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Google’s New Union Is Already Addressing Political Issues

74 points by alexrustic 6y ago

corty 6y ago
Sounds more like a political pressure group than a union. No collective bargaining, no workplace issues, only political problems quite removed from the average worker at Google. Do they call themselves a union to get legal protection, or is there another reason why they don't just drop the term?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  A union isn't just about pay or safety, though for many blue collar jobs, that's the most important issue a union might tackle. They probably could look at pay inequality though, if they get their members to disclose all of that to the union. The biggest question will be whether or not the AWU gets large enough and chooses to use the power to strike. Basically the one power any union has, that individual members can't employ without simply being fired.
  - corty 6y ago
    I don't know about the rest of the world, but the power to strike in Germany is tied strictly to workplace-related issues. You can strike for more pay, better workplace conditions, more or less equality in the workplace. The legality of political strikes is doubtful, especially if the issue isn't a really big national one: https://www.bpb.de/dialog/netzdebatte/219308/ein-bisschen-verboten-politischer-streik https://www.bpb.de/dialog/netzdebatte/219308/ein-bisschen-ve...
    - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
      I know that many Unions get involved in political lobbying though. Regardless of how they get their point across, money is taken and spent on influencing power beyond employers. For example I was part of the Musicians Union in the UK, which has a separate political fund, and members are usually self-employed, but it did create a forum for potential collective action, and for attempting to influence the political discourse.
  - chimeracoder 6y ago
    Most of your comment is correct, except: > The biggest question will be whether or not the AWU gets large enough and chooses to use the power to strike. Basically the one power any union has, that individual members can't employ without simply being fired. That's not true, strictly speaking. A group of people could theoretically strike together without being members of a formally-recognized union. In practice, it's tough to coordinate that, and they may have a more difficult time actually enforcing those rights without a legal and financial structure of support, but it's not true that people have to be members of a union in order to engage in a strike. The law unambiguously grants that power to workers acting in concert with each other, whether or not they are doing so with the formal backing of a union.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      While the law does grant individual workers the power to strike, the legal protections are weak enough that it's not really practical even if you trust your employer to respect them. Unless you're striking against a specific unfair labor practice, your employer has the right to simply replace you, and reinstate you only when a new job opening is available.
      - chimeracoder 6y ago
        > While the law does grant individual workers the power to strike, the legal protections are weak enough that it's not really practical even if you trust your employer to respect them. As a counterpoint, tens of thousands of Googlers staged a worldwide walkout two years ago. They were not unionized. They were protected by the same law that protects unionized workers when striking. When Google retaliated against four of those 20,000+ people, the NLRB launched a federal investigation, the same way the NLRB would if they had been unionized. > Unless you're striking against a specific unfair labor practice, your employer has the right to simply replace you, and reinstate you only when a new job opening is available. That's not quite true. If it happened exactly as you describe, that would be a pretty clear-cut wrongful termination lawsuit, and the NLRB would come down pretty hard on the employer.
        6y ago
  - sn_master 6y ago
    Yes, as a man I really wish they look at pay inequality at Google. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...
- myWindoonn 6y ago
  Unions are political pressure groups. The entire point of a union is to pressure employers to not shoot their employees, give them fair wages and working hours, and so on; the union is a political actor on par with the employer. By questioning whether a group of employees really is a union, you are attempting to strip them of federal protection from retaliation.
  - bioinformatics 6y ago
    I am pretty sure the work environment at Google is extremely oppressive, with low salaries and and top-down evil capitalist only approach. After all how can millionaires Google employees can have their voices heard if they don't unionize? Maybe they will demand better snacks in the cafeteria and a new foosball table at the end of the indoor slide.
    - bo0tzz 6y ago
      Unions are not just for the purpose of getting fair pay, but rather about a broad case of being on equal footing with an employer, as stated in the parent comment. Besides, this union is not just for salaried google employees, but also contractors etc - this will include for example cleaners and cafetaria employees, which are much more likely to be in need of the sort of union support that you mention.
    - xtian 6y ago
      Google was one of the participants in a corporate wage-fixing scandal. Do snacks and foosball tables justify that?
      - option 6y ago
        and they got sued for that and lost. No union was involved in holding them accountable
        xtian 6y ago
        Yeah, they got a small slap on the wrist for that one. My point is the presence of snacks and perks does not preclude the exploitation of labor.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  Members have to pay 1% of their salary to be in it, which is very union-like. I imagine if they dropped the pretense of a union and it was just a non-profit group, they would have a hard time getting that big of a donation from each member. Maybe I'm just being too cynical, but I can't help think this group is playing into the current trendiness of progressive issues, and some number of well-off Googlers are joining because ~$2000 a year is insignificant to them and they support the cause of unions in general even though they don't personally need any of the protections a typical union offers. Not to say this is necessarily a bad thing, non-profits need to market themselves somehow and if they accomplish positive change in Google's policies this way then great.
  - est31 6y ago
    It contains about 0.5% of the Gogle proper employees or about 700 people. If it were a Google product, it would have been canned a long time ago with that tiny market share.
    - starclerk 6y ago
      0.5% of a big number is a big number. If it were a Google product, I'm pretty sure they'd be happy to get O(10s of millions) users in the first week (or 0.5% of the billions of existing users).
      - compiler-guy 6y ago
        Only to shut it down a year or two later when growth stalled at 0.6%, as it nearly always does.
    - armoredkitten 6y ago
      It's also a week old. Even Google doesn't can things that quickly.
      - est31 6y ago
        Fair point. I was actually joking here :).
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  > Sounds more like a political pressure group than a union. No collective bargaining, no workplace issues, only political problems quite removed from the average worker at Google. Do they call themselves a union to get legal protection, or is there another reason why they don't just drop the term? Yes, it's effectively a PAC, not a union. Just like at Kickstarter where they were more concerned about people deemed 'conservative' not using the platform to promote comicbooks than anything related to work conditions. A union shouldn't be telling their boss who they can or cannot work with, partner with or have as clients, it's plain insubordination especially when it has absolutely nothing to do with their own compensations or work conditions. Obviously anybody can claim that employer B working with X or Y make their employees of class Z emotionally 'distressed' or 'unsafe'... The irony/hypocrisy here is people claiming 'unions are political' when that thing at google is really just about being partisan, yet these people don't have the courage to call a PAC...a PAC, and hide behind the word 'union'.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I'd argue it's more fashion than a lack of courage. Amazon's equivalent group is called Amazon Workers for Climate Justice - they regularly pressure Amazon on topics that have nothing to do with climate justice, but climate change was a trendy topic when they first organized. Sponsorship and support from the CWA is another factor, although I don't know if it's public how much the AWU is actually getting from that relationship.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    > A union shouldn't be telling their boss who they can or cannot work with, partner with or have as clients I don't agree with that assessment. If Google employees have a strong opposition to working with, say, federal agencies to share data they've gathered on users, then I think it makes perfect sense for them bring that concern to the table. Honestly, I don't see why a union shouldn't have the ability to bargain anything it wants to try and bargain. I'm open to someone changing my mind on that.
    - ta76893548 6y ago
- xtian 6y ago
  “Politics” is simply the means by which we distribute power and resources. There is no division between labor organizing and politics. We just think there is in the US because worker movements have been systematically dismantled for decades.
  - tomp 6y ago
    I don't think that's what parent poster meant by "politics"...
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Ironically, college-educated white collar workers (like those at Google) have sped that along by driving a wedge between economic liberals over social issues: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-won-in-two-dimensions-1502320256 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-won-in-two-dimensions... When Amazon’s managers are Democrats you think any progress will get made on workers issues?
    - xtian 6y ago
      I don’t think Democrats represent workers’ issues any more than Republicans if that’s what you’re asking. The point of labor organization is to enable workers to leverage their fundamental role in the mechanism of capitalism in order to make demands with teeth. That’s the only way to gain concessions from the establishment political parties.
- chimeracoder 6y ago
  > Sounds more like a political pressure group than a union. No collective bargaining, no workplace issues Collective bargaining for contracts (e.g. compensation) are only one possible role a union can play. It's the most common one in the US for legal and historical reasons, but it's not the only one permitted. Incidentally, the structure of the AWU is actually much more similar to how unions operate in Europe, where unions are not required or expected to have exclusive representation over a bargaining unit, and therefore quite commonly focus on a range of issues, rather than centering mostly on collective bargaining for contracts. The perception that "it's not a union if it only represents a small number of people" or "it's not a union if it doesn't engage in collective bargaining" is a very American perspective (and even then, a perception which is inconsistent with the actual rights granted under the NLRA to minority unions in the US).
- aerosmile 6y ago
  Tesla also didn't start with the Model 3, but instead built a roadster for the rich enthusiasts first (who were more forgiving of the lack in range, charger network, and other issues). It's the old boiling the frog adage. Perhaps the political issues were a better bang for the buck because they were easier to formulate and addressed the needs of the most fanatical base? Once they make any progress in that area (and a quick formulation of the demands is a sign of such progress), the momentum will continue to build.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  Rather than a plan to do that, it could be that if you get together all of the 0.05% most pro-union Google employees, and have them fairly vote to determine their average desires, you'll end up with something different from the average of all Google employees.
- m3kw9 6y ago
  Yeah or an internal political activists group with union powers.
- dbingham 6y ago
  Unions are political pressure groups. Collective bargaining rights are not just limited to worker compensation, they touch on every aspect of business - including how the business wields its power in the larger society.
- seventytwo 6y ago
  A union is literally a political pressure group. This Google group can advocate for wheat ever it wants.
draklor40 6y ago
LOL.
jjcon 6y ago
This really shouldn’t be called Googles union since there isn’t anything exclusive about it - 15 employees could start another ‘union’ tomorrow to put pressure on google for opposite political issues
zzzmarcus 6y ago
Here's a direct link to their asks: https://twitter.com/AlphabetWorkers/status/1347331587315171330 https://twitter.com/AlphabetWorkers/status/13473315873151713... The gist of it seems to be that "YouTube must no longer be a tool of fascist recruitment and oppression. Anything less is to countenance deadly violence..."
helen___keller 6y ago
I'm quite a fan of the abstract idea of unions: typical corporate power structures are derived from the principle of 1 share = 1 vote[0], whereas unions provide a competing power structure derived from the principle of 1 employee = 1 vote. Many fear/detest unions for their past failures, but any organization can be poorly run or corrupt. If you believe in democracy then you should believe that a power structure derived from 1 person = 1 vote has the potential to be more fair and more just, for the represented individuals, than the alternative power structure derived from dollars. I would love to see more innovation in this space: How can we design better charters for unions (or governments, really) so that the resulting power structure better represents the people? Should there be some kind of justice system for large unions to ensure there is no corruption and that decisions are made fairly in the best interests of the constituents? Should we elect representatives based on say department as a re-creation of the principles of federalism, or should we be a direct democracy? At what level of scale do these decisions matter? Many people study democracy, but I fear not enough people study the ongoing process of creating effective and resilient new democracies from scratch. [0] Although, many modern tech companies have perverted this by creating separate ultra-powerful voting shares reserved for founders
- cool_dude85 6y ago
  Most unions I suspect already have some form of within-union democracy. The small union I'm a member of works on a sort of federation basis, broken up by physical location. So members of District 26 vote for a District 26 rep, who goes to a meeting of the union leadership and then votes there. In this way, representatives are not exclusively associated with job classifications (e.g., all the programmers vote for programmer reps, the accountants for accounting reps, etc.) but are instead only loosely associated with classification. So one rep mostly, but not exclusively, represents the accountants, but also might represent the secretary in the same office. I think it's an okay system, and I'm sure different intra-union democratic structures have been studied, but to an extent I think you have the same problems as with local elections: it's difficult to get people to be informed and care, absent some huge community-wide issue. What was the difference between Rep A and Rep B in the last election? Who knows?
richardwhiuk 6y ago
Union's very existence is a political statement.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  And the same for a company. Politics is just an emergent phenomenon of groups of people.
dfilppi 6y ago
Sounds like a good union to bust.
georgiecasey 6y ago
How come you always hear this kind of stuff from Google but not a peep from the other FAANGS, especially Apple.
- unix_fan 6y ago
  Because google employees hold extremely comfortable jobs, meaning they have more time for activism. There is a massive entitlement culture within the company.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    If Google has "massive entitlement culture", then HN has massive "boss worship" culture.
- neaden 6y ago
  I don't know about Apple but Amazon has Amazon Workers for Climate Justice which is a similar group.
- yaacov 6y ago
  I hear about stuff like this from Facebook pretty often, and to some extent from Amazon and Microsoft. Apple might be different because they’re mostly just making devices? The social implications are less obvious.
- neartheplain 6y ago
  For many years, Google leadership fostered a particularly open culture with vigorous internal debate and discussion. They held weekly all-hands Q&A sessions with Larry and Sergey, built an internal tool for sharing company-related image memes (including those critical of leadership), and hosted high-traffic internal mailing lists on a wide range of political and non-work related subjects. Some of this has been curtailed in recent years, as leaks to the press increased and activist employees became increasingly critical of management.
- scottlamb 6y ago
  Because Google attracted a lot of employees who care about corporate ethics with its "don't be evil" reputation. That reputation has faded as people learned about cases when Google didn't live up to it [1] but there are still a _lot_ of Googlers who want to hold Google to the old standard. If there were another large tech company with a reputation for great ethics, many of these people would probably go there instead. But in spite of a lot of disillusionment, Google still seems to be the best of the FAANGs IMHO. Full disclosure: I just left Google. I'm taking a break before looking for something new, but if someone knows of a tech company that is as ethical as I once thought Google was, I'd love to hear it... [1] The wage-fixing cartel, several exec sexual harassment complaints and Andy Rubin's $90 million severance, double-speak around Project Maven, the complaints behind the walkout and ultimately Google firing the walkout organizers, etc.
christmm 6y ago
Lefties gone wild
drivingmenuts 6y ago
I would not join, we’re I a Google employee. It is fine, IMO, to work on projects for my employer and privately, outside of work, to apply efforts to lessen and eventually remove the need for such work. But those efforts are my own business and not the business of any other person at the company. If the conflict of interest becomes too great, then I feel the company is within their right to reassign or terminate, or more likely, for me to remove myself from the conflict. But, I also have a strong tendency and desire to leave my politics at home. I’m also careful to choose who I work for.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Just a helpful tip if you ever find yourself managing someone: firing someone because you feel like the "conflict of interest" from their union involvement is too great is illegal. Harboring and stating these views online is likely to cause more damage for whatever company you're working for than the "conflicted" employee.
  - drivingmenuts 6y ago
    I’m speaking only about myself. If someone is a member of a union, they are due all legal protection due to that membership. I also avoid any possibility of managing others because I’m very aware of my tendencies to “cold-shoulder” anyone with whom I have a severe disagreement. And in general, I’m not qualified for management, nor do I seek it.
williesleg 6y ago
That's what a union does. Wait till they collect dues and send that all to China.
arexxbifs 6y ago
> We will ensure Alphabet acts ethically and in the best interests of society and the environment. I guess they don't consider global mass surveillance for the purpose of selling ads to be an ethical or societal problem, then. Good to know there's no reason to take anything they say seriously.
- wffurr 6y ago
  How do you know what their plans are for tracking-based advertising?
  - arexxbifs 6y ago
    I don't. However, their site and the statements I've read from them don't mention anything about that, while certainly being very outspoken about pretty much all other issues related to Alphabet. It almost seems as if they've knowingly avoided that particular issue altogether. They're welcome to prove me wrong.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  "My feminism will be intersectional, despotic and Orwellian."
neartheplain 6y ago
The group says it now has more than 700 dues-paying members. Dues are 1% of total compensation [0]. With 700 members, that’s already 7 whole Google salary and bonus packages. No small chunk of change. I hope the union will be transparent with their spending. [0] https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/faq/ https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/faq/
- Crash0v3rid3 6y ago
  1% is quite a lot from a FANG employees paycheck. I would love to see how many members they sustain once the dues are owed.
sn_master 6y ago
They want to become an inside government enforcing their own extreme ideology on everybody. They can refuse working and cancel entire projects even if everyone working on the project is fine with it, ask for changes in management up and down based on rumors or tweets about a person or something they've done 25 years ago, stop serving meat in the cafeteria or allowing ICE cars to park for free and other "environmental" demands, mandatory quotas for each group they deem a "minority" based solely on their own discretion, stop work near deadlines or industry events just to show off their power etc. Each one of those already had several very large and opinionated internal forum discussions there and many have made it into actions over the years. In their minds they believe they're proletariat in a holy battle against the oppressive regime, any regime they fall under and are ironically turning into what they claim to be fighting against.
- lucian1900 6y ago
  Whatever you may think of them, they are in the objective sense proletariat. They do not own the mean of production, but instead must sell their labour. They are also labour aristocracy, the segment of global proles that are relatively comfortable and well compensated. It’s good if they wish to show solidarity to the rest of us.
  - sn_master 6y ago
    What's your definition of proletariat? The Wikipedia one (which I am not saying is correct, but is the first one I can find) mentions "..oppressed by capitalism, forced to accept meager wages" and "..who owned little or no property". 250k/year for L4 (out of college + 2 years average) isn't "meager wages" anywhere in the world, objectively. My criticism is that this doesn't seem to be about showing solidarity and getting a better deal and working conditions, rather it's primarily about enforcing their environmental and state political ideology over the rest of the company. I would never object to a group of people who want me to work more efficiently and get a better financial deal. Call me whatever you like, but I don't want to suddenly find beef off the cafeteria menu, be forced to pay extra for parking because I am not driving an electrical car (or because I am driving at all instead of biking) or be told my project is cancelled because it helps the democratically elected US government and that I have to donate from paycheck to entities I disagree with to help them in goals that hurt me at a personal level because the media that they follow managed to portray them in a positive way. I really don't know who "the rest of us" you mean are, that they want to show their solidarity to, so I can't comment on that part. Did you mean they like to show solidarity to software engineers in other companies? Because I don't know how would they do that given their current direction. Whatever little freedom we have left should be cherished at all cost because once we lose it, it won't ever come back.
blippage 6y ago
Seems that the whole thing is just a bunch of rich kids getting mad at daddy, not a serious union in the way we generally think of them. It seems that this union is more like a political party. Well, why should I join a party if I don't know their policies? Who gets to decide the policies? What if I don't agree with their policies? So just what's the point anyway?
beenBoutIT 6y ago
Does anyone have any experience managing engineers that are actively working on changing the way the company does business? Curious if engineers that excel at doing what they're told would get more done in the same amount of time.

74 points by alexrustic 6y ago

Sounds more like a political pressure group than a union. No collective bargaining, no workplace issues, only political problems quite removed from the average worker at Google. Do they call themselves a union to get legal protection, or is there another reason why they don't just drop the term?

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
A union isn't just about pay or safety, though for many blue collar jobs, that's the most important issue a union might tackle. They probably could look at pay inequality though, if they get their members to disclose all of that to the union. The biggest question will be whether or not the AWU gets large enough and chooses to use the power to strike. Basically the one power any union has, that individual members can't employ without simply being fired.
- corty 6y ago
  I don't know about the rest of the world, but the power to strike in Germany is tied strictly to workplace-related issues. You can strike for more pay, better workplace conditions, more or less equality in the workplace. The legality of political strikes is doubtful, especially if the issue isn't a really big national one: https://www.bpb.de/dialog/netzdebatte/219308/ein-bisschen-verboten-politischer-streik https://www.bpb.de/dialog/netzdebatte/219308/ein-bisschen-ve...
  - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
    I know that many Unions get involved in political lobbying though. Regardless of how they get their point across, money is taken and spent on influencing power beyond employers. For example I was part of the Musicians Union in the UK, which has a separate political fund, and members are usually self-employed, but it did create a forum for potential collective action, and for attempting to influence the political discourse.
- chimeracoder 6y ago
  Most of your comment is correct, except: > The biggest question will be whether or not the AWU gets large enough and chooses to use the power to strike. Basically the one power any union has, that individual members can't employ without simply being fired. That's not true, strictly speaking. A group of people could theoretically strike together without being members of a formally-recognized union. In practice, it's tough to coordinate that, and they may have a more difficult time actually enforcing those rights without a legal and financial structure of support, but it's not true that people have to be members of a union in order to engage in a strike. The law unambiguously grants that power to workers acting in concert with each other, whether or not they are doing so with the formal backing of a union.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    While the law does grant individual workers the power to strike, the legal protections are weak enough that it's not really practical even if you trust your employer to respect them. Unless you're striking against a specific unfair labor practice, your employer has the right to simply replace you, and reinstate you only when a new job opening is available.
    - chimeracoder 6y ago
      > While the law does grant individual workers the power to strike, the legal protections are weak enough that it's not really practical even if you trust your employer to respect them. As a counterpoint, tens of thousands of Googlers staged a worldwide walkout two years ago. They were not unionized. They were protected by the same law that protects unionized workers when striking. When Google retaliated against four of those 20,000+ people, the NLRB launched a federal investigation, the same way the NLRB would if they had been unionized. > Unless you're striking against a specific unfair labor practice, your employer has the right to simply replace you, and reinstate you only when a new job opening is available. That's not quite true. If it happened exactly as you describe, that would be a pretty clear-cut wrongful termination lawsuit, and the NLRB would come down pretty hard on the employer.
      - 6y ago
- sn_master 6y ago
  Yes, as a man I really wish they look at pay inequality at Google. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...
myWindoonn 6y ago
Unions are political pressure groups. The entire point of a union is to pressure employers to not shoot their employees, give them fair wages and working hours, and so on; the union is a political actor on par with the employer. By questioning whether a group of employees really is a union, you are attempting to strip them of federal protection from retaliation.
- bioinformatics 6y ago
  I am pretty sure the work environment at Google is extremely oppressive, with low salaries and and top-down evil capitalist only approach. After all how can millionaires Google employees can have their voices heard if they don't unionize? Maybe they will demand better snacks in the cafeteria and a new foosball table at the end of the indoor slide.
  - bo0tzz 6y ago
    Unions are not just for the purpose of getting fair pay, but rather about a broad case of being on equal footing with an employer, as stated in the parent comment. Besides, this union is not just for salaried google employees, but also contractors etc - this will include for example cleaners and cafetaria employees, which are much more likely to be in need of the sort of union support that you mention.
  - xtian 6y ago
    Google was one of the participants in a corporate wage-fixing scandal. Do snacks and foosball tables justify that?
    - option 6y ago
      and they got sued for that and lost. No union was involved in holding them accountable
      - xtian 6y ago
        Yeah, they got a small slap on the wrist for that one. My point is the presence of snacks and perks does not preclude the exploitation of labor.
cactus2093 6y ago
Members have to pay 1% of their salary to be in it, which is very union-like. I imagine if they dropped the pretense of a union and it was just a non-profit group, they would have a hard time getting that big of a donation from each member. Maybe I'm just being too cynical, but I can't help think this group is playing into the current trendiness of progressive issues, and some number of well-off Googlers are joining because ~$2000 a year is insignificant to them and they support the cause of unions in general even though they don't personally need any of the protections a typical union offers. Not to say this is necessarily a bad thing, non-profits need to market themselves somehow and if they accomplish positive change in Google's policies this way then great.
- est31 6y ago
  It contains about 0.5% of the Gogle proper employees or about 700 people. If it were a Google product, it would have been canned a long time ago with that tiny market share.
  - starclerk 6y ago
    0.5% of a big number is a big number. If it were a Google product, I'm pretty sure they'd be happy to get O(10s of millions) users in the first week (or 0.5% of the billions of existing users).
    - compiler-guy 6y ago
      Only to shut it down a year or two later when growth stalled at 0.6%, as it nearly always does.
  - armoredkitten 6y ago
    It's also a week old. Even Google doesn't can things that quickly.
    - est31 6y ago
      Fair point. I was actually joking here :).
throw_m239339 6y ago
> Sounds more like a political pressure group than a union. No collective bargaining, no workplace issues, only political problems quite removed from the average worker at Google. Do they call themselves a union to get legal protection, or is there another reason why they don't just drop the term? Yes, it's effectively a PAC, not a union. Just like at Kickstarter where they were more concerned about people deemed 'conservative' not using the platform to promote comicbooks than anything related to work conditions. A union shouldn't be telling their boss who they can or cannot work with, partner with or have as clients, it's plain insubordination especially when it has absolutely nothing to do with their own compensations or work conditions. Obviously anybody can claim that employer B working with X or Y make their employees of class Z emotionally 'distressed' or 'unsafe'... The irony/hypocrisy here is people claiming 'unions are political' when that thing at google is really just about being partisan, yet these people don't have the courage to call a PAC...a PAC, and hide behind the word 'union'.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I'd argue it's more fashion than a lack of courage. Amazon's equivalent group is called Amazon Workers for Climate Justice - they regularly pressure Amazon on topics that have nothing to do with climate justice, but climate change was a trendy topic when they first organized. Sponsorship and support from the CWA is another factor, although I don't know if it's public how much the AWU is actually getting from that relationship.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > A union shouldn't be telling their boss who they can or cannot work with, partner with or have as clients I don't agree with that assessment. If Google employees have a strong opposition to working with, say, federal agencies to share data they've gathered on users, then I think it makes perfect sense for them bring that concern to the table. Honestly, I don't see why a union shouldn't have the ability to bargain anything it wants to try and bargain. I'm open to someone changing my mind on that.
  - ta76893548 6y ago
xtian 6y ago
“Politics” is simply the means by which we distribute power and resources. There is no division between labor organizing and politics. We just think there is in the US because worker movements have been systematically dismantled for decades.
- tomp 6y ago
  I don't think that's what parent poster meant by "politics"...
- rayiner 6y ago
  Ironically, college-educated white collar workers (like those at Google) have sped that along by driving a wedge between economic liberals over social issues: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-won-in-two-dimensions-1502320256 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-won-in-two-dimensions... When Amazon’s managers are Democrats you think any progress will get made on workers issues?
  - xtian 6y ago
    I don’t think Democrats represent workers’ issues any more than Republicans if that’s what you’re asking. The point of labor organization is to enable workers to leverage their fundamental role in the mechanism of capitalism in order to make demands with teeth. That’s the only way to gain concessions from the establishment political parties.
chimeracoder 6y ago
> Sounds more like a political pressure group than a union. No collective bargaining, no workplace issues Collective bargaining for contracts (e.g. compensation) are only one possible role a union can play. It's the most common one in the US for legal and historical reasons, but it's not the only one permitted. Incidentally, the structure of the AWU is actually much more similar to how unions operate in Europe, where unions are not required or expected to have exclusive representation over a bargaining unit, and therefore quite commonly focus on a range of issues, rather than centering mostly on collective bargaining for contracts. The perception that "it's not a union if it only represents a small number of people" or "it's not a union if it doesn't engage in collective bargaining" is a very American perspective (and even then, a perception which is inconsistent with the actual rights granted under the NLRA to minority unions in the US).
aerosmile 6y ago
Tesla also didn't start with the Model 3, but instead built a roadster for the rich enthusiasts first (who were more forgiving of the lack in range, charger network, and other issues). It's the old boiling the frog adage. Perhaps the political issues were a better bang for the buck because they were easier to formulate and addressed the needs of the most fanatical base? Once they make any progress in that area (and a quick formulation of the demands is a sign of such progress), the momentum will continue to build.
whatshisface 6y ago
Rather than a plan to do that, it could be that if you get together all of the 0.05% most pro-union Google employees, and have them fairly vote to determine their average desires, you'll end up with something different from the average of all Google employees.
m3kw9 6y ago
Yeah or an internal political activists group with union powers.
dbingham 6y ago
Unions are political pressure groups. Collective bargaining rights are not just limited to worker compensation, they touch on every aspect of business - including how the business wields its power in the larger society.
seventytwo 6y ago
A union is literally a political pressure group. This Google group can advocate for wheat ever it wants.

draklor40 6y ago

LOL.

jjcon 6y ago

This really shouldn’t be called Googles union since there isn’t anything exclusive about it - 15 employees could start another ‘union’ tomorrow to put pressure on google for opposite political issues

zzzmarcus 6y ago

Here's a direct link to their asks: https://twitter.com/AlphabetWorkers/status/1347331587315171330 https://twitter.com/AlphabetWorkers/status/13473315873151713... The gist of it seems to be that "YouTube must no longer be a tool of fascist recruitment and oppression. Anything less is to countenance deadly violence..."

helen___keller 6y ago

I'm quite a fan of the abstract idea of unions: typical corporate power structures are derived from the principle of 1 share = 1 vote[0], whereas unions provide a competing power structure derived from the principle of 1 employee = 1 vote. Many fear/detest unions for their past failures, but any organization can be poorly run or corrupt. If you believe in democracy then you should believe that a power structure derived from 1 person = 1 vote has the potential to be more fair and more just, for the represented individuals, than the alternative power structure derived from dollars. I would love to see more innovation in this space: How can we design better charters for unions (or governments, really) so that the resulting power structure better represents the people? Should there be some kind of justice system for large unions to ensure there is no corruption and that decisions are made fairly in the best interests of the constituents? Should we elect representatives based on say department as a re-creation of the principles of federalism, or should we be a direct democracy? At what level of scale do these decisions matter? Many people study democracy, but I fear not enough people study the ongoing process of creating effective and resilient new democracies from scratch. [0] Although, many modern tech companies have perverted this by creating separate ultra-powerful voting shares reserved for founders

cool_dude85 6y ago
Most unions I suspect already have some form of within-union democracy. The small union I'm a member of works on a sort of federation basis, broken up by physical location. So members of District 26 vote for a District 26 rep, who goes to a meeting of the union leadership and then votes there. In this way, representatives are not exclusively associated with job classifications (e.g., all the programmers vote for programmer reps, the accountants for accounting reps, etc.) but are instead only loosely associated with classification. So one rep mostly, but not exclusively, represents the accountants, but also might represent the secretary in the same office. I think it's an okay system, and I'm sure different intra-union democratic structures have been studied, but to an extent I think you have the same problems as with local elections: it's difficult to get people to be informed and care, absent some huge community-wide issue. What was the difference between Rep A and Rep B in the last election? Who knows?

richardwhiuk 6y ago

Union's very existence is a political statement.

CydeWeys 6y ago
And the same for a company. Politics is just an emergent phenomenon of groups of people.

dfilppi 6y ago

Sounds like a good union to bust.

georgiecasey 6y ago

How come you always hear this kind of stuff from Google but not a peep from the other FAANGS, especially Apple.

unix_fan 6y ago
Because google employees hold extremely comfortable jobs, meaning they have more time for activism. There is a massive entitlement culture within the company.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  If Google has "massive entitlement culture", then HN has massive "boss worship" culture.
neaden 6y ago
I don't know about Apple but Amazon has Amazon Workers for Climate Justice which is a similar group.
yaacov 6y ago
I hear about stuff like this from Facebook pretty often, and to some extent from Amazon and Microsoft. Apple might be different because they’re mostly just making devices? The social implications are less obvious.
neartheplain 6y ago
For many years, Google leadership fostered a particularly open culture with vigorous internal debate and discussion. They held weekly all-hands Q&A sessions with Larry and Sergey, built an internal tool for sharing company-related image memes (including those critical of leadership), and hosted high-traffic internal mailing lists on a wide range of political and non-work related subjects. Some of this has been curtailed in recent years, as leaks to the press increased and activist employees became increasingly critical of management.
scottlamb 6y ago
Because Google attracted a lot of employees who care about corporate ethics with its "don't be evil" reputation. That reputation has faded as people learned about cases when Google didn't live up to it [1] but there are still a _lot_ of Googlers who want to hold Google to the old standard. If there were another large tech company with a reputation for great ethics, many of these people would probably go there instead. But in spite of a lot of disillusionment, Google still seems to be the best of the FAANGs IMHO. Full disclosure: I just left Google. I'm taking a break before looking for something new, but if someone knows of a tech company that is as ethical as I once thought Google was, I'd love to hear it... [1] The wage-fixing cartel, several exec sexual harassment complaints and Andy Rubin's $90 million severance, double-speak around Project Maven, the complaints behind the walkout and ultimately Google firing the walkout organizers, etc.

christmm 6y ago

Lefties gone wild

drivingmenuts 6y ago

I would not join, we’re I a Google employee. It is fine, IMO, to work on projects for my employer and privately, outside of work, to apply efforts to lessen and eventually remove the need for such work. But those efforts are my own business and not the business of any other person at the company. If the conflict of interest becomes too great, then I feel the company is within their right to reassign or terminate, or more likely, for me to remove myself from the conflict. But, I also have a strong tendency and desire to leave my politics at home. I’m also careful to choose who I work for.

whimsicalism 6y ago
Just a helpful tip if you ever find yourself managing someone: firing someone because you feel like the "conflict of interest" from their union involvement is too great is illegal. Harboring and stating these views online is likely to cause more damage for whatever company you're working for than the "conflicted" employee.
- drivingmenuts 6y ago
  I’m speaking only about myself. If someone is a member of a union, they are due all legal protection due to that membership. I also avoid any possibility of managing others because I’m very aware of my tendencies to “cold-shoulder” anyone with whom I have a severe disagreement. And in general, I’m not qualified for management, nor do I seek it.

williesleg 6y ago

That's what a union does. Wait till they collect dues and send that all to China.

arexxbifs 6y ago

> We will ensure Alphabet acts ethically and in the best interests of society and the environment. I guess they don't consider global mass surveillance for the purpose of selling ads to be an ethical or societal problem, then. Good to know there's no reason to take anything they say seriously.

wffurr 6y ago
How do you know what their plans are for tracking-based advertising?
- arexxbifs 6y ago
  I don't. However, their site and the statements I've read from them don't mention anything about that, while certainly being very outspoken about pretty much all other issues related to Alphabet. It almost seems as if they've knowingly avoided that particular issue altogether. They're welcome to prove me wrong.
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
"My feminism will be intersectional, despotic and Orwellian."

neartheplain 6y ago

The group says it now has more than 700 dues-paying members. Dues are 1% of total compensation [0]. With 700 members, that’s already 7 whole Google salary and bonus packages. No small chunk of change. I hope the union will be transparent with their spending. [0] https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/faq/ https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/faq/

Crash0v3rid3 6y ago
1% is quite a lot from a FANG employees paycheck. I would love to see how many members they sustain once the dues are owed.

sn_master 6y ago

They want to become an inside government enforcing their own extreme ideology on everybody. They can refuse working and cancel entire projects even if everyone working on the project is fine with it, ask for changes in management up and down based on rumors or tweets about a person or something they've done 25 years ago, stop serving meat in the cafeteria or allowing ICE cars to park for free and other "environmental" demands, mandatory quotas for each group they deem a "minority" based solely on their own discretion, stop work near deadlines or industry events just to show off their power etc. Each one of those already had several very large and opinionated internal forum discussions there and many have made it into actions over the years. In their minds they believe they're proletariat in a holy battle against the oppressive regime, any regime they fall under and are ironically turning into what they claim to be fighting against.

lucian1900 6y ago
Whatever you may think of them, they are in the objective sense proletariat. They do not own the mean of production, but instead must sell their labour. They are also labour aristocracy, the segment of global proles that are relatively comfortable and well compensated. It’s good if they wish to show solidarity to the rest of us.
- sn_master 6y ago
  What's your definition of proletariat? The Wikipedia one (which I am not saying is correct, but is the first one I can find) mentions "..oppressed by capitalism, forced to accept meager wages" and "..who owned little or no property". 250k/year for L4 (out of college + 2 years average) isn't "meager wages" anywhere in the world, objectively. My criticism is that this doesn't seem to be about showing solidarity and getting a better deal and working conditions, rather it's primarily about enforcing their environmental and state political ideology over the rest of the company. I would never object to a group of people who want me to work more efficiently and get a better financial deal. Call me whatever you like, but I don't want to suddenly find beef off the cafeteria menu, be forced to pay extra for parking because I am not driving an electrical car (or because I am driving at all instead of biking) or be told my project is cancelled because it helps the democratically elected US government and that I have to donate from paycheck to entities I disagree with to help them in goals that hurt me at a personal level because the media that they follow managed to portray them in a positive way. I really don't know who "the rest of us" you mean are, that they want to show their solidarity to, so I can't comment on that part. Did you mean they like to show solidarity to software engineers in other companies? Because I don't know how would they do that given their current direction. Whatever little freedom we have left should be cherished at all cost because once we lose it, it won't ever come back.

blippage 6y ago

Seems that the whole thing is just a bunch of rich kids getting mad at daddy, not a serious union in the way we generally think of them. It seems that this union is more like a political party. Well, why should I join a party if I don't know their policies? Who gets to decide the policies? What if I don't agree with their policies? So just what's the point anyway?

beenBoutIT 6y ago

Does anyone have any experience managing engineers that are actively working on changing the way the company does business? Curious if engineers that excel at doing what they're told would get more done in the same amount of time.