Friday’s strike by YouTube Music workers is the latest chapter in a long battle between the two companies. Employed by Alphabet subcontractor Cognizant, the strikers allege that both companies’ management have leveraged unfair labor practices to get in the way of their union drive. The strike began Friday and is expected to continue through next week, though no specific dates have yet been set.
Since the beginning of their dispute with YouTube, music workers have been fighting for a fair vote to determine whether they will be able to form a union. However, their employer has interfered with the process by suspending remote work before the vote. This would make it virtually impossible for workers to participate in an election in an impartial manner and could prevent them from forming a union.
The Alphabet Workers Union claims that YouTube’s content operations team is not based in Austin and has almost one quarter of workers who are not based in Texas. Despite this, the majority of the team is expected to return to the office on Monday. It is unclear why so many workers were hired remotely, but it may have implications for how YouTube approaching its content strategy in the future.
It is likely that many of the workers affected by the closure of Boeing’s 737 factory in Spirit Lake, IA will not be able to find new, in-person work. Many will have to relocate and take on significant travel costs, or remain without a job. These workers are paid as little as $19 dollars an hour, which means they cannot afford the relocation or travel costs on their own.
The AWU’s charge highlights an issue that unions have been facing more and more in the recently years: employers unwilling to allow their workers to freely organize and bargain collectively. The union is accusing the company of secretly recording employee meetings, tracking employees’ movements, and issuing negative evaluations based on organizing activity.
Since losing $2 billion in market value in a single day, protests have taken place at Alphabet Headquarters across the country. Employees who lost their jobs as a result of the layoffs staged a silent protest outside of Google store. The CEO defended the layoffs claiming that it would allow Alphabet to focus on its “core businesses” and claimed that all other divisions were doing well. However, critics argue that large-scale layoffs will reduce morale and stability within an already stressed workforce.
The Google search raters held an action at the company’s headquarters on February 1, demanding that they be included in Alphabet’s extended workforce. They “earn poverty wages, with no benefits,” say the workers. The group delivered a petition to senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan calling on leadership to include these workers in Alphabet’s extended workforce.
Google is often accused of favoring its own products, but the company has openly declared that it tries to be impartial when evaluating search results. Some attribute this impartiality to the fact that Google employs a purely algorithmic ranking
