Tech Workers United: The Rise of the Alphabet Workers Union
Image Credit: Reuters/Stephen Lam
At the start of the new year, about 230 Google employees announced the creation of the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU). In just one week after the public announcement, AWU has grown to over 700 members. While a traditional union, which negotiates contracts between a company and its employees, must be approved by the National Labor Relations Board , the AWU is a minority union, meaning that a majority of a company’s employees are not a part of it and thus the union cannot negotiate on behalf of employees. However, the goal of the union is not to improve the pay nor the benefits of Alphabet employees, but rather to serve as an organizing platform for employees to push Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in improving its response to political and social issues. Rather than focusing on contract negotiations, the Alphabet Workers Union can benefit from the collectivism possible within unions and harness it to organize workers towards these political and social issues. Though a minority union, AWU is backed by the Communication Workers of America, a larger and more national union. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Parul Koul, AWU’s executive chair, and Chewy Shaw, AWU’s vice chair, summarized the new union’s vision: “We want Alphabet to be a company where workers have a meaningful say in decisions that affect us and the societies we live in.”
An issue that the AWU has already called attention to is the divide between permanent employees and contract workers. More than half of Alphabet’s employees are contractors who receive less pay and less benefits when compared to permanent employees. Koul and Shaw point out that contract workers are more likely to be Black or brown when compared to permanent employees, making this a problem of diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as equal pay and benefits. As such, the Alphabet Workers Union is inclusive of all Alphabet employees, regardless of classification. One example of Alphabet’s mistreatment of its Black and brown employees was the firing of Dr. Timnit Gebru, an artificial intelligence researcher. Dr. Gebru was fired after speaking out against Google’s lack of commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and the censoring of her research on potential inequities associated with AI technology. The goal of AWU is to use its organizing power to draw attention to this and other issues, generating public pressure to demand change from Alphabet.
Although the union was formally announced at the start of this year, AWU represents a culmination of employee activism and organizing at Google on the issue of equity as well as other such company policy issues. Previous examples of workers organizing at Google include the walkouts in 2018, which demanded change in the company’s sexual harassment policies. One of the more egregious factors prompting this lockout was the $90 million payout to Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, after he was accused of sexual misconduct. Roughly 20,000 Google employees participated in the walkout in Google offices across the globe.
Google employees have also taken issue with the company taking on projects for the Trump Administration. Two projects that have drawn the most backlash include the use of artificial intelligence to enhance Trump’s infamous US-Mexico border wall, and a research initiative on drone imaging with the Department of Defense. Both projects were the subject of petitions signed by hundreds of Google employees demanding that leadership pull out of said projects.
The Alphabet Workers Union has already begun using its platform to pressure Google into taking stronger actions on current political issues. After the January 6th riot at the Capitol, the union called on Youtube to ban President Trump from the platform. As a result of the backlash, Youtube has taken down a video of the President for inciting violence at a rally just prior to the riot and banned his account from uploading new videos for 7 days. However, unlike Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Twitch, Youtube has not permanently banned President Trump.
As an innovative type of union at Silicon Valley’s 2nd largest company, the Alphabet Workers Union will surely be watched by labor organizers and employees at tech companies. Google’s leadership has undoubtedly taken note of the rise in employee activism in their hiring of IRI Consultants, a firm known for union busting as well as the firing of four employees for their labor organizing efforts in the past. While Silicon Valley is not yet a bastion of organized labor, the success or failure of Alphabet Workers Union may dictate the future of unions in the tech industry.