In USA, unions mostly represent blue-collar workers who tend to elect low-quality union leaders. A union at Google could end up with better leaders than the company itself.
I expect a Google union to force me to go to some sensitivity training instead of fighting for wages (which to be honest are pretty high as they are). So would it be about workplace safety? Probably not. Military projects? My deepest sympathy to everyone that is critical here, but maybe not really a classical union topic to be honest.
I guess Google also employs low wage workers for some tasks. Maybe they could use a union the most.
A Google union would probably focus on problems that affect most employees:
- Employee compensation (perf) is decided in secret by managers. There is no transparency and therefore no accountability. Getting rewarded for effort is unnecessarily stressful. Some managers are bad and exploit their team members. The lack of accountability creates dysfunction across the entire organization: Google managers reward people for completing projects that make the managers look good on paper. Nobody checks that the projects meet needs for users. The managers do not align incentives with shareholders (long-term profitability), customers, users, or the rest of society. This is the root cause of Google's dysfunction. Many employees feel dissatisfaction with it, even if they don't talk about it.
- The noisy & crowded workspaces. This is a direct result of the first problem of mis-aligned incentives. The office management division (REWS) is not incentivized to make Google offices actually meet the needs of workers.
- Most Google jobs are located in an area with extremely high cost of living and terrible commutes.
I agree on the noisy work spaces. That could be a union issue indeed. Maybe the problem of living costs too, but this has probably numerous reasons and it would be difficult to get everyone behind a common position.
Everyone has biases and it is okay to have some for that matter.
It's a lot harder to get behind unions when they can't really be very strong.
For white collar equivalents with bad unions, consider the teachers unions, and the constant fight over tenure and charter schools. Or the American Medical Association and their successful constriction of supply in the world's most overpriced Healthcare environment.