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And this is why tech workers need to unionise. This petition is a weak statement that probably will have no effect. Unless these workers could pose a real threa

And this is why tech workers need to unionise. This petition is a weak statement that probably will have no effect. Unless these workers could pose a real threat to Google by threatening a strike action, Google has no need to change anything. Furthermore, if the workers really stood by their moral convictions, they'd use their collective power to tackle the issue more directly than by just appealing to Google. Companies like Google are like the railroads of the 19th century. They comprise the major infrastructure of modern society. A union at Google could threaten to effectively halt all institutional operations of governments or other companies in order to influence their actions. Is facebook manipulating voters? Okay, no more gmail for facebook till they stop. Is the government going to bomb Yemen? Alright, we're shutting down government accounts. As others in the thread have also said, I'm doubtful many of these signatories will quit their cozy jobs if Google doesn't back down. Without the group solidarity and pressure from a union, most individual workers just don't have any good incentive to put their money where their mouth is.

pfarnsworth 9y ago
A reason why we SHOULDN'T unionize. It means that workers could potentially be politicized and forced to be a part of things that they don't believe in. Maybe right now we may agree with not militarizing our company, but what if the union starts supporting ideas that you're fundamentally against?
- confounded 9y ago
  Can you explain the mechanics of that happening? Do you have any personal experience of unionized work? Employees having more of a say about what they work on though collective bargaining, resulting in employees having less of a say on what they work on, seems unlikely to me.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    I'm making almost $400,000 total compensation and I'm happily working on things that I love. I don't need a union to tax me and force me to pay dues to do absolutely nothing that will benefit me, besides pay themselves well. On top of that, having a union start representing itself as a political force will definitely upset me. I may be against the militarization of Google, but what if I weren't? What if I supported it? Then I would be paying money to a union that I fundamentally disagreed with. There is a court case going to the Supreme Court about exactly this issue. What if I were a Democrat, and the union decided to support a Republican candidate?
    - zorpner 9y ago
      You have already taken a political stance -- that the common welfare of the labor force is of no concern to you.
      - pfarnsworth 9y ago
        There is no proof that unions actually contribute to the common welfare for a labor force such as tech. In fact, it's the opposite. Silicon Valley has been doing so well and enriched so many people that everyone else believes that tech workers have changed cities such as San Francisco for the worse. This was accomplished without a single union in Silicon Valley. It doesn't exist and yet hundreds of thousands of employees around here are disproportionately better off than everyone else. Can you please explain how unions would make things better? Would we be making even more money? Or would they simply enrich themselves from union dues and create friction in every single process that makes this area great?
    - kiliantics 9y ago
      You are exactly the kind of scum that would support militarisation if it handed you a cheque with the right amount. I wouldn't be sad (or organise with my union against it) if a drone vaporised you.
      - pfarnsworth 9y ago
        You're exactly the kind of scum that caused Trump to be elected.
        dang 9y ago
        You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how badly another commenter behaved. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing in the past, unfortunately. If you keep doing it, we're going to have to ban you, so please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and abide by the rules from now on.
      - 9y ago
  - djrogers 9y ago
    > Can you explain the mechanics of that happening? It's simple - unions can force you to join, take your money, and give it to political causes you don't support. And if you're in the minority, you don't have any say in it. See Abood v. Detroit Board of Education and several more recent cases (Friedrichs v. CTA, Janus v AFSCME). Picture this - if you were a minority opinion holder in a Google Union, and the majority of the members decided to strike to protest Google's work with the Pentagon, you would be subject to union discipline, including fines and lawsuits. Basically, unions are fine as long as you agree with everything they say and do...
    - kiliantics 9y ago
      There are many different structures that unions can have so what you described isn't necessarily how it has to work. That said, even if it is how it worked, you would still be better off on average than if you weren't in a union.
    - confounded 9y ago
      Sure, but by definition most employees will be in the majority on most employee issues. Few things are perfect, many things are useful. If your stance is consistently counter to that of other Google employees, then you probably have bigger problems with working at Google than the existence of a union. Being in a union doesn’t preclude you from shopping around; if working on drone assasinations is personally important, consumer search-engines/ad-tech might not be the most fertile ground. But for the employees who do work on search-engines/ad-tech, having a strong voice (and a credible threat) regarding whether that work subsidizes an extra-judicial assasination programs (sometimes targeting their own countrymen) seems like a fair idea to me.
      - pfarnsworth 9y ago
        You're missing the point. What if the Google union decides to put their weight behind Trump, because he gives tax incentives to search engine companies? And if you're vehemently against Trump and his policies, then where does that leave you? Your tax dues are now being spent on supporting a political campaign that you firmly don't support. And that's the point. Unions are nothing but friction, especially for industries such as tech. I bet the employees of Google can self-organize much more efficiently without a union than with a union, and will be much more effective as well. And as I mention below, Silicon Valley is awash with employee wealth. How exactly could unions have made things better for employees than what has already been accomplished without the help of a single union?
  - jpttsn 9y ago
    It’s confusing because you think of “employees” as a unit while gp thinks of individual “employee”s as units.
chrisseaton 9y ago
> A union at Google could threaten to effectively halt all institutional operations of governments or other companies in order to influence their actions. But this seems an amoral thing to do, to me! A small group of unelected, unaccountable and non-diverse people abusing their relative power to try to force a democratically elected government or private company to do something? Why would anyone want that?
- deciplex 9y ago
  This post seems like it was probably sarcasm but I can't tell. Just in case, though: we already have that.
  - chrisseaton 9y ago
    My post wasn't sarcasm. Nobody thinks the current system is perfect or not vulnerable to corruption or special interests etc, but at least it attempts to be representative of the people and accountable, and to be well informed through intelligence networks and professional analysis. A dictatorship of a union of Google employees forcing the hand of the government based on what they're angry about from Twitter doesn't even bother to make a pretense of being fair.
    - deciplex 9y ago
      I think if you can twist your head enough to believe that our current system "at least attempts" (but, by implication, even you seem to agree still fails) to be representative of the people, but also believe that any employee union is a priori unrepresentative, you might be showing some bias. Maybe a lot of it, actually. And it doesn't help that you immediately heap a bunch of strawmen on this hypothetical Google union, either. Edit: from your original post it also occurs to me you might think union leadership is never elected? But it almost always is (usually by law, in fact).
- nafizh 9y ago
  'a democratically elected government or private company' is the same thing? Workers of a private company should have a say in the doings of the company.
confounded 9y ago
I no longer have any “skin in the game” Re: Google, but those who do may be interested in the Tech Workers’ Coalition (Free beer! Other Googlers!): https://techworkerscoalition.org/ https://techworkerscoalition.org/

pfarnsworth 9y ago

A reason why we SHOULDN'T unionize. It means that workers could potentially be politicized and forced to be a part of things that they don't believe in. Maybe right now we may agree with not militarizing our company, but what if the union starts supporting ideas that you're fundamentally against?

confounded 9y ago
Can you explain the mechanics of that happening? Do you have any personal experience of unionized work? Employees having more of a say about what they work on though collective bargaining, resulting in employees having less of a say on what they work on, seems unlikely to me.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  I'm making almost $400,000 total compensation and I'm happily working on things that I love. I don't need a union to tax me and force me to pay dues to do absolutely nothing that will benefit me, besides pay themselves well. On top of that, having a union start representing itself as a political force will definitely upset me. I may be against the militarization of Google, but what if I weren't? What if I supported it? Then I would be paying money to a union that I fundamentally disagreed with. There is a court case going to the Supreme Court about exactly this issue. What if I were a Democrat, and the union decided to support a Republican candidate?
  - zorpner 9y ago
    You have already taken a political stance -- that the common welfare of the labor force is of no concern to you.
    - pfarnsworth 9y ago
      There is no proof that unions actually contribute to the common welfare for a labor force such as tech. In fact, it's the opposite. Silicon Valley has been doing so well and enriched so many people that everyone else believes that tech workers have changed cities such as San Francisco for the worse. This was accomplished without a single union in Silicon Valley. It doesn't exist and yet hundreds of thousands of employees around here are disproportionately better off than everyone else. Can you please explain how unions would make things better? Would we be making even more money? Or would they simply enrich themselves from union dues and create friction in every single process that makes this area great?
  - kiliantics 9y ago
    You are exactly the kind of scum that would support militarisation if it handed you a cheque with the right amount. I wouldn't be sad (or organise with my union against it) if a drone vaporised you.
    - pfarnsworth 9y ago
      You're exactly the kind of scum that caused Trump to be elected.
      - dang 9y ago
        You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how badly another commenter behaved. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing in the past, unfortunately. If you keep doing it, we're going to have to ban you, so please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and abide by the rules from now on.
    - 9y ago
- djrogers 9y ago
  > Can you explain the mechanics of that happening? It's simple - unions can force you to join, take your money, and give it to political causes you don't support. And if you're in the minority, you don't have any say in it. See Abood v. Detroit Board of Education and several more recent cases (Friedrichs v. CTA, Janus v AFSCME). Picture this - if you were a minority opinion holder in a Google Union, and the majority of the members decided to strike to protest Google's work with the Pentagon, you would be subject to union discipline, including fines and lawsuits. Basically, unions are fine as long as you agree with everything they say and do...
  - kiliantics 9y ago
    There are many different structures that unions can have so what you described isn't necessarily how it has to work. That said, even if it is how it worked, you would still be better off on average than if you weren't in a union.
  - confounded 9y ago
    Sure, but by definition most employees will be in the majority on most employee issues. Few things are perfect, many things are useful. If your stance is consistently counter to that of other Google employees, then you probably have bigger problems with working at Google than the existence of a union. Being in a union doesn’t preclude you from shopping around; if working on drone assasinations is personally important, consumer search-engines/ad-tech might not be the most fertile ground. But for the employees who do work on search-engines/ad-tech, having a strong voice (and a credible threat) regarding whether that work subsidizes an extra-judicial assasination programs (sometimes targeting their own countrymen) seems like a fair idea to me.
    - pfarnsworth 9y ago
      You're missing the point. What if the Google union decides to put their weight behind Trump, because he gives tax incentives to search engine companies? And if you're vehemently against Trump and his policies, then where does that leave you? Your tax dues are now being spent on supporting a political campaign that you firmly don't support. And that's the point. Unions are nothing but friction, especially for industries such as tech. I bet the employees of Google can self-organize much more efficiently without a union than with a union, and will be much more effective as well. And as I mention below, Silicon Valley is awash with employee wealth. How exactly could unions have made things better for employees than what has already been accomplished without the help of a single union?
- jpttsn 9y ago
  It’s confusing because you think of “employees” as a unit while gp thinks of individual “employee”s as units.

chrisseaton 9y ago

> A union at Google could threaten to effectively halt all institutional operations of governments or other companies in order to influence their actions. But this seems an amoral thing to do, to me! A small group of unelected, unaccountable and non-diverse people abusing their relative power to try to force a democratically elected government or private company to do something? Why would anyone want that?

deciplex 9y ago
This post seems like it was probably sarcasm but I can't tell. Just in case, though: we already have that.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  My post wasn't sarcasm. Nobody thinks the current system is perfect or not vulnerable to corruption or special interests etc, but at least it attempts to be representative of the people and accountable, and to be well informed through intelligence networks and professional analysis. A dictatorship of a union of Google employees forcing the hand of the government based on what they're angry about from Twitter doesn't even bother to make a pretense of being fair.
  - deciplex 9y ago
    I think if you can twist your head enough to believe that our current system "at least attempts" (but, by implication, even you seem to agree still fails) to be representative of the people, but also believe that any employee union is a priori unrepresentative, you might be showing some bias. Maybe a lot of it, actually. And it doesn't help that you immediately heap a bunch of strawmen on this hypothetical Google union, either. Edit: from your original post it also occurs to me you might think union leadership is never elected? But it almost always is (usually by law, in fact).
nafizh 9y ago
'a democratically elected government or private company' is the same thing? Workers of a private company should have a say in the doings of the company.

confounded 9y ago

I no longer have any “skin in the game” Re: Google, but those who do may be interested in the Tech Workers’ Coalition (Free beer! Other Googlers!): https://techworkerscoalition.org/ https://techworkerscoalition.org/