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A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

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Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#201

Post by SiempreViernes »

rdgthree wrote: post #94

It seems incredibly significant that only 230 people are officially involved with these plans to unionize. As of 2019, Google had nearly 120,000 employees.[0] That seems quite small, relatively speaking. Legally (I think, just learning about this now), to form a union, a majority of workers must show their willingness to form a union. Alternatively, to choose an existing union to join, an election with 30% of the wor…

It's significant in the sense that it shows google's sucesses in been fighting attempts to unionise. In addition for straight up prohibiting employees to gather in larger groups (no more than 100 per event or 10 rooms at once) they've been reading employee communications and firing people: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/google-spied-on-employees-il...

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#202

Post by chrisseaton »

maxehmookau wrote: post #160

Before US-based workers jump on this and start talking about how unions are a bad thing in general, remember to look to Europe. Trade unions are a huge part of the workforce culture here and are mostly a force for good.

In the UK we hear horror stories about French unions going so far as to literally kidnap management and hold them hostage, and in one case strip them naked and assault them with bed pans (?!).

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#203

Post by SiempreViernes »

dathinab wrote: post #189
rdgthree wrote: post #94

It seems incredibly significant that only 230 people are officially involved with these plans to unionize. As of 2019, Google had nearly 120,000 employees.[0] That seems quite small, relatively speaking. Legally (I think, just learning about this now), to form a union, a majority of workers must show their willingness to form a union. Alternatively, to choose an existing union to join, an election with 30% of the wor…

Due to all kinds of reasons people tend to not wanting to be officially associated with an budding union until it becomes reality. I mean you can guess which 230 people are more likely to lose their job, then they had been before (if the union fails). (I don't mean Google will target them, but that if Google considers letting them go for whatever other reason it's now more likely that they will let them go.)

Historically Google has targeted people that advocate for unions.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#204

Post by dubcanada »

It seems that Hacker News is rather anti union. I am not sure I fully understand what peoples opposition towards a union is.

I've honestly never heard of a negative thing about unions beyond silly unproven things like "unions don't innovate" or other nonsense.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#205

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mondoshawan wrote: post #195
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason for this may be because Google in fact pushed the NLRB to disallow organizing activity on internal emails! https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028033/google-labor-bo...

Aha! Wasn't aware of this rule change. Wonder how they'll garner the votes they need to fully form the union without internal rabblerousing digitally, and with offices being closed. Is it legal for a union to use employee info directories to contact employees outside of corp comms?

I've rarely found an employee directory that would contain people's personal email addresses. They might be stuck with calling people on the phone or something.

Which might be for the best: Google controls probably nearly every employee's personal email address too!

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#206

Post by x87678r »

sz4kerto wrote: post #173

One difficulty I see with the mission statement ( https://alphabetworkersunion.org/principles/mission-statemen... ) is that it is very broad, and contains a lot of progressive values that are likely not as widely shared as the authors might expect. One might or might not agree with these values, but it is going to be significantly harder to start steering the company's product direction and social responsibility effo…

Yeah that doesn't look like any union I've ever seen.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#207

Post by short_sells_poo »

avianlyric wrote: post #138
karl11 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees can ask for better, but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. There are very few perils of leaving Google - a top tier company in an industry t…

> I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. You're entitled to as much as you can negotiate. Isn't this a founding principle of capitalism? If collective bargaining allows employees to negotiate more, then shouldn't they negotiate more?

This is exactly the point, I really don't know what is the parent arguing for here. Companies try to maximize the profit they can extract from employees. Why does parent try to paint employees doing the same in a negative light? We see that big corporations will not shy away from outright law breaking behavior if the payoff is likely to be greater than the fine. When the employees exercise wholly lawful means to maximize their payoff that somehow becomes icky?

This mindset in the US that workforce empowerment is bad has to stop. It feels like the middle class in the US is fighting ferociously alongside the mega-corporations in obliterating the middle class. Corporations are not your friends. The C-suite at corporations, and the shareholders are not your friends. They are not enemies, but because they are more like an amoral hivemind than a single benevolent entity, they'll naturally gravitate towards maximizing their payoff, even if this is at the expense of the workforce. Again, I'm not saying there is outright malice there, it's just the natural optimum state for the a group of entities who currently hold most of the power.

The US is basically a feudal society in everything but the name. If the Google employees manage to get traction and their efforts spread to the other parts of the industry, and perhaps even other industries, and the balance of power tips even just slightly back towards equality, that's already a win in my book.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#208

Post by e40 »

appleflaxen wrote: post #153
karl11 wrote: post #60

Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unionizing at Goo…

You list teachers, who in my opinion are the poster children of how problematic unions are. And there are some phenomenal teachers out there. There are teachers that change lives profoundly. But they don't need the unions, and the terrible teachers who should be fired /are/ protected. It's really messed up, most people have first-hand experience with it, and they are a corrosive factor in the end.

This is the elephant in the room. Unions make it much harder to fire low performers. I think they have great benefits, but this terrible side effect.

For another example look at police unions.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#210

Post by frewsxcv »

kenhwang wrote: post #74
bitcharmer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question as I don't know that industry at all. How does being a member of a union imply more experience?

The unions (edit: film industry) require a certain amount of work experience to join and some have different levels of membership depending on how much work you do after joining. Because everyone prefers union workers, it creates a situation where the non-union worker has to get noticed somehow (nepotism or exceptional work) to convince someone to take a risk and hire them to earn enough work to gain union membership…

> The unions require a certain amount of work experience to join and some have different levels of membership depending on how much work you do after joining.

To users who are following along who aren't familiar, this is not how all unions works. Presumably the commenter is talking about "trade unions" which is one of many types of unions.

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