So many of the hard problems in software engineering come down to organizing people and empowering them to do what is right. This is a huge step forward for workers in the industry.
It takes an expert to write great code, but it takes a hacker to organize entire groups of people. These folks are hackers in every sense. Bravo!
I have an ugly truth for Google employees, unions don't mean anything, in NYC if you are in a union or married to a union employee you will eventually become a victim of targeted harassment campaigns by people with connections to government when they want you out of your job or spending money. Almost all unions or stable jobs have people who believe they "control" the jobs.
They will attempt to destroy you and your family any way possible.
I've personally been the victim of targeted harassment campaigns. I was punched in the face in broad daylight on the way to work. Someone vandalized my home, stole every valuable item I own and threatened my daughters life. My car was damaged and the mechanics wouldn't fix it properly because they were afraid of retaliation. My wife's car was repeatedly vandalized to get her spending money on a mechanic and then eventually force her to buy another car. Someone even hit me with an electronic weapon while I was sleeping and burned me, I still don't know how the fuck someone got hold of an electronic weapon.
The entire point of these harassment campaigns is to force you to spend money on luxury garbage, mechanics, car dealers, house cleaning services. etc.
If you contact the authorities for help, no one is going to help you out of fear of retaliation. They give you lip service even if you have video evidence (I have actual audio, video and image evidence all of this happened)
I had an actual conversation with someone last night who drove past my house asking why the police were at my home:
Me: "Someone left a threatening letter on my door." Person: "If you just purchase enough from us we can call up our friends and get you help otherwise there is always cancer."
I have an ugly truth for Google employees, unions don't mean anything, in NYC if you are in a union or married to a union employee you will eventually become a victim of targeted harassment campaigns by people with connections to government when they want you out of your job or spending money. Almost all unions or stable jobs have people who believe they "control" the jobs.
They will attempt to destroy you and your family any way possible.
I've personally been the victim of targeted harassment campaigns. I was punched in the face in broad daylight on the way to work. Someone vandalized my home, stole every valuable item I own and threatened my daughters life. My car was damaged and the mechanics wouldn't fix it properly because they were afraid of retaliation. My wife's car was repeatedly vandalized to get her spending money on a mechanic and then eventually force her to buy another car. Someone even hit me with an electronic weapon while I was sleeping and burned me, I still don't know how the fuck someone got hold of an electronic weapon.
The entire point of these harassment campaigns is to force you to spend money on luxury garbage, mechanics, car dealers, house cleaning services. etc.
If you contact the authorities for help, no one is going to help you out of fear of retaliation. They give you lip service even if you have video evidence (I have actual audio, video and image evidence all of this happened)
I had an actual conversation with someone last night who drove past my house asking why the police were at my home:
Me: "Someone left a threatening letter on my door." Person: "If you just purchase enough from us we can call up our friends and get you help otherwise there is always cancer."
It's clear that you've been through a lot. I'm sorry and I wish you the best. Comments like this are off topic, though. They don't help, and repeating them especially doesn't help.
While disagree with the OP as well, I fear your comment in its current form didn't add anything to the discussion. Is there anything specific in what he wrote, that you disagree with?
Could someone help me understand what an union could do vs the abuses presented as examples in the article?
In my limited experience, from my parents(not US) unions are mostly some sort of barganing power for salaries in various industries but stop at that.
For example, could a union stop the payout of that high-level exec that was eventually shown the door for harrasment with a good bonus?
After that, they are also mostly like various subscriptions that you forget you have, as memberships require pay. In this beautiful part of the world you would even sometimes pressured to pay and join as if you're not a union member can have consequences that are unwanted.
>In this beautiful part of the world you would even sometimes pressured to pay and join as if you're not a union member can have consequences that are unwanted.
This is to address the free rider problem inherent in unions. How do you ensure workers who get the benefits also share in the costs/work - especially when management are trying to encourage free riders?
Pretty much all free rider problems are dealt with with the group pressuring the free rider in some way.
> For example, could a union stop the payout of that high-level exec that was eventually shown the door for harrasment with a good bonus?
No. Unions protect workers, not the business.
> In this beautiful part of the world you would even sometimes pressured to pay and join as if you're not a union member can have consequences that are unwanted.
Are you a citizen of your nation and do you pay taxes? Just as a nation protects its citizens in exchange for taxes, a union protects its members in exchange for dues. Everyone has to participate for the system to reasonably work.
That depends on the union. A miner's union doesn't need to protect all mining companies, just the ones that treat their employees best. Your argument only holds if the union is specific to one company.
A minor's union has to make sure that all their members, thus more or less all miners, keep their work.
It doesn't neccissarily have to keep all mining companies alive, but if it would consolidate into a single mining company with (initially) good conditions it can't be in the union's interest as then all mining employment power is in one place.
> For example, could a union stop the payout of that high-level exec that was eventually shown the door for harrasment with a good bonus?
Yes. As unions represent workers and carry barganing power, they ask (or demand) companies to change their policies around all sort of topics.
For example, tech workers can push for ethical considerations around AI/ML, or to stay out of military contracts especially around weapons, cut the bonuses to questionable execs...
Why is it bad to be forced to pay union dues if I'd rather not, but fine for me to be forced to pass on the profits I generate to shareholders when I'd rather not?
From the article i don't quite see if this is a worker's union or a group of people with certain ideological claims they want to enforce. The comment about the AI researcher that was allegedly fired for being "critical" hints at the latter.
While a union that represents workers interests is a good thing, I think it would be dangerous to give even a part of google to people with ideological fervor. If, for instance, this group actually wants to and succeeds in turning google into a tool of the cancel culture, things will get ugly soon.
Now that leaves me wondering if it is wise to leave this comment here...
edit:
Just an example from the mission statement:
> We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
What this means is, not all google workers will be treated equally by this union. "Victims", i.e., persons will be ordered by their "oppression status" and gain preferential treatment. Now it will probably be fun to watch the details in this valuation process (e.g., "is a woman more victim than a black (disabled) male?"), but this inherent categorization of human beings into more and less worth is ugly as hell.
I think it’s fine if it starts off ideologically. A union is only as good as the total membership count. Get everyone in with whatever pretense, then you have bargaining power.
That's a very risky proposition. From what I can tell from the outside, many "progressives" throw equality and freedom out of the window when it comes to voting.
By the tone of that article, I would not even be surprised if white males don't get to vote in that union or are excluded from influential positions.
Think of the long game. Getting a union is the hard part. The ideological fervor will change with seasons, but the core issues will remain the same across decades (the stuff workers want to be able to negotiate). Nothing is free, some price must be paid.
Nothing pisses off a company more than workers organizing, so take whatever help you can get.
Check out how the collective bargaining agreement works with the NBA Player’s union and NBA. They get pretty fair terms, led by Chris Paul/LeBron James (who have it the best but they lead the union).
^^ I can promise you the list of things negotiated in that could never be done well enough by the company itself. Oh, and that’s a union for multi millionaires.
Don't piss them off alone, piss with others and they might treat you better.
You might want to think about the balance of the system. Are you actually choosing to work for them instead of the system making it look like they are the best job? Could it be better with some re-balancing?
Because you can get more money, better working conditions, and guaranteed rights, and that will irritate your bosses' bosses' owners and their investors.
> I would not even be surprised if white males don't get to vote in that union or are excluded from influential positions.
Good point. Traditionally white men are massively underrepresented and we should be making more of an effort to make sure they're represented at every level of tech. /s
Do you not realize that judging based on skin color was the same reason the idea of 'representation' exists? A vote should hold equal weight regardless of who you are or what you look like.
How come you think this union is imbued with "ideological fervor" but not the myriads of investors, executes, and other people who already controls Google?
Perhaps Google already is a tool of the cancel culture (cue the X-files intro music)?
I believe the claim here is that, people should have rights to their own strong ideological opinions, but not the right to enforce their own upon others.
"We" would do, and frequently have done, just that if it supports "our" agenda. Hence the rise of the use of such broad brushes as "silence is complicity", etc.
The idea that a certain pattern of economic behaviors is "pragmatic", "non-ideological" and even "non-political", while others are, is in itself a good example of ideology.
> Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes. We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
For my eyes, that is absolutely dripping with progressive ideology. If I am going a union I want it to be non-political. This seems more like a progressive advocating group than a software workers guild. Count me out.
"Just outcomes" is a huge signal for prioritizing equity over equality. Other than the obvious political ramifications, it probably means high performers and low performers alike will both get the same outcome from a union, leading to mediocrity overall.
If wanting the world to be a better place is an ideology then I suppose call me an idealist. It shouldn't be political to say killing is wrong and we do alot of it directly or indirectly. You're welcome to call that what you want, I just think of it as civil and just, if you wish to call that progressive I could easily call things to the contrary regressive.
I have some sympathy with you, because national politics has seemingly become more and more ideological lately, but politics does not necessarily imply ideology. The word politics in its general form simply refers to the ways people organise to collectively make decisions.
No this is not a good thing.
Binding workers right to political views is dangerous and other countries show that unions can work without any party propaganda.
Fighting for "workers rights" is a political position.
Maybe you're making a distinction between party politics (e.g. endorsing specific candidates) and pushing for general policies, but I think it's incoherent to claim that labor unions are apolitical.
BALPA is more comparable to a potential Google union as it's equally representing a tiny group of elite and extremely well compensated individuals. I don't think that a google employee has much in common with traditional populations of leftist party aligned unions like the factory line worker or coal miner.
Unions don't _have_ to affiliate with Labour (or another party) but they often do.
> I don't think that a google employee has much in common with traditional populations of leftist party aligned unions like the factory line worker or coal miner.
Not right now, sure. But the fact that this group felt the need to unionize suggests that something is changing.
(Of course, that ended up being the opposite of ideological fervor, being both ill-defined and tepid)
It's also quite remarkable that people regard being "cancelled" (complained about on the internet) as more serious than fired, which comes with actual costs.
Yeah right. "Cancel culture" would never, ever, ask for firing people. Or remove them from schools. Or harass them in real life. Everything stays civilized on twitter and the rest is alt-right propaganda.
You are completely misrepresenting what being "cancelled" means to a lot of the people it happens to. It can mean the public causing them to be fired from their job, prevented from finding another job, disconnected from both social and other contacts. Cancelling someone isn't just complaining about them; it's commonly putting for effort to ruin their life.
Came here to say the same thing. This “union” sounds more like a splinter branch of a far left political party, not an organization dedicated to the collective bargaining rights of its members.
I expect it to fail simply because the ideological tone will turn off most people.
I think you're correct, but I doubt it will be as far left as you say. Any union at Google will be dominated by "workers" with economic interests and social and educational backgrounds virtually identical to management. They're the same educated meritocratic progressive technical/managerial class who dominate the Democratic Party. They don't believe anything different from what most of the country believes; they just take pride in being further ahead because they're smarter and work harder.
I don't understand this "ideological" issue. (but maybe it's just due to language as English is not my mother-tongue)
Lots (/most) of what you choose to do (or not) can be see as a result of your own ideological standpoint. (investment, buying, culture, laws, politics, culture, media...)
I prefer when the so-called ideological point is explain in an article rather than discovered after fact. This is more honest.
Unions are traditionally there to bargain collectively for their members. Typically that means higher salaries, better work conditions, more benefits, and similar things.
This union seems less focused on that and more on pushing sociopolitical ideas currently in vogue in left-wing political circles.
You seem to be implying Google plays its white employee pays more because of overt discrimination, and that is impetus for a union. Any evidence for this belief?
> Typically that means higher salaries, better work conditions, more benefits, and similar things.
Nominally but it just isn't so. The strongest bargain an employee has is a competitor. What makes G salaries high is that there are other companies competing for the same talent.
The fundamental way unions increase wages is by constricting supply: by being part of the hiring process and blocking people, or by putting conditions that make people that would otherwise be eligible to work. In the end unions end up being very ineffective, and their administration cost ends up not worth it, thus the only way to get any leverage is with the law.
If unions had their way, it would be illegal to drive a lyft. Whoops, that happened.
If I were a Union rep in a tech company, the first thing I would do is kick out immigrants. Easiest way to increase wages for (remaining) tech workers.
We don't need to go too far for examples of unions, look at the unions SF has. Health staff, Police, Bart and Teachers.
Unabated disasters.
The best a union can achieve is being irrelevant. It will surprise me how obvious it is in the populace that if companies all agree on something it is a terrible monopoly but if all workers agree on something it is liberating. The mechanics of anti-competition are always the same, even if different markets produce different results.
I agree on the first part. But "higher salaries, better work conditions, more benefits, and similar things" are usually part of left-wing political ideology too.
So for me there is no surprises and nothing new in unions sharing/pushing "sociopolitical ideas currently in vogue in left-wing political circles".
If i understand correctly your point (and to paraphrase), unions are not setting the correct priorities between work condition and more general sociopolitical ideas.
For me this is a good new : It mean works conditions are not that bad and that union want not just to take care of personal interest but of company interests as well. But this is a ideological stand point :)
And some may argue that's not the role of unions. But the role of union is to carry the worker voices. If this is the subjects workers want to talk about, i don't see any issue. If it's not, the union will just not meet enough workers to join them.
> While a union that represents workers interests is a good thing, I think it would be dangerous to give even a part of google to people with ideological fervor.
On a practical level, a union that concentrates just on its members interests, is not able to concentrate on its members interests. Just as one person can be crushed by a company, a union at one company can be crushed by an industry. The UAW organized GM, then Chrysler then Ford (one of the weapon carrying workers in the GM strike was Larry Page's grandfather). This kind of thing is necessary for the survival of one union. If FedEx is not unionized (it is not), that weakens the union at UPS.
The AI researcher said there were racist aspects of Google AI, IIRC. Whatever the specifics of that case, unions do not prosper over the long run with a racial divide. There are numerous cases of jobs traditionally done by black men replaced by white scabs, or vice versa. It is why Bernie Sanders wants less immigration, despite the disapproval of upper middle class liberals to his right - too many unassimilated Latin American workers can be played against native workers in a divide and rule sense.
I think this ultimately will doom this type of organization. Workers don't want to be on a crusade they want rights like better pay, better hours, freedom to choose, rights for parents, etc. It's not a social crusade if that's what they're planning on doing, they will tune out 1/2 or more of the other workers there. I think you're a bit harsh on people standing up for their status like preferred gender, sexual orientation, etc. You seem to be dismissing their concerns entirely. I don't think a worker's union is the right place to try and enforce anything other than an equal rights workplace as idealistically most labor unions say that they're for.
You mean big tech's reputation is in tartars? Facebook and Amazon are no better and Apple's reputation should absolutely be down in the gutter but people jump aboard their privacy nonsense and turn a blind eye to all the forced labour they use.
I do wish Google all the best however. They have handled their very privileged workers very poorly and may pay for it.
This reads more as an ideologically motivated pressure group, than a traditional trade union. I have a feeling that unions are most successful when they focus on non-divisive universal issues affecting the broadest section of workers possible, rather than culture war talking points.
>Organized workers at the company forced executives to drop Project Maven, the company’s artificial-intelligence program with the Pentagon, and Project Dragonfly, its plan to launch a censored search engine in China.
It's expected but annoying that they'd advertise this. We've already seen that googlers' voiced ethics aren't humanitarian, just against the things bad enough to make them personally uncomfortable. And a union is explicitly for the benefit of it's members, not humanity writ large.
They're going to continue happily building the world's largest private surveillance system. The most honest googlers I know are the ones that will admit they're just there for the money and have real issues with google's dealings. I doubt we'll get that level of candor from their union. The union will be for everything that makes money but doesn't get google bad publicity (just like google itself).
99 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadIt takes an expert to write great code, but it takes a hacker to organize entire groups of people. These folks are hackers in every sense. Bravo!
I think we may have a very different definition of the word "hacker". Yours is very likely incorrect.
They will attempt to destroy you and your family any way possible.
I've personally been the victim of targeted harassment campaigns. I was punched in the face in broad daylight on the way to work. Someone vandalized my home, stole every valuable item I own and threatened my daughters life. My car was damaged and the mechanics wouldn't fix it properly because they were afraid of retaliation. My wife's car was repeatedly vandalized to get her spending money on a mechanic and then eventually force her to buy another car. Someone even hit me with an electronic weapon while I was sleeping and burned me, I still don't know how the fuck someone got hold of an electronic weapon.
The entire point of these harassment campaigns is to force you to spend money on luxury garbage, mechanics, car dealers, house cleaning services. etc.
If you contact the authorities for help, no one is going to help you out of fear of retaliation. They give you lip service even if you have video evidence (I have actual audio, video and image evidence all of this happened)
I had an actual conversation with someone last night who drove past my house asking why the police were at my home:
Me: "Someone left a threatening letter on my door." Person: "If you just purchase enough from us we can call up our friends and get you help otherwise there is always cancer."
https://twitter.com/psaintlaurent0/status/132951417338719028...
https://twitter.com/psaintlaurent0/status/134244904875058380...
https://twitter.com/psaintlaurent0/status/132883496079975628...
https://twitter.com/psaintlaurent0/status/131211998307427942...
https://twitter.com/psaintlaurent0/status/125889480453833932...
They will attempt to destroy you and your family any way possible.
I've personally been the victim of targeted harassment campaigns. I was punched in the face in broad daylight on the way to work. Someone vandalized my home, stole every valuable item I own and threatened my daughters life. My car was damaged and the mechanics wouldn't fix it properly because they were afraid of retaliation. My wife's car was repeatedly vandalized to get her spending money on a mechanic and then eventually force her to buy another car. Someone even hit me with an electronic weapon while I was sleeping and burned me, I still don't know how the fuck someone got hold of an electronic weapon.
The entire point of these harassment campaigns is to force you to spend money on luxury garbage, mechanics, car dealers, house cleaning services. etc.
If you contact the authorities for help, no one is going to help you out of fear of retaliation. They give you lip service even if you have video evidence (I have actual audio, video and image evidence all of this happened)
I had an actual conversation with someone last night who drove past my house asking why the police were at my home:
Me: "Someone left a threatening letter on my door." Person: "If you just purchase enough from us we can call up our friends and get you help otherwise there is always cancer."
It's clear that you've been through a lot. I'm sorry and I wish you the best. Comments like this are off topic, though. They don't help, and repeating them especially doesn't help.
For example, could a union stop the payout of that high-level exec that was eventually shown the door for harrasment with a good bonus?
After that, they are also mostly like various subscriptions that you forget you have, as memberships require pay. In this beautiful part of the world you would even sometimes pressured to pay and join as if you're not a union member can have consequences that are unwanted.
This is to address the free rider problem inherent in unions. How do you ensure workers who get the benefits also share in the costs/work - especially when management are trying to encourage free riders?
Pretty much all free rider problems are dealt with with the group pressuring the free rider in some way.
No. Unions protect workers, not the business.
> In this beautiful part of the world you would even sometimes pressured to pay and join as if you're not a union member can have consequences that are unwanted.
Are you a citizen of your nation and do you pay taxes? Just as a nation protects its citizens in exchange for taxes, a union protects its members in exchange for dues. Everyone has to participate for the system to reasonably work.
To protect the workers, they also have to protect the jobs, which means they have to also protect the company.
Finding the right balance there is tough and one of the greatest challenges.
It doesn't neccissarily have to keep all mining companies alive, but if it would consolidate into a single mining company with (initially) good conditions it can't be in the union's interest as then all mining employment power is in one place.
They have to find the right balance.
Yes. As unions represent workers and carry barganing power, they ask (or demand) companies to change their policies around all sort of topics.
For example, tech workers can push for ethical considerations around AI/ML, or to stay out of military contracts especially around weapons, cut the bonuses to questionable execs...
While a union that represents workers interests is a good thing, I think it would be dangerous to give even a part of google to people with ideological fervor. If, for instance, this group actually wants to and succeeds in turning google into a tool of the cancel culture, things will get ugly soon.
Now that leaves me wondering if it is wise to leave this comment here...
edit:
Just an example from the mission statement:
> We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
What this means is, not all google workers will be treated equally by this union. "Victims", i.e., persons will be ordered by their "oppression status" and gain preferential treatment. Now it will probably be fun to watch the details in this valuation process (e.g., "is a woman more victim than a black (disabled) male?"), but this inherent categorization of human beings into more and less worth is ugly as hell.
By the tone of that article, I would not even be surprised if white males don't get to vote in that union or are excluded from influential positions.
Nothing pisses off a company more than workers organizing, so take whatever help you can get.
Check out how the collective bargaining agreement works with the NBA Player’s union and NBA. They get pretty fair terms, led by Chris Paul/LeBron James (who have it the best but they lead the union).
https://cosmic-s3.imgix.net/3c7a0a50-8e11-11e9-875d-3d44e94a...
^^ I can promise you the list of things negotiated in that could never be done well enough by the company itself. Oh, and that’s a union for multi millionaires.
You might want to think about the balance of the system. Are you actually choosing to work for them instead of the system making it look like they are the best job? Could it be better with some re-balancing?
Maybe ask them yourself and get involved?
Good point. Traditionally white men are massively underrepresented and we should be making more of an effort to make sure they're represented at every level of tech. /s
/s
Except, that isn't what happens right now. Most people aren't intending to make decisions based on skin colour, yet it happens.
Perhaps Google already is a tool of the cancel culture (cue the X-files intro music)?
This isn't an argument...
I mean, that's pretty much exactly what fervour means? We'd never say "Joe is a fervent supporter of X!" if Joe never talked about X.
> Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes. We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim.
For my eyes, that is absolutely dripping with progressive ideology. If I am going a union I want it to be non-political. This seems more like a progressive advocating group than a software workers guild. Count me out.
> Now that leaves me wondering if it is wise to leave this comment here...
Oh how high minded of you.
Trade union membership and ideological politics are intertwined. This is a good thing and by design.
Maybe you're making a distinction between party politics (e.g. endorsing specific candidates) and pushing for general policies, but I think it's incoherent to claim that labor unions are apolitical.
It's just not all that common.
Aligning to a party can be argued, I'd say it's best to break things up into policies more than "teams" but still.
BALPA is more comparable to a potential Google union as it's equally representing a tiny group of elite and extremely well compensated individuals. I don't think that a google employee has much in common with traditional populations of leftist party aligned unions like the factory line worker or coal miner.
> I don't think that a google employee has much in common with traditional populations of leftist party aligned unions like the factory line worker or coal miner.
Not right now, sure. But the fact that this group felt the need to unionize suggests that something is changing.
"Don't be evil".
(Of course, that ended up being the opposite of ideological fervor, being both ill-defined and tepid)
It's also quite remarkable that people regard being "cancelled" (complained about on the internet) as more serious than fired, which comes with actual costs.
You are completely misrepresenting what being "cancelled" means to a lot of the people it happens to. It can mean the public causing them to be fired from their job, prevented from finding another job, disconnected from both social and other contacts. Cancelling someone isn't just complaining about them; it's commonly putting for effort to ruin their life.
I expect it to fail simply because the ideological tone will turn off most people.
This union seems less focused on that and more on pushing sociopolitical ideas currently in vogue in left-wing political circles.
The idea is that collective bargaining can equalize the salaries, work conditions, etc. for all members, not just the pale-skinned ones.
Nominally but it just isn't so. The strongest bargain an employee has is a competitor. What makes G salaries high is that there are other companies competing for the same talent.
The fundamental way unions increase wages is by constricting supply: by being part of the hiring process and blocking people, or by putting conditions that make people that would otherwise be eligible to work. In the end unions end up being very ineffective, and their administration cost ends up not worth it, thus the only way to get any leverage is with the law.
If unions had their way, it would be illegal to drive a lyft. Whoops, that happened. If I were a Union rep in a tech company, the first thing I would do is kick out immigrants. Easiest way to increase wages for (remaining) tech workers.
The best a union can achieve is being irrelevant. It will surprise me how obvious it is in the populace that if companies all agree on something it is a terrible monopoly but if all workers agree on something it is liberating. The mechanics of anti-competition are always the same, even if different markets produce different results.
If i understand correctly your point (and to paraphrase), unions are not setting the correct priorities between work condition and more general sociopolitical ideas. For me this is a good new : It mean works conditions are not that bad and that union want not just to take care of personal interest but of company interests as well. But this is a ideological stand point :)
And some may argue that's not the role of unions. But the role of union is to carry the worker voices. If this is the subjects workers want to talk about, i don't see any issue. If it's not, the union will just not meet enough workers to join them.
On a practical level, a union that concentrates just on its members interests, is not able to concentrate on its members interests. Just as one person can be crushed by a company, a union at one company can be crushed by an industry. The UAW organized GM, then Chrysler then Ford (one of the weapon carrying workers in the GM strike was Larry Page's grandfather). This kind of thing is necessary for the survival of one union. If FedEx is not unionized (it is not), that weakens the union at UPS.
The AI researcher said there were racist aspects of Google AI, IIRC. Whatever the specifics of that case, unions do not prosper over the long run with a racial divide. There are numerous cases of jobs traditionally done by black men replaced by white scabs, or vice versa. It is why Bernie Sanders wants less immigration, despite the disapproval of upper middle class liberals to his right - too many unassimilated Latin American workers can be played against native workers in a divide and rule sense.
The first thing they would do if they have any power is kick out immigrants.
I do wish Google all the best however. They have handled their very privileged workers very poorly and may pay for it.
Clearly unacceptable, time to unionize to get things back to a more righteous state.
/s
Sorry to say so, but it has always been a moral failure to work in the surveillance industry.
It's expected but annoying that they'd advertise this. We've already seen that googlers' voiced ethics aren't humanitarian, just against the things bad enough to make them personally uncomfortable. And a union is explicitly for the benefit of it's members, not humanity writ large.
They're going to continue happily building the world's largest private surveillance system. The most honest googlers I know are the ones that will admit they're just there for the money and have real issues with google's dealings. I doubt we'll get that level of candor from their union. The union will be for everything that makes money but doesn't get google bad publicity (just like google itself).