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Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

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Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#131

Post by ergothus »

kodablah wrote: post #116
ergothus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rephrasing from my original comment: Because Google worried about a very supply-limited audience (tech workers, including related non-programmers). Most fields, the ones paying their employees far less and with far fewer perks, don't share that restraint. If these other fields had their current crop of (non-unionized) workers get disgusted, the companies would just get different employees. There's no shortage of comp…

So, would you say it is particularly repeatable in this industry? I.e. that while those other industries need unions due to lack of leverage, this one may be different? (of course one instance is too small of a sample size to support either direction on its own)

I'm hardly qualified to have anything but the most grossly informed of opinions, but yeah, I'd expect that in the current environment most tech-area (i.e. Seattle, SF, etc) devs can and should demand improvements and be able to get them without requiring unions (which is not the same as saying unions aren't needed. Look to games dev for examples).

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#132

Post by knopyPusher »

defen wrote: post #49
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Wow, you mean collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? Who knew? :-) I'm really glad to hear that Google made this step, now if they would drop the overly expansive ownership claim in their employment agreement and the right to surveillance on personal property it would be a much more employee friendly place. I also hope that it gives them an edge in hiring which wou…

> the right to surveillance on personal property Wait, what? I don't think I've seen that before, what does this mean exactly?

I work in Google as well, and I simply don't check my personal Gmail from work machines. They can monitor my work laptop as much as they want.

This is coming from a firefox-using privacy paranoid Googler.

I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#133

Post by ilaksh »

throwaway987988 wrote: post #126
defen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the right to surveillance on personal property Wait, what? I don't think I've seen that before, what does this mean exactly?

Yeah, this is real. On a throwaway for obvious reasons, but this is from an employment contract I've seen in the past: "I acknowledge that I have no reasonable expectation of privacy in any computer, technology system, email, handheld device, telephone, or documents that are used to conduct the business of the Company. As such, the Company has the right to audit and search all such items and systems, without further…

I had a contract with something like that in it. I told him "this says you can spy on my computer" and he was quite surprised. He had received the document from a lawyer and truly had no idea it was in there. So when I told him we had to remove the section there was no problem.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#134

Post by walshemj »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #84
defen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the right to surveillance on personal property Wait, what? I don't think I've seen that before, what does this mean exactly?

Well, I can't quote my copy as I'm under NDA from sharing it, however if you have a copy that you signed then carefully read the section about "equipment that you use to access your google work account".

You mean the companies equipment - that's fairly normal I have worked for companies that recognised unions in the UK and that clause never raised any issues.

There where agreements about what sort of offence justified monitoring at work it had to be a serious offence for example.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#135

Post by walshemj »

m0zg wrote: post #83
JohnFen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not sign something like that contract today. I've been seeing wording to that effect in nearly every contract I've been presented with for years now. Every time, I speak up and suggest replacing it with wording that is much more restrictive (they can own anything I make using their resources or intellectual property, otherwise I own it). I have yet to have a company not agree to this change.

Google will flat out refuse. In their view they own the entirety of your intellectual output for the duration, whether or not it's done on your own time and resources, and whether or not it's in any way related to your day job. I mean I get it (sort of), early on there wasn't really any "moat" to protect the business, so they had to put shit like this in their contracts lest someone goes off and upends their entire b…

I doubt that non related work would actually be enforceable

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#136

Post by sn41 »

danans wrote: post #95
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Wow, you mean collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? Who knew? :-) I'm really glad to hear that Google made this step, now if they would drop the overly expansive ownership claim in their employment agreement and the right to surveillance on personal property it would be a much more employee friendly place. I also hope that it gives them an edge in hiring which wou…

> Wow, you mean collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? Who knew? :-) I think part of the problem is that we non-organized workers (i.e. most tech workers and our similar peers) have accepted the unfortunate media-fueled trope that collective worker action equates to organized-crime connected unions like those of the Hoffa-period Teamsters. Unfortunately, many white…

Also, tech workers willingly buy into a very harsh libertarian ideology. It is hard to accept that as an employee in a company, we are more likely the blue-collar Joe Six-Packs, not the John Galts.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#137

Post by Animats »

It may also be because forced arbitration backfired on Google when they went after Anthony Levandowski. They claimed he took Waymo's trade secrets and went to Uber. But they can't sue him. They can only go to arbitration. And that's over and settled. They can only sue Uber.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#138

Post by phamilton »

danans wrote: post #95
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Wow, you mean collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? Who knew? :-) I'm really glad to hear that Google made this step, now if they would drop the overly expansive ownership claim in their employment agreement and the right to surveillance on personal property it would be a much more employee friendly place. I also hope that it gives them an edge in hiring which wou…

> Wow, you mean collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? Who knew? :-) I think part of the problem is that we non-organized workers (i.e. most tech workers and our similar peers) have accepted the unfortunate media-fueled trope that collective worker action equates to organized-crime connected unions like those of the Hoffa-period Teamsters. Unfortunately, many white…

You ignore the non-union organizations that also protect their own. ABA, AMA, etc. control the supply of doctors/lawyers and accomplish the same end result as unions: higher wages and less competition.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#139

Post by Symmetry »

JohnFen wrote: post #68
Symmetry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Averaged across distinct contracts (as opposed to contract-instances) forced arbitration is a very good thing. If Google and Microsoft get into a dispute about the meaning of some agreement they signed they it's far better that they get some third party to quickly resolve the issue than that they have to spend years and millions of dollars in legal fees fighting it out in the courts. It's only when these agreements a…

> Averaged across distinct contracts (as opposed to contract-instances) forced arbitration is a very good thing. Forced arbitration is a very good thing for the employers. It's not a good thing for the employees, who are effectively signing away a huge swath of rights.

Employers generally use the same contract for all their employees so employer/employee forced arbitration contracts are only a minority of contracts. If a contract is between two corporations each with their own lawyers to review the contract that giving up of their rights to sue each other is actually a good thing. But that depends on the arbitrator being acceptable to each and desiring repeat business from each. It's the employer/employee situation where only one side has lawyers involved in selecting the arbitrator that the situation becomes abusive.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#140

Post by mjg59 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Wow, you mean collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? Who knew? :-) I'm really glad to hear that Google made this step, now if they would drop the overly expansive ownership claim in their employment agreement and the right to surveillance on personal property it would be a much more employee friendly place. I also hope that it gives them an edge in hiring which wou…

> overly expansive ownership claim

If any Google employees in California are potentially interested in doing something about this, contact me at mjg59@srcf.ucam.org.

(Google employee, not involved in anything to do with employment contracts)

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