Google workers announce union amid heightened rift with management

Amid escalating conflict with the management, employees working at Google and parent company Alphabet Inc. announced the creation of a union on Monday, January 3. Named ‘The Alphabet Workers Union’, the group would be open to all employees and contractors, regardless of their role in the company. It would also collect dues, pay organising staff and have an elected board of directors. 

The unions come amid a rare widening rift between the tech giant and its workers. In recent months, Google clashed with its employees over military contracts, differential treatment of contract workers amongst others. Last month, it drew ire of workers after it allegedly fired a black researcher. 

Supported by CWA

The union is supported by Communications Workers of America as part of the recent tech-focused initiative known as CODE CWA. Although, the union could limit executives’ authority and inspire similar movements across Silicon Valley. It hasn’t specified if it would try to secure majority amongst the Alphabet’s workforce, formal recognition by Alphabet or collective bargaining with the company, a report by Bloomberg stated. 

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“We will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values,” Dylan Baker, a software engineer at Google, said in a statement.

Workers protest 

More than 1,400 Google employees, on December 3, gathered to protest against the sacking of the black employee. Timnit Gebru, who was the technical co-lead at Google’s ethical AI team had previously admitted that she was asked to resign after she called out "silencing of marginalized voices" in the company. ''I was fired by @JeffDean for my email to Brain women and Allies. My corp account has been cutoff. So I've been immediately fired :-),'' she wrote in a tweet. In her tweet, she also revealed that the Google asked her to retract her research paper which looked at the potential for an AI tool used by Google and other tech organisations to imitate human writing of hate speech and biased language, an NPR report stated. 

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Image: AP