Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), also informally referred to as the Google Union,
is a
trade union of workers employed at
Alphabet Inc.,
Google's parent company, with a membership of over 800, in a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors, and vendors.
It was announced on January 4, 2021 with an initial membership of over 400, after over a year of secret organizing, and the union includes all types of workers at Alphabet, including full-time, temporary, vendors and contractors of all job types.
It has been called a
minority union Members-only unionism, also known as minority unionism, is a model for trade unions in which local unions represent and organize workers who voluntarily join (and pay dues) rather than the entire workforce of a place of employment. In such a model ...
and a
solidarity union,
and is not registered with the
National Labor Relations Board, and thus cannot engage in
collective bargaining.
It is part of the
Campaign to Organize Digital Employees
The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees or CODE-CWA is a project launched by the Communications Workers of America to unionize tech and video game workers in January 2020. It sprung out of conversations with Game Workers Unite (GWU) and empl ...
, an effort to organize unions at tech companies, and affiliated with the
Communications Workers of America, a larger trade union.
History
On 4 February 2021, the union expressed support of datacenter workers, including Shannon Wait, employed through contractors, who were demanding the right to drink water at work and discussing wages and other working conditions. Subsequently Wait was suspended by the company for her pro-union activities, which AWU protested against through a legal charge. On 10 February, the union announced Wait was readmitted to work after pressure from the union.
Positions
The union says it fights to improve the workers' wages; fights against abuse, retaliation and discrimination; and advocates on behalf of disadvantaged workers at Google such as contractors.
It fights to stop
sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions fro ...
in the workplace. It aims to stop Google from allowing its social media platforms such as
YouTube to function as a hub for right-wing extremism and white supremacy.
The union argued that Alphabet may do wrongful things for the sake of profit, and that having a union allows workers to make the world a better place by pressuring the company to drop its bad practices and ensure tech labor is used for good purposes. The union also asserts that the company has retaliated against workers for speaking out, and it says it would allow workers to have a say in how things are run and act as a mechanism for workers to speak safely, being protected by the collective strength of workers.
See also
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2018 Google walkouts
*
Google worker organization
Tensions between the multinational technology company Google and its workers escalated in 2018 and 2019 as staff protested company decisions on a censored search engine for China, a military drone artificial intelligence, and internal sexual ...
*
Tech Workers Coalition
References
External links
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{{Google LLC
2021 establishments in the United States
Trade unions established in 2021
Communications Workers of America
Solidarity unionism
Tech sector trade unions
Criticism of Google
Google