Lily Bohlke | Public News Service
More than 600 Google employees have joined the newly formed Alphabet Workers Union, a rare occurrence in the tech industry. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons by ElObservador 01/15/2021
Google employees are forming the Alphabet Workers Union, both to push their parent company toward greater social responsibility and to ensure workers are treated fairly.
It’s a rare occurrence in the technology industry, but Andrew Gainer-Dewar, a software engineer at Google and a founding member of the union, said Alphabet workers have a history of workplace activism. In 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees staged a walkout over the parent company’s handling of issues of sexual harassment. And just last month, roughly 2,000 Google employees signed a letter requesting transparency about the exit of Dr. Timnit Gebru from the company. She’s an AI researcher who criticized Alphabet’s lack of diversity.