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Comment by mondoshawan | Hacker News Reader

Googler here, these articles are literally the first I've heard of it. No internal emails, rabblerousing, or any kind of comms about it, and it seems as though the union discussed doesn't actually exist yet. Seems a bit odd (and bad reporting), but we'll see where it goes.

After watching how a mechanics union did absolutely nothing while CEOs ripped apart my Dad's pension and put him through hell, I have a bit of a dim view on this sort of thing to begin with.

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Part of the reason for this may be because Google in fact pushed the NLRB to disallow organizing activity on internal emails! https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028033/google-labor-bo...

Aha! Wasn't aware of this rule change. Wonder how they'll garner the votes they need to fully form the union without internal rabblerousing digitally, and with offices being closed.

Is it legal for a union to use employee info directories to contact employees outside of corp comms?

I've rarely found an employee directory that would contain people's personal email addresses. They might be stuck with calling people on the phone or something.

Which might be for the best: Google controls probably nearly every employee's personal email address too!

A good chunk of Google employees don't have a 'personal' phone. They use test android devices, or work-provided phones and plans. Google even has an internal program to migrate your personal phone number onto a corporate device.

Calls between employees will be video conferences over google servers anyway - nobody goes typing old fashioned phone numbers anymore...

And with the lack of this union's formal status, Google probably could get away with behaviors which interfere with the use of Gmail, Fi, Voice, and Meet services used to organize this union without significant penalty.

Why would you ever want to migrate your personal line to a work owned device?

So you don't have to carry two devices with you. Especially relevant for people who need to be contactable outside regular hours.

Also means work pays for the device, gives you a new one every year, and pays for and organises the data plan including worldwide roaming.

If you break it, they give you a new one in 5 minutes rather than haggling with an insurance company taking weeks...

It's a pretty sweet deal if you trust your employer.

> After watching how a mechanics union did absolutely nothing while CEOs ripped apart my Dad's pension and put him through hell, I have a bit of a dim view on this sort of thing to begin with.

I would say that unions aren't magical entities. They're a necessary but not a sufficient condition for protecting the interests of workers. A union is only as good as its membership. If union members think they can just pay their union dues and expect the benefits to magically accrue, that's not going to happen. Union members have to take a very active part in governance of their union, and immediately remove any union leaders who start to show signs of corruption. Complacency is the enemy. As soon as unions become "hierarchical", it's game over, and the union is no better than the management it was designed to fight against.

Necessary in some cases. Workers who are happy with the general conditions of their company won't unionize.

>As soon as unions become "hierarchical",

Which is a probability that approaches 1 over time. All human endeavors tend toward hierarchies, it's just a matter of how formalized the hierarchy is and how many levels it has - but one always exists.

Also Googler. When I previously worked at a unionized company the union actually helped a lot when our corporate overlords cut retirement benefits. For that sort of collective bargaining I think unions can be useful. It looks like this isn't that type of union however. This one seems much more like a political advocacy group (I realize all unions are political, but the idealized union is political as a side effect of improving the welfare of their constituency, not as their primary purpose).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but usually the people who know about the union before it's announced are those who are understood to support the idea & are unlikely to go to management about it :)

This is the first I've ever suggested an opinion on it publicly, and I'm a line engineer, not management. Internally, I don't usually talk about things like this, either.

Ah, then it's likely that by chance someone just never got around to talking to you about it. It's a big company! Hopefully you'll soon get to talk to an organizer about your specific doubts.

It might also be that the organizers where only talking to people that they expected to be pro-union (as opposed to selecting people who only had not expressed negative views of unions). This is the safer approach at union-hostile companies like Google.

Right, that's why the GP said that only those who were understood to already support the idea would have been approached about it.

You're an unknown, and they didn't risk telling you and have it leak early.

At least, that's the idea. Who knows how true any of this is yet.

The parent comment originally was written in such a way as to imply I was management.

Not sure where you read that from my comment. Corps are filled with non-management workers who will tell management about unionization efforts, either naively or intentionally.

That pension thing probably isn't the union's fault. Pretty much anyone that had a non-government backed pension lost it or had it severely reduced. They simply were not financially sustainable. But I do agree they sometimes the union can be their own worst enemy. For example, I knew a sterl plant manager and he was telling me that they had a hard time competing with imported steel and that the union was constantly asking for more and more money and time off. Eventually management was forced to give them everything they wanted dispite explaining that it would bankrupt the company.

Overall, I think unions can be good. I would like an actual contract and no forced arbitration.

Here's their website: https://alphabetworkersunion.org/ It's hard to find in Google searches buried under all the news articles.

Does the Google Walkout count as rabblerousing? It's all been word-of-mouth until now, which is kinda slow since everyone left the office and went online.

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