The Google Union’s Unusual Strategy

On Monday, workers for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced they were forming a union. The unusual Silicon Valley organizing effort, which includes hundreds of workers, hit headlines all over the world, and drew plaudits from Bernie Sanders. The workers condemned Google’s work with authoritarian governments and internal problems with discrimination and harassment.

The union is not just a small group of Google’s elite engineers: The collective is designed to include tech workers, contract workers, janitorial staff, part-timers and everyone else who works for Alphabet. “Everyone at Alphabet – from bus drivers to programmers, from salespeople to janitors – plays a critical part in developing our technology. But right now, a few wealthy executives define what the company produces and how its workers are treated. This isn’t the company we want to work for,” two workers wrote in the New York Times.

Having such a big tent is rare in unions today, and to achieve it, Alphabet workers have followed an unconventional path. Instead of organizing in secret and seeking National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certification, they’ve formed a noncontract union, explained in greater depth here by Collective Action in Tech, which documents organizing in the tech industry.

In short, with the help of the Communications Workers of America, they have organized themselves into a dues-paying union without seeking formal recognition (which is not required to be protected by labor law, but does offer some legal benefits) and they’re relying on their own power: the ability to stop Google from operating.

This organizing marks a shift not only in American labor organizing, but in American attitudes toward the tech industry. Whereas tech companies were once vaunted for their progressive vision, today they are being attacked on multiple fronts for their dominant role in American life.

Google has recently been sued by the federal government for violating antitrust law through its market dominance in search and online advertising. While breaking up Google could be positive, there’s a good argument to be made that this isn’t enough. Antitrust allows more businesses to compete, but doesn’t necessarily mean better conditions for workers. Unionizing Google would correct that problem and, in turn, boost the antitrust fight. Google employees note in their announcement the company’s efforts to “keep workers from speaking on sensitive and publicly important topics, like antitrust and monopoly power.”

Google is immensely powerful, and if it is going to be brought under some semblance of democratic control, organizing workers will be just as essential as antitrust actions, perhaps more. Monday’s announcement heralds a possible new era in taming Google, and a big step for labor as well.