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The thing about collective bargaining is that it's collective and a strategy to help yourself, and even when it's a stand to help some other union, it's to help

The thing about collective bargaining is that it's collective and a strategy to help yourself, and even when it's a stand to help some other union, it's to help strengthen unions in general, which helps your own Union, and those your own bargaining power. Oh, and it's all done under a group to make help avoid consequences. All sane choices to make, but not exactly what I meant to convey by taking a stand on moral or ethical convictions. I more meant being willing to deal with the consequences when you don't really have enough power to force that change. I wasn't trying to paint Google employees as overly noble, just somewhat that and also priveleged and naive. And of course that's just my perception from the outside.

chrisseaton 5y ago
Maybe it's different where you are - but here in the UK working-class unions do often take stands on moral and political issues outside their own interests. A major example is the massive action they took against South African apartheid in the 1980s - a political issue many thousands of miles from their interests. https://www.aamarchives.org/who-was-involved/trade-unionists.html https://www.aamarchives.org/who-was-involved/trade-unionists... Many students' unions vote to ban newspapers they don't like from campus, and things like that as well. Google employees aren't even remotely near that kind of practical stand yet.