Google Employees Form Union

Google employees are among the best-paid workers in American corporations and enjoy ample perks, and 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.

Organizing efforts began over a year ago, part of a continuing tide of activism within Google. 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.

Members said Google has retaliated against employees critical of the company and done little to address complaints of discrimination and harassment.

“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.”

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.

Unionization is rare within the ranks of Silicon Valley’s tech companies, and Google’s U.S. white-collar workforce hadn’t previously been represented by a union. Median pay at Alphabet, whose operations include internet search, digital video and online advertising, was $258,708 in 2019, according to company filings.

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.

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.

The Communications Workers of America union 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.

“Activism can rise and fall depending on things that are fleeting,” said Beth Allen, a spokeswoman for the CWA. A union allows workers to hold companies accountable over the long term, she said, adding that the small number of initial participants in Google’s union isn’t a concern. “It doesn’t take a lot of workers to make change,” Ms. Allen said.

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Write to Sarah E. Needleman at [email protected]