Yes, it's effectively a PAC, not a union. Just like at Kickstarter where they were more concerned about people deemed 'conservative' not using the platform to promote comicbooks than anything related to work conditions.
A union shouldn't be telling their boss who they can or cannot work with, partner with or have as clients, it's plain insubordination especially when it has absolutely nothing to do with their own compensations or work conditions.
Obviously anybody can claim that employer B working with X or Y make their employees of class Z emotionally 'distressed' or 'unsafe'...
The irony/hypocrisy here is people claiming 'unions are political' when that thing at google is really just about being partisan, yet these people don't have the courage to call a PAC...a PAC, and hide behind the word 'union'.
I don't agree with that assessment. If Google employees have a strong opposition to working with, say, federal agencies to share data they've gathered on users, then I think it makes perfect sense for them bring that concern to the table.
Honestly, I don't see why a union shouldn't have the ability to bargain anything it wants to try and bargain. I'm open to someone changing my mind on that.
Edit: to clarify, letting the employees of a public corporation decide the direction/priorities would be like if the employees of a non-profit had a union which could force the non-profit to change from planting trees to something unrelated like washing dogs. The people who donated money would probably be upset that they were deceived about what the donation would be used to accomplish.
Money is not the only value here, so I don’t see why it has precedence over what other’s find valuable?
Yes, this is where negotiation between owners & the union comes in. Sometimes reality can disagree with a decision shareholders voted on and that is okay.
Who's forcing anyone? If the company doesn't want to play ball they are free to hire replacements when the workers strike. If the workers don't care enough to risk their jobs over it then their bluff has been called.
If the company does play ball and the shareholders don't like it they are free to elect a new board or sell their shares.
IANAL, but I did some research then, and my understanding is that the Supreme Court has ruled that to the extent that a union spends money on political activities, the dues they collect are no longer mandatory.
The point being that it’s not just a moot point whether they are actually a PAC. It is recognized in law that the purpose of a union is for collective bargaining in the workplace, and some of the special legal protections that a union holds (like mandatory dues and legal immunity) can fall away when the union is actually operating like a PAC.
A union is a PAC. It's a PAC that allows the workers to exercise some level of collective control over the business they create through their work. It's not just about bargaining for better pay or working conditions - that's a fabrication of the propaganda spread in the US as part of the effort to dismantle our labor movement.
If you look at the history of labor organizing, it's always been about power - whether power is held in the hands of those with capital, or whether it's shared with those who do the work.
A union can negotiate on whatever the workers want to negotiate.
Maybe I'm just being too cynical, but I can't help think this group is playing into the current trendiness of progressive issues, and some number of well-off Googlers are joining because ~$2000 a year is insignificant to them and they support the cause of unions in general even though they don't personally need any of the protections a typical union offers. Not to say this is necessarily a bad thing, non-profits need to market themselves somehow and if they accomplish positive change in Google's policies this way then great.
Your original figure of 0.5% was correct and your edit is wrong.
FTR: total employee number is 130k. 700/130000 = 0.054
When Amazon’s managers are Democrats you think any progress will get made on workers issues?
They probably could look at pay inequality though, if they get their members to disclose all of that to the union.
The biggest question will be whether or not the AWU gets large enough and chooses to use the power to strike. Basically the one power any union has, that individual members can't employ without simply being fired.
> The biggest question will be whether or not the AWU gets large enough and chooses to use the power to strike. Basically the one power any union has, that individual members can't employ without simply being fired.
That's not true, strictly speaking. A group of people could theoretically strike together without being members of a formally-recognized union. In practice, it's tough to coordinate that, and they may have a more difficult time actually enforcing those rights without a legal and financial structure of support, but it's not true that people have to be members of a union in order to engage in a strike.
The law unambiguously grants that power to workers acting in concert with each other, whether or not they are doing so with the formal backing of a union.
As a counterpoint, tens of thousands of Googlers staged a worldwide walkout two years ago. They were not unionized. They were protected by the same law that protects unionized workers when striking. When Google retaliated against four of those 20,000+ people, the NLRB launched a federal investigation, the same way the NLRB would if they had been unionized.
> Unless you're striking against a specific unfair labor practice, your employer has the right to simply replace you, and reinstate you only when a new job opening is available.
That's not quite true. If it happened exactly as you describe, that would be a pretty clear-cut wrongful termination lawsuit, and the NLRB would come down pretty hard on the employer.
I do agree that informal coordination can do much of the work a union would. You just have to convince the company that it'd be a huge headache to replace everyone, because the actual organization work (which those four investigations you describe were about) is unconditionally protected.
...Everyone who organized the workout was either fired or retaliated against anyways, since you know, Google doesn't care about workers rights or the law.
Whether or not Google does, the courts do. The NLRB determined that two of the four were illegally fired, and there is a hearing scheduled for April 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...
By questioning whether a group of employees really is a union, you are attempting to strip them of federal protection from retaliation.
The one thing that makes unions special imho is the focus on workplace issues in a specific industry or company. That is the area where a union also has legal protection. Anything else they do isn't necessarily protected, and I find it very odd that that "union" does everything _but_ the protected stuff.
Gardening clubs are clearly not political pressure groups. I recommend that you do some reading on the history of unions in the USA; it is written in blood.
Googlers suffered Apple's Techtopus salary-fixing collusion. In the USA, collective bargaining is an important component of breaking wage-fixing situations, and "labor union" is legal shorthand for such collective-bargaining groups.
Google routinely appropriates code from its employees using a Microsoft Clause, which reassigns employee-produced code to Google unless the employee can rigorously prove that Google had nothing whatsoever to do with the production of the code. Thousands of commits are appropriated every year, and there is an internal lawyer-driven process for automating the appropriation. Labor unions of artists have successfully attacked such practices in the USA before.
Google owns Youtube and Doubleclick, large advertising systems which both inspire great amounts of abuse and also themselves are abusive tools of user coercion. If Googlers wanted for Google employees to not damage their mental health by working in user moderation for hours on end, or wanted Google to be less of a part of our societal disinformation and spam problem by reforming advertising policies, then a union would be the natural place to start that argument.
It sounds like you've never worked at Google before. Just because Google does not threaten its employees with regular violence, does not mean that Google is a stellar employer above reproach and without need for redress.
Your overall attitude towards unions reminds me of a classic movie scene where disgruntled and confused folks wonder whether the Romans ever did anything for them. Here [0] is but one of many lists enumerating exactly what unions did for us.
[0] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/5/15/1092027/-Thanks-a...
History doesn't care about your frustration. If you're a member or affiliate of AWU or CWA and you feel like your membership has been appropriated, contact your representative and start a formal appeal for redress. Otherwise, your place in this discussion isn't to have feelings, but to learn some facts and context.
Collective bargaining for contracts (e.g. compensation) are only one possible role a union can play. It's the most common one in the US for legal and historical reasons, but it's not the only one permitted.
Incidentally, the structure of the AWU is actually much more similar to how unions operate in Europe, where unions are not required or expected to have exclusive representation over a bargaining unit, and therefore quite commonly focus on a range of issues, rather than centering mostly on collective bargaining for contracts.
The perception that "it's not a union if it only represents a small number of people" or "it's not a union if it doesn't engage in collective bargaining" is a very American perspective (and even then, a perception which is inconsistent with the actual rights granted under the NLRA to minority unions in the US).
This Google group can advocate for wheat ever it wants.
Perhaps the political issues were a better bang for the buck because they were easier to formulate and addressed the needs of the most fanatical base? Once they make any progress in that area (and a quick formulation of the demands is a sign of such progress), the momentum will continue to build.