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We're Google Workers. And We're Forming a Union
DU thread in Latest Breaking News: Google employees form labor union in United States
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Source: New York Times
Alternate NYT headline: We're Google Workers. And We're Forming a Union
We Built Google. This Is Not the Company We Want to Work For.
Our company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” An organized work force will help us live up to it.
By Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw
Ms. Koul and Mr. Shaw are, respectively, the executive chair and the vice chair of the Alphabet Workers Union.
Jan. 4, 2021
On Nov. 1, 2018, at 11:10 a.m., some 20,000 Google employees, along with employees of Waymo, Verily and other Alphabet companies, stopped working and walked off the job in cities around the world. A week earlier, The New York Times reported that the company had paid tens of millions of dollars to two executives who had been accused of sexual misconduct toward our co-workers, staying silent about the alleged abuse and letting them walk away with no consequences.
People speaking at the protests that morning recounted their own experiences of harassment and discrimination at the company. In San Francisco, one woman held up a sign reading, “I reported and he got promoted.” Others read, “Happy to quit for $90 million, no sexual harassment required” and “Unfair workplaces create unfair platforms.”
We’d had enough.
The two of us are software engineers, and we were recently elected executive chair and vice chair of the Alphabet Workers Union, a group of more than 200 workers in the United States who believe our company’s structure needs to change.
For far too long, thousands of us at Google — and other subsidiaries of Alphabet, Google’s parent company — have had our workplace concerns dismissed by executives. Our bosses have collaborated with repressive governments around the world. They have developed artificial intelligence technology for use by the Department of Defense and profited from ads by a hate group. They have failed to make the changes necessary to meaningfully address our retention issues with people of color.
-snip-
Our company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” An organized work force will help us live up to it.
By Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw
Ms. Koul and Mr. Shaw are, respectively, the executive chair and the vice chair of the Alphabet Workers Union.
Jan. 4, 2021
On Nov. 1, 2018, at 11:10 a.m., some 20,000 Google employees, along with employees of Waymo, Verily and other Alphabet companies, stopped working and walked off the job in cities around the world. A week earlier, The New York Times reported that the company had paid tens of millions of dollars to two executives who had been accused of sexual misconduct toward our co-workers, staying silent about the alleged abuse and letting them walk away with no consequences.
People speaking at the protests that morning recounted their own experiences of harassment and discrimination at the company. In San Francisco, one woman held up a sign reading, “I reported and he got promoted.” Others read, “Happy to quit for $90 million, no sexual harassment required” and “Unfair workplaces create unfair platforms.”
We’d had enough.
The two of us are software engineers, and we were recently elected executive chair and vice chair of the Alphabet Workers Union, a group of more than 200 workers in the United States who believe our company’s structure needs to change.
For far too long, thousands of us at Google — and other subsidiaries of Alphabet, Google’s parent company — have had our workplace concerns dismissed by executives. Our bosses have collaborated with repressive governments around the world. They have developed artificial intelligence technology for use by the Department of Defense and profited from ads by a hate group. They have failed to make the changes necessary to meaningfully address our retention issues with people of color.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/opinion/google-union.html