Posts tagged Google
White Collar Workers Are Considering Unionizing as Their Jobs Are Threatened
October 23, 2025 // The scenario was recently explored in a Washington Post article titled “The future of white-collar work may be unionized,” which noted “(l)aw firms, banks and tech companies are seeing an uptick in employees choosing to organize.” Interestingly, the paper didn’t mention that its own tech workers overwhelmingly voted to form a union earlier this year, despite management efforts to prevent them. Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has for years battled to stop the online marketplace’s employees from doing the same. In any case, it was probably no coincidence that the Post’s IT workers led the push to organize. Employees at Alphabet, Microsoft, Kickstarter, and other tech companies began organizing as far back as 2020 to gain better leverage against what they considered heavy-handed management decisions.
The future of white-collar work may be unionized
October 10, 2025 // “The way layoffs happened at Google, where it wasn’t clear what the reason for people getting laid off was, definitely created a sense of job insecurity and mistrust,” says Parul Koul, a software engineer at Google and president of the Alphabet Workers Union. Another driver has been artificial intelligence threatening to replace entry-level knowledge work. Few white-collar industries epitomize the challenge of integrating AI into workflows more than the practice of law. While many legal experts say AI will have a transformative impact by automating repetitive research tasks, some also fear it will dilute entry-level associate roles at law firms.
Why Chicago Teachers Union’s $7.3B tax hike will hurt all of Illinois
May 18, 2025 // The Illinois Revenue Alliance, a group which includes the Chicago Teachers Union, has released a proposal to impose nine tax increases and hike statewide taxes by $7.3 billion annually. Some of CTU’s ideas are likely illegal and tax all Illinoisans for the union’s excesses. The Chicago Teachers Union has released a new proposal that calls for nine new tax hikes that would increase statewide taxes by $7.3 billion.
Darn good policy’ George Leef on Right to Work and Rethinking Higher Education
April 20, 2025 // While acknowledging some setbacks — “Michigan being key among them” — Leef remains optimistic. “Union membership keeps shrinking. The union clout, I think, is less than it used to be,” he attests. Leef attributes this to a growing awareness among workers that, “unions don’t always represent the people they claim to; they’re oftentimes lining their own pockets.” Leef argues that labor relations were healthier before federal interference. “In our early history, people could sign up if they wanted to, or they were free to not sign up… Then the federal government stepped in and insisted that unions had some special right to represent workers,” he says.
Gavin Newsom Wants to Curb a Labor Law That Cost Businesses $10 Billion
June 12, 2024 // Newsom’s office has brought together the state’s powerful California Chamber of Commerce with the California Labor Federation to hash out a compromise over the Private Attorneys General Act, or PAGA, people familiar with the negotiations said. The law has cost big and small businesses $10 billion over the past ten years, according to one study, and is viewed by labor advocates as a model of worker protection.The negotiators are in a race against time: June 27 is the deadline to strike a measure from Californians’ November ballot that would give voters the opportunity to repeal the law. The Chamber of Commerce is negotiating on behalf of a broad alliance, which includes the billionaire owner of the Wonderful Company, Stewart Resnick, car dealership owners, Walmart and McDonald’s Corp., along with small businesses across the state. The business coalition committed more than $31 million to entities backing the ballot measure, including the signature-gathering effort and an advertising blitz.
Union members sound alarm after Google fires key workers
June 12, 2024 // “As members of the LIS team, these workers are responsible for handling and responding to requests for user data made by law enforcement, the courts, and members of the public, as well as creating and operationalizing the programs and policies that safeguard user data and maintain compliance with Google’s legal obligations,” the Alphabet Workers Union wrote in a May 24 statement. Since Bloomberg published a September 2023 report revealing law enforcement officials often use search warrants to gain access to Google’s location and search data made by individuals involved in “nonviolent cases” (and those who had no involvement in the crime they are investigating), Google has appeared to further distance itself from withholding that sensitive information. This may explain Google's decision to shrink the Legal Investigations Support team.
Op-ed: Diversity, equity, and exclusion: How the NLRB’s double standard on job-related speech hurts workers
March 22, 2024 // The NLRB in 2020 required Amazon to reinstate a male worker who had used a bullhorn to call a female colleague a “gutter bitch” and “crack ho,” among other misogynistic insults. The bullhorn-wielding worker had been engaged in a one-man union protest when the female co-worker told him to quiet down. The union activist replied with a string of insults that would be clear proof of a hostile workplace under any other circumstances. The NLRB nevertheless sided with the union activist, as it usually has in such situations. The board has long believed that allowances must be made for heated rhetoric when workers are engaged union-related activities. So, you cannot question a workplace diversity policy publicly at work and you cannot criticize the policy outside of work in the private-yet-public world of social media. Either one can get you fired for creating a hostile work environment. But a male worker can be openly hostile and insulting to female co-workers if the man is affiliated with a union.
Workers in the game industry turn to unions for protection from rampant layoffs
March 21, 2024 // Jessica Gonzalez, a longtime quality assurance (QA) worker in the games industry and a labor organizer with CODE-CWA, said unionizing can also help workers negotiate more “ethical layoffs” if their roles are being cut from the company. This entails negotiating protections such as extended health care coverage and severance pay, benefits she noted are not always honored by companies dealing with non-union employees.
Google’s Layoffs Labeled ‘Needless’ By Union as Hundreds of Employees Lose Jobs in Fresh Cuts
January 12, 2024 // The Alphabet Workers Union responded to the layoffs on X, saying: “Tonight, Google began another round of needless layoffs. Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter. We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!” In response, a Google spokesperson told TIME via email: “We’re responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead. To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities.”