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Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

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Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#41

Post by netcan »

rocqua wrote: post #12

What has made google look at the facts and think this is the right way to proceed? Do they think this won't blow up? Do they fear unions so much that this is worth the bad PR? Or is this just a corporate process that no-one took a big picture view on? Because from where I am standing, this just seems like a dumb move.

Who knows, but plausibly, yes.

The game, as I understand it,^ is a "yes or no" game. Either Google unionisers get a union or they don't. If they do, what that means will be be worked out later.

So yes, Google plausibly don't want a union (or a big union discussion) enough to take chances with bad PR, or labour court. Totally different scales of threat.

^not well.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#42

Post by dabbernaught420 »

erlag wrote: post #19

Seems there is still hope for Google. Few more actions like that and maybe they will start behaving like a company and not like an ideological echo chamber.

Did you ever really think that they'd let ideology get in the way of profit?

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#43

Post by intarga »

Sangama34 wrote: post #40

This move is laudable. Google is a great employer, perhaps one of the best on planet earth. If anyone is trying to form a labour union with special powers to disrupt normal work these people must be seen as real evil scums.

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm...

If it's not, consider this: If an employer really is fair and unexploitative to their employees, the employees have nothing to gain by unionising.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#44

Post by pas »

netcan wrote: post #36

Currently, with the way labour organising works... it seems to either go nowhere, or go into a (belligerent) dichotomy. Professional organizers themselves often see it as an entirely dichotomous, zero-sum game, an inevitable conflict between opposite interests. Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for >20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish secto…

Labor should try to change regulation/policy to better help people live while trying to find a new job and/or simply unemployed. Forcing companies to employ someone they don't want is not a winning strategy on the long term. (Though worrying about poor poor companies is a bit premature considering how abysmal worker protections are in the US.)

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#45

Post by netcan »

netcan wrote: post #36

Currently, with the way labour organising works... it seems to either go nowhere, or go into a (belligerent) dichotomy. Professional organizers themselves often see it as an entirely dichotomous, zero-sum game, an inevitable conflict between opposite interests. Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for >20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish secto…

Just to put some practical meat on it... salaries.

Iirc, unions typically insist on a strict payscale/structure combining legible factors like seniority, position, etc. Would they want this.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#46

Post by duncanawoods »

thundergolfer wrote: post #17
m4r35n357 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Is the SA acronym that commonly known? I had to search it, and for those also not in the know it's the Sturmabteilung, more commonly known as Storm Troopers. Also I'm pro-union and not averse to laying out links between fascism and corporate capitalism, but I think you'd need to add a bit more argument here beyond 'the Nazis also did this so it's definitely bad'.

Yes? It's mentioned in most "rise of Nazis" documentary of which there are 1000s and everyone has seen a few. I'd consider most educated people to know it. More than SD, less than SS.

It's fair to say that union busting was a specific part of the brown-shirt agenda but beyond that it's probably not a very useful historical analogy. There was a much more direct link between worker organisations and nascent revolutionary socialism. IMHO Nazi antipathy to unions was more about political competition than preventing increased worker's rights.

It would be more analagous if it was a republican allied political group working to disrupt unions because they were organising to support democrats.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#47

Post by Ensorceled »

netcan wrote: post #36

Currently, with the way labour organising works... it seems to either go nowhere, or go into a (belligerent) dichotomy. Professional organizers themselves often see it as an entirely dichotomous, zero-sum game, an inevitable conflict between opposite interests. Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for >20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish secto…

Google, I’m also not sure, from the outside things seem pretty good for employees. We can see the union end game and how it would work for the minimum wage Amazon warehouse workers who had to fight about not being paid for the 30 minute security screening so these are entirely different.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#48

Post by blankety445566 »

Xoogler. Several people who were involved in organizing protests have also quit over the past year or so, after posting stories of the retaliation they faced, including being reassigned, getting bad performance reviews and such.

I jumped ship for these kinds of reasons, but looking ahead a couple years. You simply cannot scale culture, especially when culture that prevents it from going full balls-to-the-wall profit. Google is growing at such a rate that it surpassed organic trajectory; it's discarding and digesting its own culture as it swallows up the tech industry and doubles down on surveillance. The technical capabilities of the panopticon it has already built should be the subject of (world) government oversight. Sadly, tech giants have outpaced democracy's ability to recognize and rein in threats to human freedom.

Google's play to be everyone's digital assistant should be recognized for what it nakedly is: a play to absolutely dominate every single person's life and sell those lives to the highest bidder.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#49

Post by mc32 »

You don’t get to organize and sabotage billions of dollars of revenues and get to keep your job.

Google set up this attitude they fostered that worked in attracting talent and productivity. It worked for a time to improve internal issues. But as it creeps and threatens the corporation itself, it cannot continue for management.

But as history has borne out, you have to know when to regain control. It’s the struggle of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, PLA and red guards.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#50

Post by HelloNurse »

dataduck wrote: post #27

There has been quite a lot of noise on HN about this, and many of the other posts have disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to stop the whole front page getting swamped by this story. You can find the other links here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal... I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fir…

Private political agendas? Who are they, the oxymoron party?
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