CNET profiles the Alphabet Workers Union and recaps some Google labor history
Reporter and video producer Jesse Orrall, reporting for CNET, has published a short article alongside a 9-minute profile video that includes interviews with Alphabet Workers Union Executive Vice-Chair Chewy Shaw, plus former Google employee and Women's Walkout co-organizer Meredith Whittaker. The video provides a good recap of some of the past 3 years of history, dating back to resistance against Google's participation in the military drone project Maven in 2018, and also covering the Andy Rubin pay-the-harasser travesty, the 2019 firing of the Thanksgiving Four, and the recent formal complaint by the NLRB indicating that Google violated U.S. labor law. I'll paste some extracts from the article below, but it's the interview video that offers the best content.
If you'd like a more in-depth look at some of the key moments in Google labor history, my video coverage of the Mountain View Women's Walkout speeches, plus the Google workers townhall that took place just a few days before the Thanksgiving Four were fired, are available to watch online:
-- Mountain View Women's Walkout, Nov. 1, 2018:
-- Google workers townhall, San Francisco, Nov. 22, 2019:
- Bruce
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https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/google-workers-explain-why-they-unionized/
Google workers explain why they unionized
Organized labor came to Silicon Valley earlier this year when employees of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, formed the Alphabet Workers Union. It's open to all Alphabet employees in the US and Canada, including the temporary workers, vendors and contractors who make up more than half the company's workforce...
The AWU filed its first complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in early February on behalf of contractor Shannon Wait, who was briefly suspended after complaining about conditions in the data center where she works. Less than a week after she filed the complaint, Wait posted on Twitter that she'd been invited back to work and cited the incident as evidence that the Alphabet Workers Union has "legitimate power." ...
"We need to organize tech, because its power over our core social institutions is profound," Whittaker said. "I think the job now is to build [the Alphabet Workers Union] into something that's bold ...
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