Yesterday, 250 Google employees announced that they had taken the plunge and formed a union and, after a torrent of news, ended the day 400 people. The effort is unique in this is aimed at uniting all workers, from maintenance to full-time to permanent developers. In the technology industry, it is undeniably an important and bold step.
But, and there always is, what can a few hundred members who pay dues in a company with 120,000 workers do? Especially in a company with a pre-dissent response potentially illegal traits? It is not immediately clear how the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) can currently guarantee important protections, such as job security. And its low affiliation compared to the company’s overall workforce makes it a minority union, meaning Google isn’t likely to be forced to bargain with it.
“According to the dominant interpretation of federal labor law, an employer is not legally required to recognize a union until it has the support of a majority of workers in a unit,” UC law professor wrote to Gizmodo Berkeley, Catherine Fisk. “A unit is not necessarily all Google workers; it could be a department or division. (There is a good argument that the law requires an employer to recognize and negotiate with a union even if it only represents a minority, always that the union negotiates only its members. But this is not the dominant interpretation of the law.) “
Organizing a single campus or a subset of Google employees, such as Google Contractors in Pittsburgh in 2019, it could be a simpler strategy to get contracts, if that is the goal of AWU. You could even create multiple units under the AWU umbrella, instead of trying to deal with the entire Google template at once. To form a union certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) —a Google should negotiate with it — at least 30% of all workers in a unit would have to sign union cards. Then, in an election overseen by the NLRB, the majority of votes would have to be in favor of a union.
The road to good faith negotiation is long and the heads of Googlers have more than a few ways to make it difficult or stop the process. But AWU is not currently thinking about contracts. “Our union will focus the voices of the workers and provide us with a much needed advocacy platform Right Now“Google Search software engineer and AWU member Raksha Muthukumar told Gizmodo by email.” While it will be incredible to one day achieve the majority needed to negotiate contracts, this is not the our main agenda because we believe we can do a lot of work in the meantime. “
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In addition to forming members, the main goal seems to be based on past victories. Google workers have been successful in pressure campaigns: the uproar of employees led Google to kill both the PCC-compatible search engine Dragonfly Project, i Maven Project, which would have improved drone AI for the Pentagon. What AWU is likely to produce or break as a project will be to identify similar concerns generally shared between the workforce and to act on them.
To gain momentum, AWU will need to reduce the widespread fear of reprisals. The recent memory is that of Google kick out of AI Ethics Timnit Gebru, the shooting or way out of other employed activists and the company’s decision to retain one anti-union company, whose discriminatory methods were filtered to documents before today by Vice.
As several labor academics pointed out to Gizmodo, the punishment for violating federal labor law is mild and poorly enforced. However, the existence of USA makes it possible for Google to justify more difficult retaliatory behavior. “Organizing a minority union remains a concerted and protected activity,” Ken Jacobs, president of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, told Gizmodo at Gizmodo. “It is still illegal to fire someone for a concerted and protected activity, even if the sanctions are incredibly weak.” It remains to be seen whether the partnership with an existing union prevents Google from acting so harshly against the organizers.
And the relatively low number of a global squad should probably be expected, if not embraced, as a start. “All unions start as minority unions,” Catherine Fisk wrote. “That’s how the United Auto Workers in Detroit started and how the United Steelworkers started, along with teachers, nurses, janitors and all the other unions. That they gain power depends on whether they grow ”.
Chaumtoli Huq, an associate professor of law at CUNY Law School, told Gizmodo by phone that unions should not be recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, or even include a majority of workers, to move forward. He pointed to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which represents 25,000 of New York City’s 180,000 drivers, who are considered independent contractors. (Huq previously worked as an alliance lawyer).
While this means that the NYTWA is not covered by the National Labor Relations Act, it is part of the largest trade union federation in the United States, the AFL-CIO. Through pressure campaigns, litigate, and job breaks, has achieved victories in the New York legislature as wage increases and health care and disability background.
Bhairavi Desai, executive director of Taxi Workers Alliance, told Gizmodo by phone that organizers could not afford to wait for the incorporation of a plurality of workers with collective actions, especially when technology companies have demonstrated which can easily group a few. one hundred million of its turns and buy a law. “I think it’s important to send a message, especially to the technology sector, that workers don’t have to wait until then to have a collective voice and participate in collective action.”
Even without a formal union structure, Googlers have participated in collective actions, more visibly during a 2018 way out, where more than 20,000 Google employees around the world left their desks to protest the executives of sexually conduct companies for misconduct.
Huq sees this as a victory not only in the technology sector, but for the growing labor movement in general, which has recently been joined by white workers. game developers and journalists, as well as historically excluded shadow workers, such as application-based drivers and domestic workers.
“They’re contemplating a broader imagination of what the labor movement might be like,” Huq said. “I’m very excited about that prospect.”