size – the Alphabet Workers Union states that the company employs more than 120,000 workers – half of Google’s workers at Alphabet are hired as “temps, vendors, or contractors – without the benefits afforded to full-time employees.”
As of December 2020, the Alphabet Workers Union has over 200 members, though the union has opted not to reveal their names for the sake of each member’s privacy. Currently, membership is restricted to the United States and Canada, though the union has reached out to organizations in other countries, and plans to communicate closely with them. The Alphabet Workers Union hasn’t negotiated a contract with Google, but it will exercise its power to “collectively cease labor” in order to challenge Google on issues.
In the past, unions were instrumental in creating the 40-hour workweek, ending child labor, and establishing a minimum wage. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that 55% of Americans view unions favorably, though only 10.7% were members of unions. Conversations about unionization in the video game industry happen frequently, with surveys finding that as many as half of game developers want to unionize.
Source: Alphabet Workers Union, Pew Research Center
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