We’re Google Workers, and We Are Forming a Union
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
While a union that represents workers interests is a good thing, I think it would be dangerous to give even a part of google to people with ideological fervor. If, for instance, this group actually wants to and succeeds in turning google into a tool of the cancel culture, things will get ugly soon.
Now that leaves me wondering if it is wise to leave this comment here...
edit:
Just an example from the mission statement:
> We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
What this means is, not all google workers will be treated equally by this union. "Victims", i.e., persons will be ordered by their "oppression status" and gain preferential treatment. Now it will probably be fun to watch the details in this valuation process (e.g., "is a woman more victim than a black (disabled) male?"), but this inherent categorization of human beings into more and less worth is ugly as hell.
By the tone of that article, I would not even be surprised if white males don't get to vote in that union or are excluded from influential positions.
Nothing pisses off a company more than workers organizing, so take whatever help you can get.
Check out how the collective bargaining agreement works with the NBA Player’s union and NBA. They get pretty fair terms, led by Chris Paul/LeBron James (who have it the best but they lead the union).
https://cosmic-s3.imgix.net/3c7a0a50-8e11-11e9-875d-3d44e94a...
^^ I can promise you the list of things negotiated in that could never be done well enough by the company itself. Oh, and that’s a union for multi millionaires.
You might want to think about the balance of the system. Are you actually choosing to work for them instead of the system making it look like they are the best job? Could it be better with some re-balancing?
Maybe ask them yourself and get involved?
Good point. Traditionally white men are massively underrepresented and we should be making more of an effort to make sure they're represented at every level of tech. /s
/s
Except, that isn't what happens right now. Most people aren't intending to make decisions based on skin colour, yet it happens.
Perhaps Google already is a tool of the cancel culture (cue the X-files intro music)?
This isn't an argument...
I mean, that's pretty much exactly what fervour means? We'd never say "Joe is a fervent supporter of X!" if Joe never talked about X.
> Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes. We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
For my eyes, that is absolutely dripping with progressive ideology. If I am going a union I want it to be non-political. This seems more like a progressive advocating group than a software workers guild. Count me out.
> Now that leaves me wondering if it is wise to leave this comment here...
Oh how high minded of you.
Trade union membership and ideological politics are intertwined. This is a good thing and by design.
Maybe you're making a distinction between party politics (e.g. endorsing specific candidates) and pushing for general policies, but I think it's incoherent to claim that labor unions are apolitical.
It's just not all that common.
Aligning to a party can be argued, I'd say it's best to break things up into policies more than "teams" but still.
BALPA is more comparable to a potential Google union as it's equally representing a tiny group of elite and extremely well compensated individuals. I don't think that a google employee has much in common with traditional populations of leftist party aligned unions like the factory line worker or coal miner.
> I don't think that a google employee has much in common with traditional populations of leftist party aligned unions like the factory line worker or coal miner.
Not right now, sure. But the fact that this group felt the need to unionize suggests that something is changing.
"Don't be evil".
(Of course, that ended up being the opposite of ideological fervor, being both ill-defined and tepid)
It's also quite remarkable that people regard being "cancelled" (complained about on the internet) as more serious than fired, which comes with actual costs.
You are completely misrepresenting what being "cancelled" means to a lot of the people it happens to. It can mean the public causing them to be fired from their job, prevented from finding another job, disconnected from both social and other contacts. Cancelling someone isn't just complaining about them; it's commonly putting for effort to ruin their life.
I expect it to fail simply because the ideological tone will turn off most people.
This union seems less focused on that and more on pushing sociopolitical ideas currently in vogue in left-wing political circles.
The idea is that collective bargaining can equalize the salaries, work conditions, etc. for all members, not just the pale-skinned ones.
Nominally but it just isn't so. The strongest bargain an employee has is a competitor. What makes G salaries high is that there are other companies competing for the same talent.
The fundamental way unions increase wages is by constricting supply: by being part of the hiring process and blocking people, or by putting conditions that make people that would otherwise be eligible to work. In the end unions end up being very ineffective, and their administration cost ends up not worth it, thus the only way to get any leverage is with the law.
If unions had their way, it would be illegal to drive a lyft. Whoops, that happened. If I were a Union rep in a tech company, the first thing I would do is kick out immigrants. Easiest way to increase wages for (remaining) tech workers.
The best a union can achieve is being irrelevant. It will surprise me how obvious it is in the populace that if companies all agree on something it is a terrible monopoly but if all workers agree on something it is liberating. The mechanics of anti-competition are always the same, even if different markets produce different results.
If i understand correctly your point (and to paraphrase), unions are not setting the correct priorities between work condition and more general sociopolitical ideas. For me this is a good new : It mean works conditions are not that bad and that union want not just to take care of personal interest but of company interests as well. But this is a ideological stand point :)
And some may argue that's not the role of unions. But the role of union is to carry the worker voices. If this is the subjects workers want to talk about, i don't see any issue. If it's not, the union will just not meet enough workers to join them.
On a practical level, a union that concentrates just on its members interests, is not able to concentrate on its members interests. Just as one person can be crushed by a company, a union at one company can be crushed by an industry. The UAW organized GM, then Chrysler then Ford (one of the weapon carrying workers in the GM strike was Larry Page's grandfather). This kind of thing is necessary for the survival of one union. If FedEx is not unionized (it is not), that weakens the union at UPS.
The AI researcher said there were racist aspects of Google AI, IIRC. Whatever the specifics of that case, unions do not prosper over the long run with a racial divide. There are numerous cases of jobs traditionally done by black men replaced by white scabs, or vice versa. It is why Bernie Sanders wants less immigration, despite the disapproval of upper middle class liberals to his right - too many unassimilated Latin American workers can be played against native workers in a divide and rule sense.
The first thing they would do if they have any power is kick out immigrants.
It's expected but annoying that they'd advertise this. We've already seen that googlers' voiced ethics aren't humanitarian, just against the things bad enough to make them personally uncomfortable. And a union is explicitly for the benefit of it's members, not humanity writ large.
They're going to continue happily building the world's largest private surveillance system. The most honest googlers I know are the ones that will admit they're just there for the money and have real issues with google's dealings. I doubt we'll get that level of candor from their union. The union will be for everything that makes money but doesn't get google bad publicity (just like google itself).
It takes an expert to write great code, but it takes a hacker to organize entire groups of people. These folks are hackers in every sense. Bravo!
I think we may have a very different definition of the word "hacker". Yours is very likely incorrect.
For example, could a union stop the payout of that high-level exec that was eventually shown the door for harrasment with a good bonus?
After that, they are also mostly like various subscriptions that you forget you have, as memberships require pay. In this beautiful part of the world you would even sometimes pressured to pay and join as if you're not a union member can have consequences that are unwanted.
This is to address the free rider problem inherent in unions. How do you ensure workers who get the benefits also share in the costs/work - especially when management are trying to encourage free riders?
Pretty much all free rider problems are dealt with with the group pressuring the free rider in some way.
No. Unions protect workers, not the business.
> In this beautiful part of the world you would even sometimes pressured to pay and join as if you're not a union member can have consequences that are unwanted.
Are you a citizen of your nation and do you pay taxes? Just as a nation protects its citizens in exchange for taxes, a union protects its members in exchange for dues. Everyone has to participate for the system to reasonably work.
To protect the workers, they also have to protect the jobs, which means they have to also protect the company.
Finding the right balance there is tough and one of the greatest challenges.
It doesn't neccissarily have to keep all mining companies alive, but if it would consolidate into a single mining company with (initially) good conditions it can't be in the union's interest as then all mining employment power is in one place.
They have to find the right balance.
Yes. As unions represent workers and carry barganing power, they ask (or demand) companies to change their policies around all sort of topics.
For example, tech workers can push for ethical considerations around AI/ML, or to stay out of military contracts especially around weapons, cut the bonuses to questionable execs...
Clearly unacceptable, time to unionize to get things back to a more righteous state.
/s
Sorry to say so, but it has always been a moral failure to work in the surveillance industry.
I do wish Google all the best however. They have handled their very privileged workers very poorly and may pay for it.