Google, whose employees have captured international attention in recent months through high-profile protests of workplace policies, has been quietly urging the U.S. government to narrow legal protection for workers organizing online.
During the Obama administration, the National Labor Relations Board broadened employees’ rights to use their workplace email system to organize around issues on the job. In a 2014 case, Purple Communications, the agency restricted companies from punishing employees for using their workplace email systems for activities like circulating petitions or fomenting walkouts, as well as trying to form a union. In filings in May 2017 and November 2018, obtained via Freedom of Information Act request, Alphabet Inc.’s Google urged the National Labor Relations Board to undo that precedent.
When Google employees protested their company’s policies en masse in walkouts all over the world – organised through company e-mail – Google’s CEO and leadership publicly supported them. Behind their backs, though, they are trying very hard to make such protests much harder to organise.
Charming.
Do no evil. Heh.
https://imgflip.com/i/2rz71n
I don’t agree with some of the more ideological protests coming out of Google’s employee base, but I definitely want them to still have the right to do it without punitive reactions from their employers.
I’m not entirely sure that employers should even be given say when it comes to employee rights anyway. They have a vested interest in limiting or eliminating them, and their opinions aren’t really relevant when we’re talking about employee right anyway. The point is to give them the right to do things that employers probably don’t like. We wouldn’t need to make them legally protected rights otherwise.
Well, yeah, if we all agreed on a matter, there wouldn’t be ideological protests.
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
And no, that’s not from Futurama – it’s Evelyn Hall.
Thanks, beat me to that response. Exactly what I meant.
I might not agree with every protest but they most definitely should have the right to organize and perform those protests.
And how does this hinder ideological protests and trigger punitive reactions?
um… huh?
The entire article is about google wanting to undo a precedent that prohibits employers from hintering ideological protests and using punitive reactions.
I’m saying that precedent should stand.
Google employees should use Facebook to organize. That alone would make Google listen.