Hundreds of Google employees form union for entire company, a big tech first

Hundreds of Google employees announced Monday that they’ve formed a union – the first such at a major, big tech company.

The Alphabet Workers Union has the backing of the Communications Workers of America and is named after Google’s parent company – Alphabet Inc.

Still, the union and its first 200 members face the uphill challenge of garnering enough support from Alphabet’s 120,000 workers, and Google may not voluntarily recognize the union, considering its history of not supporting organized labor, according to The Hill newspaper.

Small teams of Google workers – including cafeteria workers in the Bay Area and contractors in Pittsburgh – have unionized before. But the union announced Monday is the first company-wide effort, The Hill also reports.

“We will elect representatives, we will make decisions democratically, we will pay dues, and we will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values,” Dylan Baker, a Google software engineer, said in a statement obtained by the newspaper.

The National Labor Relations Board last month faulted Google for allegedly illegally firing two workers who were organizing against the company’s efforts moving to hire a purported union-busting firm.