GOOG Alphabet Inc

By Sarah E. Needleman 

A group of Google employees has formed a union to organize workers across the technology company's sprawling global operations, a rare move within Silicon Valley and one that reflects growing employee activism in the sector.

Representatives said the Alphabet Workers Union -- which is currently backed by around 200 workers, a tiny fraction of the tech company's more than 132,000 employees -- will be affiliated with Communications Workers of America Local 1400, and is the first one open to employees and contractors at any Alphabet Inc. company. The union will be supported by members paying 1% of their annual base pay and bonus every year, organizers said.

Google employees are among the best-paid workers in American corporations and enjoy ample perks. Median pay at Alphabet, whose operations include a range of internet businesses, was $258,708 in 2019, according to company filings.

Organizing efforts began over a year ago, part of a continuing tide of activism within Google. Members said the union's immediate goal isn't collective bargaining or formal recognition by Alphabet. The push instead reflects a need for employees to be able to speak out about the company without facing career repercussions, they said.

In 2018, thousands of employees staged a walkout to protest a workplace culture that they said promotes and protects perpetrators of sexual harassment. Employees had previously also criticized the company's work with the Defense Department and its plan to explore a censored search engine for Chinese citizens.

The employee group also said Google has retaliated against employees critical of the company and done little to address complaints of discrimination and harassment. The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint last month alleging Google interrogated, surveilled and later fired employees for engaging in workplace organizing. A Google spokesman said the company denies the claims.

"We've always worked hard to create a supportive and rewarding workplace for our workforce," said Kara Silverstein, Google's director of people operations. "Of course our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we've always done, we'll continue engaging directly with all our employees."

Organizers also cited the recent firing of a Black artificial-intelligence researcher in reflecting the need for employee activism. Timnit Gebru late last year said she was fired by Google after refusing to retract a research paper and complaining about the company in an email to colleagues, saying it ignored her feedback on issues like the proportion of female employees. In a December memo, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai pledged the company would review the circumstances behind the researcher's exit, including "where we could have improved and led a more respectful process."

"I've heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru's departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google," Mr. Pichai wrote in the memo. "I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the responsibility of working to restore your trust."

Securing collective-bargaining rights can be a hard-fought, expensive endeavor that can face resistance from management, said Beth Allen, a spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America. For a company of Google's size and geographic reach, the process could be especially challenging, she said. Forming a union without collective bargaining isn't novel in itself, she added, but is new for the tech sector, where few unions exist.

CWA and its affiliates represent 700,000 workers at a range of telecommunications and media companies, from AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to news outlets including the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The unionization effort at Google is part of a broader push within the labor group to organize digital workers.

Union membership has been on the decline for several decades, but Ms. Allen said interest in organizing has been rising of late. Companies have long told workers they were being taken care of, but now "the facade has started to crack," she said.

The Google union's main goal is to have a say in how Alphabet does business and how its products are used, according to Andrew Gainer-Dewar, a Google software engineer in Cambridge, Mass. Though no specific actions are planned, the group intends to speak out about problems its members see at Google, including pay discrepancies and retaliatory firings, he said.

Google has long supported open debate among employees, though it has implemented rules intended to curb political conversations among staff. Google has also added corporate moderators to many of its internal affinity groups as a way to reduce strife. It announced changes last year to how it treats allegations of sexual misconduct in its executive ranks and put $310 million into a new fund for diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Google late last year announced the hiring of a chief people officer following the resignation of its vice president of people operations, Eileen Naughton. The new executive, Fiona Clare Cicconi, was previously human-resources chief at pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca PLC and starts with Google this week.

Several large tech companies have faced pressures from their workforces of late. Workers at an Amazon.com Inc. warehouse in Alabama received approval last month to hold a unionization vote, the first such election since 2014 at the nation's second-largest employer. Amazon has faced criticism from workers who have said the company hasn't provided proper safety conditions at its warehouses in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some have also complained of being retaliated against for urging better treatment of workers as they handled an extraordinary surge in orders amid elevated staff absences.

Amazon has said that its teams regularly consult with medical experts to ensure the safety of its sites, employees and customers. The company has denied firing workers for seeking better treatment and also denied that people were terminated or reprimanded for violating internal policies.

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Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 04, 2021 15:38 ET (20:38 GMT)

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