Techies start growing an Alphabet-wide labor union: 200-plus sign up, only tens of thousands more to go Hundreds of Googlers have started forming a labor union at the internet giant and its Alphabet stablemates. The group launched the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) on Monday to, among other things, fight for better working conditions for non-full-time workers, to improve the handling of sexual harassment complaints, to protest …
There is no good reason that unions in the USA have to be run by the mob.
We tend to accept words like "militant" unions but I would claim you don't get militant on just one side if it's not militant on the other side too.
I suppose we don't have any word for a company should it oerate in a mob like fashion.
... that only 200 out of 120,000 high-tech employees (0.166%) are daft enough to want to add yet another level of fucking useless manglement between themselves and Moneybags. Given the number of idiots who voted for Trump, I would have thought the numbers would have been much higher.
Maybe there is hope for humanity after all!
There's so many unions in the USA. Some are good and some are payroll tolls, forced or mutual. I'm living proof that without a union of any type, Legal == Ethical, which means that if we were living back in the 1600's, Slavery == Ethical. There can be a lot of good in a union but, like anything else, you have to shop around. As a general rule of thumb, the more a company fights a union with lawyers, the more a union is needed.
As for the article, there's always a hint of foreshadowing when your union chooses to use the word "labor" as if it is secondary and this union is somehow more. White collar labor exists, yes it's a thing, always has been. In fact today, I consider blue collar labor to be more respectable as today's white collar labor can literally be describing whoever posts a politician tweets... it has fallen that far.
No it's mostly a pain. I have fixed hours and must clock out by 4:30pm, but in practice I run (*) the computer modelling group and so have lots more work to do out of hours. In theory this would be overtime but that would need agreeing with so many layers of management and union and would have to also be offered to every other union employee on the same terms.
The big problem is in recruiting, any union member with seniority gets offered the job. In theory I could be kicked down a rung if some union member in another dept with more seniority was qualified.
Most of the people I hire have math/physics/CS PhD so it't just a matter of making that a requirement and waiting an extra 6weeks while no internal candidates are found.
(*) except officially I don't because I can't be a manager because physisicts aren't "a profession" so I need to be union regular staff alongside the bin men and canteen staff. My dad worked in the pits in S. Yorks - he would be proud.
the AWU is aiming more toward setting high standards of ethics at the internet giant, ending retaliation against workers, and helping those outside engineering.
That's the "mission statement" of every union. If they admitted that it was just a way to give the finger to 'the man" while enriching the union organizers they'd have even fewer members.
There doesn't seem to be much love for this internal effort to make Alphabet keep to its "founding motto" (I'll leave that point for another discussion).
I used to be part of a company union. There were no dues and, as we all had work to do, our meetings were kept short and to the point.
When I left that company, the employee union was still functioning in the same way.
I fail to see why everyone is apparently assuming that these 200 employees are looking to enrich themselves when they specifically state they are organizing to help non-full time workers and put an end to sexual harassment.
I find those goals laudable, and it seems that Alphabet is not doing enough on the sexual harassment front - which means it is just another large US company, since they seem to all have that problem.
I'm not sure they're not doing enough on the sexual harassment front — I'm sure they want to avoid sexual harassment lawsuits as much as the next company, they have mandatory trainings and they fire people who are caught. The biggest complaint the workers seem to have is not that sexual harassment is rampant, it's that Andy Rubin was able to negotiate an exit package for $100M for going away quietly (which didn't work).
That's a good start, but you can also try to convince your current employer not to do things you don't want to do. If your current employer isn't someone you have an objection to, but they have started to consider doing business with someone you have an objection to, you have two options. You could quit immediately so you don't do something you object to, or you could go to your employer and suggest that they might want to consider changing their mind. If they do change their mind, you keep a job, they keep you employed by them, and everyone's avoided a negative. If a lot of your colleagues also object to the considered project, you in combination are more likely to convince the company not to do the objectionable thing.
This benefits you, obviously, since you don't have to look for a new job if your employer doesn't do what you want, but it also helps your employer. If everyone only operated on the "never work for people you object to but also never complain" principle, the company would likely sign the contract to work for the objectionable place, lose a bunch of employees, end up in a crisis, and have trouble. If they just don't sign the contract, the company is as fine as it was before and can find a less objectionable contract. No guarantee that they'll change their mind, but if you try to suggest that they do, it's possible it ends better. It can't really end worse, as even if they do nothing it's no different from your original plan.
That has to be considered, and don't worry, the company will consider it for you. The problem is that the alternative is no different. If the company signs the contract and enough of their staff leave based on the arguments made in the post I replied to, the company might well go bust anyway because they lack the staff to fulfill their requirements and are spending all their time trying to hire new ones. At least if the employees concerned attempt to convince the company that it's a bad idea, the company knows that's going to happen and can decide whether it's worth the risk. There's little downside telling the company "I don't like this idea, and if you do it, I will quit".
"the average Google salary ranges from approximately $28,835 per year for Customer Service Representative to $198,428 per year for Technical Program Manager."
So, $28835 / year divided by 2040 hours/year is $14.13/hr. According to California, the California minimum wage in 2020 was $13.
In 2015, I was hired as an SRE III/SWE IV. Salary, bonuses, and stock was >$200k. I have little doubt that our TPM was close to $300k.
While I do not doubt that sexual harassment occurred and occurs at Google, the claims that it is "rampant" is demonstrably false. My history in the industry has been that such behavior is entirely untolerated at the level of the individual engineers, let alone management. The closest I have to first-hand knowledge of it actually occurring was when a director at IBM was walked out the same day as the alleged event. (And the target got his job.) Yes, my view is not complete. But these claims of "rampant" sexual harassment at Google are an attack on every male engineer there, and I won't stand for that. Even the least professional man I knew reeled it way, way back when a woman joined the team--and kept it back.
Fine. Demonstrate it then.
From Uber to IBM to Google, I have the feeling that I have not stopped reading about sexual harassment cases in major US multinationals since about ten years.
So please, demonstrate that I am wrong.
That would actually be a relief.
And how, precisely, is that to be done?
These claims smear the good name of tens of thousands of people, and when my sample of a hundred or so across a couple of decades results in zero confirmation, and in fact counter-information, I get suspicious. When outrages claims are escalated in the face of skepticism, it's the good faith of the accusers that become questioned.
Yes, Uber apparently had (and has?) a problem. Unemployed over a year, I won't deal with them. Yes, there are persistent complaints against IBM in the sales force. Yes, there was one high-up at Google that apparently used his position to buy off threats. But neither the IBM nor Google have credible complaints about their engineers being permitted to carry on as claimed by folks who just happen to also be agitating for "social justice".
"So, $28835 / year divided by 2040 hours/year is $14.13/hr."
Which is more than the US federal min wage. These people won't be working in CA, I suspect.
"In 2015, I was hired as an SRE III/SWE IV. Salary, bonuses, and stock was >$200k. I have little doubt that our TPM was close to $300k."
Yeah, as the article says, the quoted numbers are base pay. Once you include bonuses and stock, it's going to be a lot more. And sure, $200k base is low when you get up to L6 and long-term L5.
The quoted base pay range is in the right sort of neighborhood, depending where you are, and experience. You get the gist: in engineering you get paid a lot, and outside engineering, not so much.
C.
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