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Comment by dcre | Hacker News Reader

They are not trying to form a traditional majority union.

> unlike a traditional union, which demands that an employer come to the bargaining table to agree on a contract, the Alphabet Workers Union is a so-called minority union that represents a fraction of the company’s more than 260,000 full-time employees and contractors. Workers said it was primarily an effort to give structure and longevity to activism at Google, rather than to negotiate for a contract.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/technology/google-employe...

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This is a very important comment, not sure why it's not higher. This isn't really a union in the traditional sense - it's just a group of hyper liberal Google activist employees who are banding together to try to get institutional change.

"hyper liberal" you say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In societies that are not America, unions are traditionally left of center but most definitely still more or less in the center.

It seems that political discussions relating to the US don't have the appropriate vocabulary to discuss political opinions that are positioned to the left of the corporate wing of the Democratic party.

Even among unions, the tone and political messaging from the AWU is particularly left. It's obvious if you contrast the AWU's stated principles and values with a more traditional union.

I think the OP meant liberal in the sense that activism at Google tends to be for liberal causes

no its not. these activists are leftists, not liberals, which is what the parent was trying to point out.

liberalism is not a far left ideology, it is actually pretty centrist. "Hyper-liberal" is more synonymous to libertarian than it is to what these google activists are.

America has a stunted perception of political ideology. This is pretty apparent when you observe far right pundits and politicians refer to democrats as "far left" when the majority are actually right of center and would be considered conservative in most european countries or even by the democratic party of 20 years ago.

This is a good comment. As someone with liberal tendencies it bugs me to see it conflates with leftist politics

Sounds like exactly the type of stuff Coinbase was wise enough to smother recently.

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