The tech industry’s overwhelmingly non-unionized status took a small but significant hit on Monday, with the announcement of the Alphabet Workers Union, a minority union at Google (the parent company of which is Alphabet). Their goal—at least in the short term—isn’t to win a union representation election and get the company to the bargaining table. It’s …
The five most valuable companies in America are all big tech companies, and none of them are unionized. Compounding this existential challenge for organized labor is the fact that the huge work forces of the companies make unionizing them seem an impossibly large task. Now, one union has solved that problem with a revolutionary approach: Just start. This morning, …
Google Workers Say the Endless Wait to Unionize Big Tech Is Over Read More »
Google is famous for workplaces called “campuses” where employees get enormous paychecks and enjoy all the perks of fancy private college campuses, including pingpong tables and other entertainment. But other workers who produce for Google across the country are not so pampered. They are Google’s underclass. In this two-tier system, these workers get less money, less respect, …
One week after 20,000-plus Google employees around the world staged a mass walkout to protest the company’s discrimination and its abysmal handling of sexual misconduct complaints against top-level executives — as the New York Times reported, multiple senior executives were granted multimillion-dollar severance packages or promotions after being accused of sexual violence — the company has announced revisions …
All over the world, employees at Google are demonstrating that they won’t tolerate sexual harassment, low pay, and other poor working conditions. Google workers in London, Zurich, Dublin, Berlin, Tokyo, and Singapore organized walkouts on Thursday. U.S. workers in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Mountain View, California have also walked out. Workers …
Google employees demand company do something about sexual harassment and pay inequality Read More »
A male software engineer at Google, James Damore, wrote a 10-page memo in opposition to hiring practices that consider racial and gender diversity in tech, arguing that women were unable to do the same kind of work as their male peers. Days after it was circulated throughout the company and leaked to the press, he was fired. Now …
You do not have a constitutional right to be extremely sexist at work Read More »
Lyft has produced its first-ever diversity report, months after its chief competitor Uber released its own data about the make-up of its staff. While its numbers ring similar to other tech companies—which are predominantly white and male?—?Lyft does have more female employees than Uber. Overall, 42 percent of Lyft’s employees identify as women, compared to Uber’s …
A U.S. District Court finalized a $415 million wage settlement for tech workers Wednesday after four-years of litigation. Nearly 65,000 employees for Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit in 2011 after the government uncovered emails between Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and other executives that …
Tech Companies Ordered To Pay Employees $415 Million For Working Together To Lower Wages Read More »
Recently I had a chance to interview a former top executive for Google. She was wicked smart, insightful and clearly thought three or four steps ahead. I kept grilling her about what the average person should know about online searches. We spent a lot of time on such topics as phrasing the searches correctly, a …
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
