Google Workers Form 1st Labor Union

Hundreds of Google Employees created a union on Monday, a rare step for the tech industry that also represents the biggest and most organized challenge yet to the company's executive leadership. The group revealed capping years of growing activism at one of the world’s largest companies and presenting a rare beachhead for labor organizers in staunchly anti-union Silicon Valley.

The new union, named the Alphabet Workers Union after Google’s parent company and elected its leadership last month. The group is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents workers in telecommunications and media in the United States and Canada.

The Alphabet Workers Union is a so-called minority union that represents a fraction of the company’s more than 260,000 full-time employees and contractors. The workers reported it was primarily an effort to give structure and longevity to activism at Google, rather than to negotiate for a contract.

Moreover, the union will likely need to pursue other tactics to push for changes at Google, such as pushing for outside media coverage, pressuring Congress for new legislation and oversight, or filing complaints to the NLRB.

Noteworthy, the new union is the clearest sign of how thoroughly employee activism has swept through Silicon Valley over the past few years. While software engineers and other tech workers largely kept quiet in the past on societal and political issues, employees at Amazon, Salesforce, Pinterest and others have become more vocal on matters like persity, pay discrimination and sexual harassment, according to CNN report.