Seems to me that the organizers are using a union to push their own personal agendas (which they otherwise don't have the power to push) which seems like the perfect way to form a corrupt union that harms workers.
Here they are listed:
- All Alphabet workers deserve a voice
- Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes
- Everyone deserves a welcoming environment
- All aspects of our work should be transparent
- Our decisions are made democratically
- We prioritize society and the environment
- We stand in solidarity with workers and advocates everywhere
Full statement: https://alphabetworkersunion.org/principles/mission-statemen...
All in all, seems to be good values to want to have in a workplace, especially such a global and pervasive one as Google. If all of these things were pushed for and implemented in Google, you think that would harm the workers?
Here’s a statement from United Steelworkers, for comparison;
https://m.usw.org/union/our-founding-principles
Here’s the SAG mission statement;
https://www.sagaftra.org/about/mission-statement
The primary goal of a union is to ensure safe and secure working conditions, the best compensation and benefits, etc.;
> negotiating the best wages, working conditions, and health and pension benefits; preserving and expanding members’ work opportunities; vigorously enforcing our contracts; and protecting members against unauthorized use of their work.
The purpose of a labor union is traditionally not to set corporate direction / input into the creative process, to ensure “right-think” in the workplace, or for social justice campaigns.
USW were fighting for the abolition of child labor -- this is not a direct concern for Alphabet employees, thankfully. Actor's Equity Association were fighting against McCarthyism and blacklisting (which SAG participated in, and apologized for in 1997).
In particular, for the Alphabet union effort, I think their press release[0] is more concrete. I think the goals of increased workplace democracy, pressuring management to prevent pushing externalities, and preventing suppression and retaliation in the workplace are pretty relevant, and would be high on my list for a prospective union for tech workers.
Ironically, I think they would draw much more ire if they merely focused on analogous workplace/worklife comfort improvements, for Software Engineers at least, given their famed perks. Hopefully the union targets the Alphabet employees who really do need workplace/worklife improvements, mostly found in the non-full-time ranks.
[0] https://alphabetworkersunion.org/press/releases/2021-01-04-c...
No, that is the primary goal of the unions you are familiar with.
> trade union: An organization of workers in the same skilled occupation or related skilled occupations who act together to secure for all members favorable wages, hours, and other working conditions.
There is apparently a concept in trade unions called the "golden formulae";
> golden formulae a non-technical but convenient expression to describe the conditions required for a trade union to benefit from the limited immunities available to it under legislation. There must first be a trade dispute that relates wholly or mainly to matters such as terms and conditions of employment, sacking or suspension of workers, allocation of work, discipline, membership of a union, facilities for union officials or negotiating regime. The acts in question must be in contemplation of furtherance of the dispute.
So, for example, the legal benefits of a union may not confer to any possible activity a group of employees may conduct, but rather must pertain to specific aspects of their employment and relations to their employer.
US Federal labor law defines a trade union as;
> any organization of any kind, or any agency or employee representation committee or plan, in which employees participate and which exists for the purpose, in whole or in part, of dealing with employers concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment, or conditions of work.
I'm not saying that it's impossible for a collective of employees to organize around political rallying points, just that these actions are not generally recognized as the purpose of a trade union, and perhaps would not be legally protected in the same way.
For example, there are carve-outs to requiring employees to pay union dues which are not used for specific purposes;
> In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled (5–3) in Communications Workers v. Beck that private-sector workers who are not full union members cannot be forced to pay for the “social, charitable, and political” activities of unions. They can only be forced to pay the portion of dues used for “collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment.” Per the ruling, the federal law that requires compulsory unionism in certain situations does not provide the unions with a means for forcing employees, over their objection, to support political causes which they oppose.
To the extent that this "union" is more of a PAC than a collective bargaining agreement over labor contracts, the specific protections (like required payment of dues) melt away.
[1] - https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/trade+union
These days it's for race+gender-orientated demands.
I agree, but that's what we have to go on, as this effort just started. The opposite is naive as well, where you assume everyone always have hidden agendas. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
> For example, the line about "economic justice" almost certainly means the authors believe the company should be used as a propaganda vehicle for socialism/communism.
Well, yes and no. Yes, you can describe their economic justice value as socialistic, I don't think they are trying to hide that. Here's the full value:
> Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes. We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
Yes, sounds like socialism. Exactly what they are aiming to implement in the Google/Alphabet workplace. The people who sign up with the union, are people who agree they want to focus on fixing that particular problem. That's a strong point of unions in general, to align about common values.
Not sure how you get it to be a "Google should be used as a propaganda vehicle". The employees there want to improve their own workplace by implementing their ideas. Now they are calling for others (who agree) to join them. I don't have any skin in the game, so I'm fine either way. But I find the process of even trying this to be refreshing, no matter what their values and ultimately their impact will be.
Some of these statements are _actually_ controversial. (Without saying whether I personally agree with them or not -- I am saying that they are far from being universally accepted.)
Examples:
> All aspects of our work should be transparent, including the freedom to decline to work on projects that don’t align with our values.
Not sure how the company should approach this exactly. I'll bring up some extreme (and maybe stupid) examples. Let's say Google wants to monetize the Google search page even more, while employees working in the UX team disagree with this direction. Should Google be able to let them go (in case there's no other UX role in the company) or not?
> Our decisions are made democratically, not just by electing our leaders who set the agenda, but by actively and continuously listening to what workers believe is important.
This approach of corporate decision making practically doesn't exist anywhere, and there's not much proof that it'd work, so I consider this controversial.
> Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes. We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
Google had a massive impact on the world by creating the search engine and broadening access to information to people around the world. Should it have other social missions as well? What should those be? What happens if the company's core mission (organizing the world's information) becomes at odds with other social mission(s)?
Normally the leaders of the company are responsible for making decisions here.
> Everyone deserves a welcoming environment
I think this is something most people would agree with, if there weren't many examples of people abusing these policies.
> We prioritize society and the environment instead of maximizing profits at all costs. We can make money without doing evil.
Sure, no reason to not agree with this sentence. Question is: how is this actionable? Who is going to decide what's evil, what's worth it? By default the executives do, that's their job.
If you're remotely alarmed by what happened to James Damore, then you should be alarmed by a union that organizes itself around these sorts of values.
The language of these organizers triggers too many warnings in my head around being that kind of personality. No matter which side of the political spectrum they are on I try to not support these personalities.
Edit: My comment seems to have spawned replies to unrelated subjects so I'll repeat the question hopefully a bit more clear: What of the values proposed so far in the "Google Union", goes against modern conservative values in the US today?
For example, if one posts "All Lives Matter" on social media they could easily fall afoul of a "welcoming environment" provision.
You have exactly four replies and all but one of them answers your question directly, politely and respectfully.
> Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes. We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
Social justice is a progressive view normally running counter to the individual responsibly outlook favored by conservatives. Prioritizing the needs of the worst off could be supported by conservatism but they will probably define "worst" in a way conservatives find objectionable. As for "Neutrality never helps the victim" that runs counter to a lot of American conservative thought that rule of law and applying rules neutrally is a massive progress over previously biased systems. The implication of the statement is that they want to remove neutrality in certain circumstances for certain people which goes against the conservative view that all people should be treated equally.
Prioritizing the environment? Straight from the radical liberal left playbook. It means allowing my children die of hunger because I can’t find a job so a dolphin survives.
So if I understand what you're saying as a reply to my question, you mean that having "We prioritize society and the environment instead of maximizing profits at all costs" as a explicit value for the Google workplace, means that you'll end up without food for your child?
Not sure when/how dolphins became Google's business, but I might have missed something recently as I don't follow their every move.
I was super sarcastic because it’s not a view I share, but pretty common in the US. Heck, it’s similar to the coronavirus situation right now, we can’t stop the economy just to save people who are about to die anyway.
An eye opener for me is how water policy is impacting small farmers in the eastern part of California. Imagine spending 40 years building a business, and then being told that starting in 2021 you will have to pay 1M$ in fees to continue pumping water that you have legal rights to using your own infrastructure. It is literally taking peoples livelihoods without any compensation and eminent domain.
That's not really relevant, the union will focus on Google and it's workplace, not the US as a whole. Maybe in the future they'll have impact in US politics, but that's not how unions start out.
> likely by a non trivial percentage of Google workers
I guess that's why they announced this, to see how many agree with it. We already know by fact that Google try to prevent internal discussions about unions, hence the people wanting to unionize, have to communicate in other ways (press releases to reach more people).
> As such they are the personal values of the organizers
They might also be the personal value of the organizers, but the explicit goal of setting up a organization (or more specifically a union) is to setup an organization that reflects those views. Once the organization is setup, it's the organizations values, not their personal values.
Social justice is not justice
In a traditional sense, social justice is referring to the balance between the individual and society at large. Distribution of wealth, public services/schools, taxation, regulations of markets and more are part of what social justice is, at least in this part of the world.
That does sound like justice to me. It's not criminal justice, which you might be referring to, but more justice in the sense of "just behavior or treatment".
"Social justice" is an awkward term for an immensely important project, perhaps the most important project, which is to make the world a more equitable, fair, and compassionate place.
But the project for social justice has been captured by an elite strata of post-collegiate, digitally-enabled children of privilege, who do not pursue that project as an end, but rather use it as a means with which to compete, socially and professionally, with each other.
In that use, they value not speech or actions that actually result in a better world, but rather those that result in greater social reward, which in the digital world is obvious and explicit. That means that they prefer engagement that creates a) outrage and b) jokes, rather than engagement that leads to positive change.
In this disregard for actual political success, they reveal their own privilege, as it’s only the privileged who could ever have so little regard for actual, material progress. As long as they are allowed to co-opt the movement for social justice for their own personal aggrandizement, the world will not improve, not for women, people of color, gay and transgender people, or the poor.
Maybe this isn't the kind of "social justice" Google union activists are arriving for. But if that's the case the union activists should lay out specific goals, like establishing name-blind resume reviews, eliminating gender and racial quotas, or something else. Otherwise, my instinct is to lump their views into the same trend as the social justice activists I have encountered during my time working in tech which tends to be hostile to meritocracy and desires picking outcomes a priori.
To be clear, it's fine to be in favor of affirmation action as an individual and I often support it myself, but I definitely wouldn't want a union enforcing it and I could see why many people would be alienated by a union movement espousing it.
1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...
Social justice is an arbitrary judgment based on subjective examination of inputs. It's collectivism. Disregard for individuals.
This is a clear misunderstanding. We're talking about two different social justice's here. The social justice you're talking about is the current moral panic many feel in the US today. The social justice I'm (and hopefully the future union) talking about, is balancing society at large and the individuals. Not disregarding, balancing. That means that sometimes the individual has to have less of something and society more, and sometimes the other way around.
But maybe the word "social justice" in the US has been completely co-opted by TV politics, so us in the rest of the world now talk a different language...
I think these Google workers see their demands falling into this category..not saying I agree with every bullet, but it really doesn't seem that different to me.
edit: I don't think I've ever seen environmentalism come up as a desirable goal from proponents when people discussed tech unions. Pay, benefits, working conditions, abusive management and so on but environmentalism????