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The ABC’s Of Google’s New Union

January 4, 2021 Clarissa Redwine, Collective Action in Tech. , , ,
Google workers have organized for pay equity, opposed unethical uses of machine learning, protested sexual assault, and more. Our small team at Collective Action in Tech has been archiving these organizing events for years. Now the workers of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are building worker power through a non-contract union they’ve named The Alphabet Workers Union. This isn’t the first time Google workers are unionizing. In 2017, Security guards at Google and Facebook had their union recognized and fought through a long contract negotiation. In 2019, Google cafeteria staff employed by vendor Bon Appetit won their union election.

Google Illegally Surveilled, Interrogated, And Fired Workers Who Tried To Organize

December 5, 2020 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. , , ,
Google repeatedly violated U.S. labor law when it spied on, probed, and terminated employees engaged in worker organizing in 2019, according to a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday. In its complaint (pdf), the NLRB alleges that Google was "interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed in Section 7" of the National Labor Relations Act.  As The Guardian reported Wednesday: The complaint was filed on Wednesday following a year-long investigation launched by terminated employees who filed a petition with the board in 2019, after hundreds of Google employees carried out internal protests and public demonstrations against Google's work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

CIA Partners With Google, Amazon And IBM

November 25, 2020 Raul Diego, Mintpress News. , , ,
AWS currently holds the sole contract to provide cloud computing services to a number of intelligence agencies, including the FBI and the NSA. That contract is set to expire in 2023 and this new award – managed by the CIA – will further weaken Amazon’s once privileged position in the federal money sweepstakes, which had already taken a hard hit when Microsoft was unexpectedly chosen over Bezos’ company for the Department of Defense’s own cloud services contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program.

Google Contractor Moving Work From Pittsburgh To Poland To Bust Union

October 9, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. , , ,
Pittsburgh, PA -Today the NLRB charged Google Contractor HCL with moving work from Pittsburgh to Poland, citing that the move was a way to bust the newly formed Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals. The NLRB Region 6, based in Pittsburgh, charged HCL with breaking labor law and refusing to negotiate a bargain in good faith with the Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals. Most egregiously, the NLRB charged HCL with moving work to lower-paid tech workers in Krakow, Poland. 

Court Rules That Google Can Legally Manipulate Searches To Influence Political Results

March 14, 2020 By Shane Trejo, Bigleaguepolitics.com , ,
A court has ruled that Google has the right to legally manipulate searches in order to cause electoral interference and influence political results, rebuking a legal challenge from Democrat Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard sued the tech giant after Google bottled up her campaign as it was rising following a strong performance in a presidential debate.

Google Secretly Harvests The Health Data Of Millions

November 30, 2019 Julienne Tveten, Truthdig.com , ,
Google has been harvesting the health data of tens of millions of U.S. patients since 2018, unbeknownst to those patients or their doctors, as revealed by a Nov. 11 investigation by the Wall Street Journal. According to the story, Ascension, a private network of some 2,600 hospitals and other health care facilities, had been systematically feeding the medical information to Google’s cloud infrastructure in what amounts to the largest data transfer in the health care field. Google, in turn, plans to “suggest” changes to patients’ care, possibly via machine learning.

50 Attorneys General Launch Antitrust Investigation Into Google

September 11, 2019 By Harper Neidig, Thehill.com , ,
A coalition of 50 attorneys general will be investigating Google for potential violations of antitrust law, a step that could potentially lead to a broad legal challenge to the company’s market dominance. The investigation, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D), was announced on the steps of the Supreme Court building Monday afternoon after months of rumors about states seeking to turn up the pressure on Silicon Valley. 

Tulsi Gabbard Vs Google Goliath

August 7, 2019 Rick Sterling, Blackagendareport.com , ,
"Google creates, operates, and controls its platform and services, including but not limited to Google Search, Google Ads, and Gmail as a public forum or its functional equivalent by intentionally and openly dedicating its platform for public use and public benefit, inviting the public to utilize Google as a forum for free speech. Google serves as a state actor by performing an exclusively and traditionally public function by regulating free speech within a public forum and helping to run elections." (p22)

Google Employees Protest Retaliation With International Sit-In

May 6, 2019 By Colin Lecher, Theverge.com , , ,
Google employees are holding a sit-in at offices around the world to protest alleged retaliation against workers. A Google employee told The Verge that hundreds were expected to be involved throughout the day, with sit-ins at offices scheduled for 11AM local time. A Google spokesperson said more than 200 employees participated in the New York sit-in, but that not all company offices participated. Employees in international offices, including London, also took part. At the sit-ins, employees shared stories of what they said were acts of retaliation.

Google Workers Walk Out Over Sexual Misconduct

November 1, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance , ,
Google employees around the world are staging a mass walkout Thursday in protest of sexual misconduct, following a major New York Times report last week that named executives who had been accused of sexual misconduct. The walkout, “Walkout For Real Change,” involves thousands of workers taking part in the protest which began at 11 am. See the hashtag #GoogleWalkout. Below are some tweets describing the walk out.

Omidyar’s Intercept Teams Up With War-Propaganda Firm Bellingcat

October 10, 2018 By Whitney Webb, Mintpressnews.com , , ,
NEW YORK — The Intercept, along with its parent company First Look Media, recently hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using “open source” tools — with Bellingcat’s past, controversial investigations for use as case studies. The exact details of what occurred during the workshop have not been made public and Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins declined to elaborate on the workshop when pressed on social media. The decision on the part of The Intercept is particularly troubling given that the publication has long been associated with the track records of its founding members, such as Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald...

Groups Backed By Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon Push For Return Of Net Neutrality Rules

August 29, 2018 By Roger Cheng, Cnet.com     , , , ,
On Monday, the Internet Association, Entertainment Software Association, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Writers Guild of America filed a brief with a US Appeals Court in support of Mozilla's lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission to bring back the rules governing an open internet. The groups represent power players such as Google parent Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. "It's indisputable that net neutrality protections help consumers, promote innovation, and foster competition online," said IA President and CEO Michael Beckerman in a statement.  This comes a week after attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia filed a brief urging the same court to reverse the FCC rollback, according to CBS News.

Google And Facebook Are Strangling The Free Press To Death

July 29, 2018 Barry Lynn, The Guardian , ,
This week’s firing by the New York Daily News of half the paper’s staff shines a different light on the matter. The reason that was given by the publisher – a sharp decline in revenue – is largely the result of Google abusing its monopoly over online advertising, in tandem with Facebook. Vestager’s move against Android does nothing to protect the free press in Europe or America. This means it’s time for other regulators and legislators in America and in Europe to speed the process of bringing Google to heel.

Google Sets Limits But Allows Work For Military

June 11, 2018 Tom Simonite, Wired , ,
Earier this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described artificial intelligence as more profound to humanity than fire. Thursday, after protests from thousands of Google employees over a Pentagon project, Pichai offered guidelines for how Google will—and won’t—use the technology. One thing Pichai says Google won’t do: work on AI for weapons. But the guidelines leave much to the discretion of company executives and allow Google to continue to work for the military. The ground rules are a response to more than 4,500 Googlers signing a letter protesting the company’s involvement in a Pentagon project called Maven that uses machine learning to interpret drone surveillance video. The dissenting employees asked Google to swear off all military work. Pichai’s response? We hear you, but you can trust us to do this responsibly.

SF Protesters Say No To “Techsploitation,” Block Buses With Scooters

June 7, 2018 By Charlotte Silver and Abraham Rodriguez, Missionlocal.org , , ,
Fifty people blocked 14 tech buses by piling scooters in their path and lighting an orange flare at 24th and Valencia. One bus driver tried to move the scooters, but soon resigned himself to just waiting. A passerby sprayed graffiti on one of the idle buses. The group of housing activists reject what they see as tech companies “littering the city,” while homeless encampments are swept away. “This is a message from the community,” said Tony Robles, a community organizer focused on housing for seniors with disabilities. He says that tech companies like Bird, a scooter company, act with impunity and dump stuff in the neighborhoods without considering the needs of current residents. People testified on a PA system about how their lives have been transformed by what they call a tech takeover.
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