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☆ Google contractors who rate how effective its search is will visit its headquarters this week to protest 'poverty wages'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google "raters" who test and evaluate search quality say they aren't fairly compensated. This means the raters are not technically Google employees, even though they are tasked with improving its services. In this latest action, workers in the Alphabet Workers Union have organized a visit to Google's headquarters to deliver a petition addressed to Prabhakar Raghavan, the senior vice president at Google overseeing search. Now many tech workers have considered joining unions as mass layoffs have swept the industry in recent months. In 2021, tech workers at The New York Times formed a union.

☆ Tech layoffs strip the facade of TikTok's 'day in the life' videos
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-29 | by ( Morgan Sung | Morgan Sung Is A Trends Reporter For Nbc News Digital. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

Meta, Salesforce, Twitter, Snap and other tech companies have also announced layoffs in recent months. Others are using their platforms to raise awareness of labor rights in wake of recent layoffs. So yeah, I’m unemployed, but I have a hell of a lot of confidence in myself.”Educating viewers about their rights has also gained popularity after recent layoffs. TikTok user alberta.nyc, a Google software engineer and self-described “tech cynic," has made videos about the importance of unions in the tech industry. In a video, creator alejandra_n_h expressed solidarity with former Amazon employees who had been affected by recent layoffs.

☆ YouTube Music contractors must move to and work from its Austin offices by February 6. Staffers say this is a retaliatory move after they voted to unionize.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

These staffers, many of whom work remotely and do not live in Austin, work for Cognizant, a major contractor for YouTube's parent company Alphabet. Employees who spoke to Insider say the firm's requirement that they return to its offices was retaliatory following the team's decision to unionize with the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) in October 2022. When Cognizant set the February deadline last November, it gave employees outside Austin only about three months to move. The employees in Austin were fully aware of the intention to return to the office prior to the filing of a petition. Moreover, all associates working on this project were hired with the understanding that the jobs were based in an Austin office location.

☆ Googlers prize 'psychological safety,' but it won't save them from layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Rebecca Knight | Shana Lebowitz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Some Google employees said the company's layoffs violated its commitment to psychological safety. Research suggests that psychological safety is critical to team success and helps drive creativity, build resiliency, and improve decision-making. "It's so important to be clear that psychological safety is not the same thing as job security," Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School who pioneered research on psychological safety, told Insider. Google execs said psychological safety doesn't guarantee job securityAt the all-hands meeting, Google's leadership took issue with the notion that it breached its commitment to psychological safety. "Psychological safety is about interpersonal dynamics, not about economic or organizational reality," he told Insider, adding, "You can still have psychological safety without necessarily having job security."

☆ Some Google workers who've been laid off earned as much as $1 million a year, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced layoffs Friday affecting 12,000 positions at the Google owner. Some employees who earned as much as $1 million were also cut, The Information reported. Pichai told staff in a memo that he took "full responsibility for the decisions that led us here." According to The Information, Google told managers to put more employees into low-performing categories during performance reviews. A spokesperson for Alphabet Workers Union told Insider earlier this month that there had not been any complaints from new employees.

☆ Google employees scramble for answers after layoffs hit long-tenured and recently promoted employees
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Google employees are scrambling for answers from leadership and from colleagues as the company undergoes a massive layoff. On Friday, Alphabet -owned Google announced it was cutting 12,000 employees, roughly 6% of the full-time workforce. Some of the laid-off employees had been long-tenured or recently promoted, raising questions about the criteria used to decide whose jobs were cut. The company provided an FAQ for the layoffs, which CNBC has seen, but employees have complained that it doesn’t give much detail on many answers. The scramble highlights the challenges Google could face in maintaining a supportive and productive company culture for its restive workforce of more than 160,000 full-time employees.

Workers at Google and other big tech companies in recent years have clashed and protested over politics and racial and gender equity. "We've always been proud to host external speakers at Google, as they provide great opportunities for learning and connection for our employees," Google spokesman Ryan Lamont told Reuters. Rivals such as Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) also have policies for inviting speakers. At Google, speakers have included then-U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, celebrity chef Ayesha Curry and former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. At least one of the critics suggested inviting for balance Rajiv Malhotra, according to an internal message.

☆ In the midst of Amazon's record layoffs, corporate employees of the company float a forbidden word: Union
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Katherine Long | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A small group of corporate Amazon staff is discussing unionizing, according to messages seen by Insider. There, a small group of corporate employees have been openly discussing the pros and cons of labor activism, including organizing into a union. Though only one warehouse has successfully voted to unionize, organizing efforts are active in at least seven Amazon locations. And now, with about 10,000 corporate jobs on the line, union activism is picking up here, too. Members of the Discord group have brought up the Alphabet Workers Union, a minority union representing roughly 1,000 Alphabet employees and affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, as a possible model.

Google employees are increasingly concerned that layoffs will hit their company, as rivals including Amazon and Meta slash more than 20,000 jobs. From the end of 2018 to earlier this year, the company added almost 100,000 full-time staff, nearly doubling the workforce. "There's a lot of people openly nervous," another Google employee said, while noting that Googlers have been posting internal memes to express their anxiety. "Performance plans are the next step if folks don't respond to the check-ins," a person familiar with the changes said. 'Google execs will want to cut people'Widespread layoffs at Google would be unprecedented.

☆ Waymo workers form union in the latest push to organize Silicon Valley
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-10 | by ( Eli M. Rosenberg | Eli Rosenberg Is An Investigative Tech Reporter For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

Food service employees at the autonomous driving company Waymo are forming a union, the latest push by support workers to organize at Silicon Valley's most prominent companies. The workers are employed by Sodexo, which contracts service work for Google and other companies. "We are confident this one will also reach an amicable agreement for workers, the union, and our client very soon." The workers are part of Silicon Valley's ranks of contractors who support and supplement the work at tech companies. Her team unionized in 2020, and some of them have been joining meetings with the Waymo workers to show them the ropes of organizing and talk up the union.

☆ U.S. tech execs hone approach to counter unions amid growing worker interest
▼ + stars: | 2021-11-24 | by ( Julia Love | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Mapbox's response offers a window into how tech companies are pushing back as unions seek to bring workers into the fold. The CWA also formed the Alphabet Workers Union, a so-called minority union that does not have collective bargaining rights. For many tech workers, the promise of a generous payday is no longer enough. They also want sound working conditions and assurances that the products they are building will not harm society, tech employees and organizers say. On their website, members of the Mapbox Workers Union wrote that they banded together "to build a lasting, accountable, inclusive Mapbox."

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