Read on Twitter
Google workers have announced their intention to form a union, under the auspices of @CWAUnion Local 1440. The union is called @AlphabetWorkers (Google maintains the legal and accounting fiction that it is a division of a holding company called "Alphabet").
1/
1/
Speaking of legal fictions, the union is opening membership to "TVCs" - temps, vendors and contractors - employees who have deliberately misclassified so as to avoid paying them benefits or extending normal workplace protections to them.
2/
2/
It's a bold move, a countermeasure to thwart the other commercial advantage from worker misclassification: by creating multiple categories of workers, bosses can pit employees against one another, by dangling privileges in front of one group but not the other.
3/
3/
But it comes at a high price: to gain official legal recognition, more than 50% of eligible workers must join the union. By including more workers, the union is setting a higher bar for official status.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3an5q9/google-workers-publicly-launch-union
4/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3an5q9/google-workers-publicly-launch-union
4/
But the union has momentum: a series of high-profile googler uprisings - driven by official tolerance for sexual misconduct, complicity in US military drone programs, secret collaboration with Chinese surveillance and censorship, and more - show how radicalized googlers are.
5/
5/
Google's management - who cultivated an air of participatory, cuddly collaboration - have arrived at a point where the contradictions between their "values" and the company's profits can no longer be reconciled.
6/
6/
In Dec 2020, Google fired @timnitGebru, an eminent Black AI scientist who refused to retract a paper critical of its profitable Big Data research. Management compounded their sins by making false claims about Gebru's dismissal.
7/
7/
The unionization drive is under the CWA's #CODE (Coalition to Organize Digital Employees) project. Though CODE is no stranger to conflict, Google represents a serious challenge, thanks to its partnership with notorious union-busters @IRIConsultants.
8/
8/
(IWI's tactics pale in comparison to the mercenaries that @Amazon has hired to bust its unions: the @pinkerton company, who have spilled rivers of workers' blood in their murderous history):
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports-expose-spying-warehouse-workers-labor-union-environmental-groups-social-movements
9/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports-expose-spying-warehouse-workers-labor-union-environmental-groups-social-movements
9/
For important context on the drive, check out @tech_actions' article on the announcement, which explains why googlers have formed a "non-contract union" that does not yet have official recognition.
https://collectiveaction.tech/2021/the-abcs-of-googles-new-union/
10/
https://collectiveaction.tech/2021/the-abcs-of-googles-new-union/
10/
"Non-contract unions embody the idea that worker power does not come from legal processes, but rather through building power through solidarity."
eof/
eof/
