4/1/2022 Alphabet Workers Union wins official recognition of first bargaining unit. By: Liberation StaffRead Now
Google Fiber workers in Kansas City, MO who voted to join Alphabet Workers Union. Credit — AWU
On March 25, Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) won its first legally-recognized bargaining unit of retail associates at Google Fiber stores in Kansas City, MO. The workers voted 9-1 to form a bargaining unit that will now negotiate a first union contract with BDS Connected Solutions, a contractor hired by Alphabet Inc.’s Google Fiber division to run its retail operations. Alphabet is the parent company of Google and other companies. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are each worth over $100 billion, making them two of the world’s richest individuals alongside other tech oligarchs like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk.
Alphabet Workers Union, a member of Communications Workers of America (CWA), is a wall-to-wall union made up of workers across Google, other Alphabet companies, and various sub-contractors hired by Alphabet to perform certain functions. The union has over 900 members, and though the vast majority do not yet have collective bargaining agreements with their respective employers the workers have still fought for and won numerous improvements in their working conditions with collective action. The Google Fiber retail store associates are the first to run and win a union recognized by the National Labor Relations Board. BDS Connected Solutions is now required by law to bargain with these AWU workers collectively. This recognition will be a welcome change, as the company was aggressively anti-union during the leadup to the election. Eris Derickson, a member of the new bargaining unit, observed, “Our campaign faced many efforts to discourage us from exercising our right to a collective voice on the job.” BDS Connected Solutions even hired union-busting consultants who threatened employees with job loss and denigrated the workers’ union in leaked audio from a captive audience meeting.
The AWU workers, prepared for BDS’s own anti-union campaign, countered the consultants’ talking points and put management on the back foot. Importantly, workers pointed out who comprised their union at their stores: the workers themselves. It was not – as the consultants argued – a third-party looking to sow trouble and collect dues.
This is AWU’s first victory in a campaign for collective bargaining rights but not the first action by Alphabet workers. AWU grew out of a long history of tech workers organizing at the company. For a long time, Google maintained a reputation as a great place to work; it was known for its free food, progressive values, and famous “Don’t Be Evil” motto. In 2018, that motto was removed from its code of conduct, and cracks began to appear in the sunny Silicon Valley facade. That same year, employee revolt forced the company to not renew a contract with the Pentagon, named “Project Maven,” that had Google employees write software to analyze imagery from U.S. military drones. Later that year, worker organizers led a massive walkout over Google’s repeated failure to properly handle sexual harrassment against employees. The company had offered credibly-accused executives hefty payouts as they were asked to resign and reassigned abusive managers to protect them from consequences. Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android operating system, was gifted $90 million on his way out – even though Google’s own investigation found an allegation that he sexually assaulted an employee in 2013 to be credible. Although it claimed to be chastened and promised to listen to employee concerns, Alphabet retaliated against some of the walkout organizers the next year and later fired organizers who created a petition that called on Google to stop work for US Customs and Border Protection. Workers then began to look for other ways to protect their rights on the job. The organizers got into contact with CWA’s Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), which has become a driving force in tech worker organizing across the country. AWU formed secretly throughout 2020 and launched publicly in January 2021. Though they lack a bargaining agreement, the AWU workers have solidarity with one another. They have successfully won back an attendance bonus for datacenter workers, secured housing stipends for remote interns, and forced Alphabet to issue badges with employees’ chosen names. The rapidly growing tech sector has driven much of the economic recovery since the 2008 financial crisis. The workers who make that economic growth possible have increasingly become aware of their status as members of the working class and have banded together to prevent abuse by employers and to win a fair share of the fruits of their labor. Indicative of tech worker organizing growing in its strength, the New York Times Tech Guild – also organized with CODE-CWA – recently celebrated the creation of tech’s largest bargaining unit with 600 members. Tech workers are not just the stereotypical Bay Area computer programmers – many workers in different jobs and different firms around the world provide necessary labor needed to power a search engine, phone app, or online marketplace. These workers might maintain data centers worldwide, assemble smartphones in Asia, label data in Syrian refugee camps, or cook food for the software developers’ free meals in Silicon Valley. Most of these workers are not directly employed by the well-known tech giants. For example, the drivers of the ubiquitous blue Amazon delivery vans are not employed directly by Amazon but by hundreds of smaller “delivery service partner” firms. Alphabet takes advantage of this two-tier employment system to reap super-profits and maintain an almost $2 trillion market capitalization with only 150,000 full-time employees. This is deceptive: Google itself employs even more temps and contractors than full-time employees in order to manage its operations. This tiered employment system allows Alphabet to cut costs by devolving as much work as possible to cheaper contractors and subcontracted workers. These workers have fewer rights and are in a more unstable position than full-time Alphabet workers. The Google Fiber workers in Kansas City are exemplary of this “divide and conquer” staffing strategy. The victory of the Google Fiber workers at BDS Connected Solutions opens the door for these contracted workers to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement that narrows the gulf between them and workers directly employed by Alphabet. Meanwhile, AWU continues to fight for workers across the conglomerate and its subcontractors to end the two-tiered employment system, prevent illegal retaliation, and assure all workers dignity at work. AuthorLiberation Staff
This article was produced by Liberation News.
ArchivesApril 2022
0 Comments
The multi-billion dollar company waged a well-funded campaign against grassroots labor organizers, who, after a hard-fought struggle, successfully unionized a New York City warehouse
Amazon worker leaders celebrate their union victory outside the JFK8 warehouse (Photo via BreakThrough News)
On April 1, Amazon workers could be seen celebrating and embracing amongst shouts of “ALU!” in front of the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York City. These workers had just won the first union at Amazon in the US: the Amazon Labor Union (ALU).
The union has been fighting to organize workers in the Staten Island warehouse since April 2021. After a year battling vicious union-busting on the part of Amazon and gathering support of agitated workers, union organizers won their union election with a 2,654–2,131 vote. 67 ballots remain contested. The union organizers themselves are current or former Amazon workers. The nascent Amazon Labor Union, self-described as an “independent, democratic labor union”, is not formally part of any established union. However, established unions have provided ALU with significant support in the form of office space, lawyers, and advisors according to ALU’s website. ALU’s organizing efforts in Staten Island have been described as “unorthodox”, with a young, Black, Latino and working class union leadership that far better represents the demographics of actual Amazon workers than former CEO and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world. In 2020, Amazon executives including Bezos attended a meeting in which Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky described Black organizer Chris Smalls, then recently fired from the warehouse for staging a protest against Amazon’s lack of COVID-19 protections, as “not smart, or articulate”. Executives seemingly believed Smalls’ leadership would discredit worker organizing, to Amazon’s benefit. Instead, Smalls has led ALU’s successful organizing drive as its interim president.
The City reported the scene from the bus stop outside of the warehouse where ALU has dedicated much of its organizing efforts. There is a shrine to a warehouse worker killed by a driver when she was crossing the street during a midnight lunch break, a testament to Amazon’s precarious conditions. The bus stop is surrounded by evidence of Amazon’s notorious union-busting efforts: a barbed-wire topped fence that came up after Smalls’ protest against lack of COVID-19 protections, and scaffolding that obstructs the view of bus stop organizing from workers at the warehouse. ALU has decorated both of these obstructions with the union’s initials and ribbons.
In 2021, Amazon spent $4.2 million on union-busting consultants, hired to persuade workers to not join the union. ALU crushed Amazon’s union-busting efforts with less than $100,000 according to Chris Smalls, soliciting donations from a Gofundme page. Amazon forced workers into captive-audience meetings in which hired consultants called ALU organizers “thugs”. One of the union’s demands is that Amazon allow organizers into these meetings to tell workers their side of the story. As described in the union’s website, “when ALU president Chris Smalls came onsite to give out food and answer questions, General Manager Felipe Santos had him and two of our coworkers arrested by the police.” The ALU has a comprehensive list of demands of Amazon. These include a $30/hour minimum wage to account for New York City’s enormous living costs, a pension, childcare, a free shuttle to and from the warehouse, and a fair and transparent promotion system. One important demand is that Amazon “Shut the [warehouse] down with pay during extreme weather events”, especially important considering the six Amazon workers who died in a warehouse in Illinois after Amazon refused to shut down operations despite tornado warnings. The ALU allows for workers to vote and change demands consistently, adding further demands depending on worker feedback. The next step after winning this union election is for Amazon workers to fight for their first contract. After the worker’s victory, ALU president Chris Smalls said, “This is the catalyst for revolution.” AuthorNatalia Marques
This article was produced by Peoples Dispatch.
ArchivesMarch 2022 |
Details
Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|