Google union a silver lining on Big Tech cloud

Earlier this month, 225-odd workers got together at Alphabet — parent conglomerate of Google with about 2.6 lakh full-time employees — to form the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU). It tweeted that the body was in the works for over a year now and that it was open to ‘all’ Alphabet company workers. ‘Every worker deserves a union —including tech workers,’ it said.The union is open to not just full-time Google employees, but also to other categories including temporary and contract workers on the rolls of vendors. These shadow workers outnumber full-time Google workers by at least a lakh.For Big Tech — of late, up against governments, regulators, activists, consumers —this was hardly a moment of reckoning. But while gig workers have been joining hands to wage battles against digital giants in different parts of the world including India, this is the first time that full-time employees of a tech giant have joined hands to form a workers’ union. In a world, increasingly shaped by FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google), anything happening in their backyard makes headlines.Worker unions are considered vestiges of the 20th century industrial era. Amid waves of globalisation, technology and dramatic shifts in the world of work, labour unions have increasingly been marginalised with the rise of market-led economy and business friendly governments. AWU’s formation offers an opportunity to all stakeholders — governments, corporates and workers — to pause and reflect on their relevance today.The labour market landscape has been changing dramatically. In a tech-led world, developed countries like the US have seen inequality surge. On the back of automation and outsourcing, a handful of tech giants and their generously paid tech workers are shaping a twotiered society, hollowing out the middle-class in the US. Pressure groups like worker unions could play an important role in setting the stage for collective bargaining.Further, a confluence of factors is creating headwinds for workers globally. Artificial intelligence (AI)-led automation and digitisation waves are expected to obliterate millions of jobs across countries. ‘Gigification’ of the labour market means a range of jobs being digitised, sliced and farmed out to poorly paid freelance workers (with virtually no statutory benefits). Most experts expect the proportion of full-time workers in the labour force to decline, a trend the Covid-19 pandemic has amplified.A study by US freelancing platform Upwork, ‘2020 Freelance Forward’ (bit.ly/3bsO5qO), revealed that a third of workers in the US are freelancers who contribute nearly $1.2 trillion annually to its economy. Many countries, including India, are also bracing for a tight job market and rising unemployment as Covid-19-instigated restrictions ravage their economies.From the 1760s, worker unions have been directly linked to stress in the labour market. Today, economic conditions are ripe globally for such unions to take root. Typically, unions have focused on issues of wages, job contracts and work conditions for full-time employees who are on a company’s rolls. If the Google-led workers’ union gains steam, they will be different this time around.The arc of battle being waged by Google employees has been inclusive and wide-ranging. For one, it is open to all shades of workers serving Google, including temporary staff and those working with its vendors. For these well-paid Google employees, the issues they are fighting for go much beyond demands of wages and job security. In 2018, they staged walk-outs to protest alleged sexual harassment in 2018. In 2019, they wrote a public letter urging Google to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. From questioning its AI policies and its treatment of temp workers, to pushing for diversity at the workplace to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ campaign, Google employees have questioned their employer on a range of issues.This is, perhaps, unsurprising. In a world so comprehensively dominated by Big Tech, well-paid Google employees are keenly aware that they are a privileged minority sitting on top of the world’s labour pyramid. And many feel that they have a larger moral responsibility to bring larger changes while sending signals to the outside world.

from Economic Times https://bit.ly/3osLCQS
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