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As big tech companies have become more entrenched in our lives, the rise of remote work has made their employees more disposable. So it’s no surprise that the pandemic has catalysed new efforts to unionise tech workers. Last week, a group of Google employees announced the formation of an Alphabet Workers Union in partnership with the Communications Workers of America.
But instead of mobilising as most unions do for better pay, more benefits and better job security, this labour union hopes to seize the means of managerial decision-making. Unlike previous petitions and protests, the union at Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, will require a tangible commitment in the form of hefty membership dues. That’s a sacrifice it’s far from clear that many of the organisers’ colleagues are willing to pay.
“Why do we demand democracy from our government, then cede our individual power in our workplaces?†asks Raksha Muthukumar, a Google software engineer and union member.
Google frequently ranks near the top of Glassdoor’s annual list of best places to work (although it fell from #8 to #11 last year), with a hiring process even more exclusive than that of Ivy League admissions (over 99% of job applicants are rejected). Sure, there are plenty of reasons one might disagree with the company’s business practices, but there’s an easy solution to that problem — go work somewhere else. Google employees have a lot more career mobility than the steelworkers and coal miners
who organised unions during the industrial era.
That said, unions do have a long record of improving wages and conditions for the working class. And there is a tech worker contingent that suffers legitimate injustice with limited recourse: Contract workers. Google employs more than 130,000 temps, vendors, and contractors, a workforce that outnumbers the company’s 123,000 full-time employees. Many temp workers put in the same hours as full-time employees, but with none of the insurance, benefits or worker protections. Efforts to unionise temp workers in the tech industry were underway even before the pandemic. The Teamsters union already represents shuttle drivers for tech companies like Facebook, Apple and Google. In 2019, a group of Google contractors voted to join the United Steelworkers.
Full-time employees may also have a financial interest in organising to secure their own positions. As tech companies extend remote-work policies into late 2021, the coordination and knowledge-sharing benefits of on-site employment become irrelevant.
—Bloomberg