10 ms·

Google fired employees for union activity, says US agency

261 points by willvarfar 6y ago

maedla 6y ago
Can't wait for this monopoly to get busted up
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Breaking up Google won't necessarily do anything to end anti-union activity. Google's pieces could be just as anti-union as Google itself.
  - weego 6y ago
    Once you're subject to the kinds of invasive scrutiny that a govt mandates break up demands, it tends to be hard to get out from under it.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Genuinely curious, why? The worst aspect- the ad network- is also its most profitable. I am sure if search and ads were separated, they would find a way to create some sweetheart deals that keep operations not too terribly changed. Android would likely become less coupled to various google services, but I don't think most people actually want that- at least, I imagine most Android users would prefer Google maps to whatever else is out there
  - maedla 6y ago
    It has way too much power without going through any sort of democratic process
sida 6y ago
Why is google worried about this, how many software engineers want to join a union anyway?
- marricks 6y ago
  They make a lot of sense, “employees have more control if they act together”, so I imagine they’re rightly scared of them catching on.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Most Googlers aren't exactly passing around union cards, but a bunch are collaborating and organizing on pushing the company to do what they believe the company should do. It's kinda union-like, but software engineers aren't fighting for higher wages and workplace safety as much as trying to push ethical behavior.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Google would vastly prefer the former than organizing for ending forced arbitration (which worked and is what prompted Google's anti-union crackdown/illegal firings), a formal council for engineers to voice complaints/elect representatives, and higher wages/profit sharing.
  - marricks 6y ago
    Google has essentially a monopoly on search and is part of a duopoly on mobile phones, so they have the money to treat their employees LAVISHLY compared to others. Perhaps Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is right, and the employees are treated well enough their able to care about other groups and the ethical implications of their work? Seems like a good thing to me.
  - lithos 6y ago
    A Kickstarter style union where employees say "we aren't allowing this on the platform, and we will have this even though we normally would not allow it", would allow for an amazing level of evidence to pile up of biases. That would be a nightmare scenario for Google.
- okokok___ 6y ago
  I'd join one if it meant I had more bargaining power and therefore more pay. Just because I'm being paid outrageously high, doesn't mean I shouldn't also be getting paid more.
Zenst 6y ago
Slight aside but I'm somehow reminded of a quote from the film - The Dark Knight "You Either Die a Hero, or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become the Villain".
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  When was google EVER the hero?
  - skronch 6y ago
    I remember them being pretty infallible from 1998-2006.
adrian_mrd 6y ago
Given this legal complaint is USA-based, it would be interesting to understand how ‘friendly’ Google is to unionised employees or employees organising unions in other countries (eg UK, France, Germany, Australia, etc) where it has a significant number of employees. Laws and perceptions on unionisation of staff obviously differ heavily on a per-country basis. edit: added last sentence
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  In other countries, employees enjoy different protections in general, and in general Google complies with the regulations of other countries regarding employment. This doesn't preclude them from making decisions that favor the company over individual employees' best interests if the law allows it, but I can't think of an example of Google breaking employment law in, for example, Germany.
- izacus 6y ago
  In Zurich it seems that they managed to organize a Workers council: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/google-agrees-to-worker-council-in-europe-amid-recurring-discord/45627678 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/google-agrees-to-work... Can't seem to find anything else.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    There is a Workers Council being formed in the London office too.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      How does a Workers Council differ from a union?
      - Youden 6y ago
        They're entirely different things. A Workers' Council is a legally recognized body representing employees of a single employer. It has very limited rights and duties, like being informed in the case of mass layoffs. A union is a body that represents workers in an entire industry. It can have whatever duties the employees feel like giving it.
whimsicalism 6y ago
I hadn't heard they had fired Timnit, that is shocking. e: surprising that this comment appears to be controversial
- andreilys 6y ago
  I may be out of the loop but as I understood it she threatened to resign and they called her bluff. So it’s a bit disingenuous to say she was fired without mentioning her threat of resignation.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > So it’s a bit disingenuous to say she was fired, since they merely accepted her resignation. Unless you actually submit your resignation, I don't think they can just "accept" your resignation and that still counts as a firing.
    - xibalba 6y ago
      If you give your employer an ultimatum with the fallback choice being "... Or else I resign" and they decline, it seems obviously logical and reasonable that your resignation has been submitted. This was the case for her. She admits to doing as much in her tweets, but then chooses to characterize the outcome as a surprise firing.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        > it seems obviously logical and reasonable that your resignation has been submitted In the United States, there is a huge difference legally between being fired and resigning. You don't get to declare someone else's "resignation" for them. Maybe that's the logical thing, but lots of people also bluff and fail.
        xibalba 6y ago
        > You don't get to declare someone else's "resignation" for them I think you are arguing that this is more straightforward than it really is. If we suppose (in absence of her actual email) that she declared "...make x, y, and z happen or I resign", that certainly reads as a (conditional) offer of resignation that can be accepted by the other party. All of this is likely to end up in court and we'll get a decision on whether it was a resignation or firing.
k33n 6y ago
Most tech companies have that toxic group of employees who think management is doing it wrong, and that they should be the ones in charge. Eventually they will try to form a union. I've seen it 5 or 6 times. Fire early, or this is what happens.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Do you think Google was right to have forced arbitration for sexual harassment or should employees be allowed to sue Google for sexual harassment in a court of law? Was management "doing it right" by prohibiting such suits or did the employees have a point?
  - quotemstr 6y ago
    I don't think any company should have forced arbitration for regular employees for anything, but the right place to lobby for a fix to the arbitration problem is Capitol Hill, not memegen.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > the right place to lobby for a fix to the arbitration problem is Capitol Hill, not memegen. So, remembering that employees successfully organized to get Google management to end mandatory arbitration, whereas such requirements are still permitted by law, - that was the wrong approach, and employees should have continued waiting (and still waiting today) for congress to act? Who determines the "right" place?
      - SerLava 6y ago
        The "right place and time" to fight corporate power usually turns out to be the most ineffective place and time anyone can think of. It's such an odd and consistent coincidence!
- aweb 6y ago
  Organizing in a way so that workers are represented and heard in the company's leadership is not being toxic, mate
quotemstr 6y ago
Don't believe the headline. Google has a problem with activist employees pushing radical political agendas, often in ways explicitly prohibited by company policy -- for example, leaking internal documents to sympathetic press and harassing individuals on public forums like memegen because of their privately held political views. These activists present their activities as "union organizing","transparency and ethics", "whistleblowing, and other sweet-sounding and broadly-liked labels, but in reality, what they're doing is not any of these things. What these activists are actually doing is trying to turn the company into a vehicle for advancing their fringe vision for a Utopian society. And if you know your history, you should run away screaming from anyone trying to engineer a Utopia. Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs. Companies should be mission focused. Coinbase got it right where Google got it wrong, and now Google's activist chickens are coming come to roost.
- sabertoothed 6y ago
  I strongly disagree with this view. Companies should do what is right and ethical (beyond just what is legal). And who else than the managers and employees working for the company can determine this? It requires exactly those employees pushing for what is right to move the overall company into the right direction. It was even their job as ethics in AI researchers.
  - quotemstr 6y ago
    Who decides what is "right" and "ethical"? Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo? Who put those angry people in charge? Of course employees should be able to voice concerns about projects and policies and suggest an alternate strategy. But if leadership rejects that alternative strategy, that needs to be the end of it. If leadership disagrees with you, you can't just start leaking stuff to the press, doxxing people, and organizing protest events. A company is not Twitter and any healthy company should fire employees who are confused about the difference.
    - 6y ago
skeeter2020 6y ago
>> And it also accessed an employee slide presentation that was part of a union drive, the complaint said. I suspect this employee immediately started receiving targeted ads. Why should google employees expect privacy protections that google customers don't get?
- throwaways885 6y ago
  I don't believe G Suite data is used for advertising. That's just creepy and not something sellable to enterprise.
jeffbee 6y ago
Does anyone have a link to the primary sources? All I can find is news reports. The NLRB search is almost useless, and the only case I managed to find involving Google has only redacted documents.
dang 6y ago
This NLRB complaint was discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25278781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25278781. The document is here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22140676/CPT.20_CA_252802.CCNOH.docx_redacted.pdf https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22140676/C... These threads from a year ago are related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21520129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21520129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21634095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21634095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21813619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21813619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21960921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21960921
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  The Timnit firing is new and significant and wasn't in the previous discussion.
  - detaro 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Cheers - I had missed that.
      - dang 6y ago
        There was also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Google, Facebook, Amazon all need to be broken up cleanly along org lines. Competition is a good thing. We need a need type of trust busting place and the law should be modernized.

261 points by willvarfar 6y ago

maedla 6y ago

Can't wait for this monopoly to get busted up

pmoriarty 6y ago
Breaking up Google won't necessarily do anything to end anti-union activity. Google's pieces could be just as anti-union as Google itself.
- weego 6y ago
  Once you're subject to the kinds of invasive scrutiny that a govt mandates break up demands, it tends to be hard to get out from under it.
zdragnar 6y ago
Genuinely curious, why? The worst aspect- the ad network- is also its most profitable. I am sure if search and ads were separated, they would find a way to create some sweetheart deals that keep operations not too terribly changed. Android would likely become less coupled to various google services, but I don't think most people actually want that- at least, I imagine most Android users would prefer Google maps to whatever else is out there
- maedla 6y ago
  It has way too much power without going through any sort of democratic process

sida 6y ago

Why is google worried about this, how many software engineers want to join a union anyway?

marricks 6y ago
They make a lot of sense, “employees have more control if they act together”, so I imagine they’re rightly scared of them catching on.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Most Googlers aren't exactly passing around union cards, but a bunch are collaborating and organizing on pushing the company to do what they believe the company should do. It's kinda union-like, but software engineers aren't fighting for higher wages and workplace safety as much as trying to push ethical behavior.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Google would vastly prefer the former than organizing for ending forced arbitration (which worked and is what prompted Google's anti-union crackdown/illegal firings), a formal council for engineers to voice complaints/elect representatives, and higher wages/profit sharing.
- marricks 6y ago
  Google has essentially a monopoly on search and is part of a duopoly on mobile phones, so they have the money to treat their employees LAVISHLY compared to others. Perhaps Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is right, and the employees are treated well enough their able to care about other groups and the ethical implications of their work? Seems like a good thing to me.
- lithos 6y ago
  A Kickstarter style union where employees say "we aren't allowing this on the platform, and we will have this even though we normally would not allow it", would allow for an amazing level of evidence to pile up of biases. That would be a nightmare scenario for Google.
okokok___ 6y ago
I'd join one if it meant I had more bargaining power and therefore more pay. Just because I'm being paid outrageously high, doesn't mean I shouldn't also be getting paid more.

Zenst 6y ago

Slight aside but I'm somehow reminded of a quote from the film - The Dark Knight "You Either Die a Hero, or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become the Villain".

mrguyorama 6y ago
When was google EVER the hero?
- skronch 6y ago
  I remember them being pretty infallible from 1998-2006.

adrian_mrd 6y ago

Given this legal complaint is USA-based, it would be interesting to understand how ‘friendly’ Google is to unionised employees or employees organising unions in other countries (eg UK, France, Germany, Australia, etc) where it has a significant number of employees. Laws and perceptions on unionisation of staff obviously differ heavily on a per-country basis. edit: added last sentence

shadowgovt 6y ago
In other countries, employees enjoy different protections in general, and in general Google complies with the regulations of other countries regarding employment. This doesn't preclude them from making decisions that favor the company over individual employees' best interests if the law allows it, but I can't think of an example of Google breaking employment law in, for example, Germany.
izacus 6y ago
In Zurich it seems that they managed to organize a Workers council: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/google-agrees-to-worker-council-in-europe-amid-recurring-discord/45627678 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/google-agrees-to-work... Can't seem to find anything else.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  There is a Workers Council being formed in the London office too.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    How does a Workers Council differ from a union?
    - Youden 6y ago
      They're entirely different things. A Workers' Council is a legally recognized body representing employees of a single employer. It has very limited rights and duties, like being informed in the case of mass layoffs. A union is a body that represents workers in an entire industry. It can have whatever duties the employees feel like giving it.

whimsicalism 6y ago

I hadn't heard they had fired Timnit, that is shocking. e: surprising that this comment appears to be controversial

andreilys 6y ago
I may be out of the loop but as I understood it she threatened to resign and they called her bluff. So it’s a bit disingenuous to say she was fired without mentioning her threat of resignation.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > So it’s a bit disingenuous to say she was fired, since they merely accepted her resignation. Unless you actually submit your resignation, I don't think they can just "accept" your resignation and that still counts as a firing.
  - xibalba 6y ago
    If you give your employer an ultimatum with the fallback choice being "... Or else I resign" and they decline, it seems obviously logical and reasonable that your resignation has been submitted. This was the case for her. She admits to doing as much in her tweets, but then chooses to characterize the outcome as a surprise firing.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > it seems obviously logical and reasonable that your resignation has been submitted In the United States, there is a huge difference legally between being fired and resigning. You don't get to declare someone else's "resignation" for them. Maybe that's the logical thing, but lots of people also bluff and fail.
      - xibalba 6y ago
        > You don't get to declare someone else's "resignation" for them I think you are arguing that this is more straightforward than it really is. If we suppose (in absence of her actual email) that she declared "...make x, y, and z happen or I resign", that certainly reads as a (conditional) offer of resignation that can be accepted by the other party. All of this is likely to end up in court and we'll get a decision on whether it was a resignation or firing.

k33n 6y ago

Most tech companies have that toxic group of employees who think management is doing it wrong, and that they should be the ones in charge. Eventually they will try to form a union. I've seen it 5 or 6 times. Fire early, or this is what happens.

whimsicalism 6y ago
Do you think Google was right to have forced arbitration for sexual harassment or should employees be allowed to sue Google for sexual harassment in a court of law? Was management "doing it right" by prohibiting such suits or did the employees have a point?
- quotemstr 6y ago
  I don't think any company should have forced arbitration for regular employees for anything, but the right place to lobby for a fix to the arbitration problem is Capitol Hill, not memegen.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > the right place to lobby for a fix to the arbitration problem is Capitol Hill, not memegen. So, remembering that employees successfully organized to get Google management to end mandatory arbitration, whereas such requirements are still permitted by law, - that was the wrong approach, and employees should have continued waiting (and still waiting today) for congress to act? Who determines the "right" place?
    - SerLava 6y ago
      The "right place and time" to fight corporate power usually turns out to be the most ineffective place and time anyone can think of. It's such an odd and consistent coincidence!
aweb 6y ago
Organizing in a way so that workers are represented and heard in the company's leadership is not being toxic, mate

quotemstr 6y ago

Don't believe the headline. Google has a problem with activist employees pushing radical political agendas, often in ways explicitly prohibited by company policy -- for example, leaking internal documents to sympathetic press and harassing individuals on public forums like memegen because of their privately held political views. These activists present their activities as "union organizing","transparency and ethics", "whistleblowing, and other sweet-sounding and broadly-liked labels, but in reality, what they're doing is not any of these things. What these activists are actually doing is trying to turn the company into a vehicle for advancing their fringe vision for a Utopian society. And if you know your history, you should run away screaming from anyone trying to engineer a Utopia. Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs. Companies should be mission focused. Coinbase got it right where Google got it wrong, and now Google's activist chickens are coming come to roost.

sabertoothed 6y ago
I strongly disagree with this view. Companies should do what is right and ethical (beyond just what is legal). And who else than the managers and employees working for the company can determine this? It requires exactly those employees pushing for what is right to move the overall company into the right direction. It was even their job as ethics in AI researchers.
- quotemstr 6y ago
  Who decides what is "right" and "ethical"? Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo? Who put those angry people in charge? Of course employees should be able to voice concerns about projects and policies and suggest an alternate strategy. But if leadership rejects that alternative strategy, that needs to be the end of it. If leadership disagrees with you, you can't just start leaking stuff to the press, doxxing people, and organizing protest events. A company is not Twitter and any healthy company should fire employees who are confused about the difference.
  - 6y ago

skeeter2020 6y ago

>> And it also accessed an employee slide presentation that was part of a union drive, the complaint said. I suspect this employee immediately started receiving targeted ads. Why should google employees expect privacy protections that google customers don't get?

throwaways885 6y ago
I don't believe G Suite data is used for advertising. That's just creepy and not something sellable to enterprise.

jeffbee 6y ago

Does anyone have a link to the primary sources? All I can find is news reports. The NLRB search is almost useless, and the only case I managed to find involving Google has only redacted documents.

dang 6y ago

This NLRB complaint was discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25278781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25278781. The document is here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22140676/CPT.20_CA_252802.CCNOH.docx_redacted.pdf https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22140676/C... These threads from a year ago are related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21520129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21520129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21634095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21634095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21813619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21813619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21960921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21960921

whimsicalism 6y ago
The Timnit firing is new and significant and wasn't in the previous discussion.
- detaro 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Cheers - I had missed that.
    - dang 6y ago
      There was also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Google, Facebook, Amazon all need to be broken up cleanly along org lines. Competition is a good thing. We need a need type of trust busting place and the law should be modernized.