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It’s Not Easy to Unionize at Tech Companies. But Google Employees Are Doing It.

Devin KatayamaSam HarnettEricka Cruz GuevarraKyana MoghadamAlan Montecillo
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Google employees walk off the job in 2018 to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct claims, on November 1, 2018, in Mountain View, California. Employees were seen staging walkouts at offices around the world after a report that Google gave $90 million in a severance package to Andy Rubin and covered up details of his sexual misconduct allegations, which triggered his departure. (Jason Trinca/Getty Images)

This week, 200+ employees at Google announced that they’ve formed a union. The Alphabet Workers Union, which is supported by Communications Workers of America (CWA), is the first of its kind at Google, and will include dues-paying members, an elected board of directors, and paid organizing staff. For now, it still represents a small fraction of the roughly 260,000 workers at Alphabet. But it’s still a big deal — especially in Silicon Valley, where it’s so hard to organize at all.

Guest: Sam Harnett, Silicon Valley Reporter for KQED


Read the transcript here.

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