Nuked The alphabet workers union (awu) is in turmoil following the announcement of an international alliance on Monday. The alliance, alpha global, was billed as a worker-led initiative, but members in the us say they did n’t know about it until the verge published an exclusive. That piece included a quote from awu executive council member parul koul, which she says she did n’t write.
Multiple sources tell the verge that some awu organizers are considering pushing the group to disaffiliate from the Communications Workers of America. The news was an unwelcome surprise to union members who expect the alphabet workers union to run democratically.
Awu executive council member auni ahsan said:’our primary focus as a union is n’t affiliation or Disaffiliation’.
As a so-called minority Union, it is n’t recognized by the National Labor Relations board. Its power comes in part from uniting alphabet workers and swelling its membership base to mount public pressure campaigns.
Since the union went public on January 4th, it’s grown from 230 members to more than 800. Some members have raised concerns that the CWA pushed the union to go public prematurely.
The alphabet union’s rapid expansion has also underlined the need for clear rules and processes. So far, awu has called on YouTube to permanently ban Donald Trump.
That did n’t happen with the global alliance announcement. That was n’t happening with the announcement. The announcement did n’t take place.
Uni global Union, a Switzerland-based Federation of labor unions, organized the coalition, and worked with at least one CWA representative on the rollout strategy. The idea was to bring together unions representing Google workers across the globe and allow members to share information more easily.
Uni sent out a press release stating that’alphabet workers’ announced a new global union alliance to build a more ethical and accountable company’. Cwa representative Wes mcenany told the verge that the alliance was worker-led in a phone call about the announcement.
A Google worker in Europe also said they had n’t known about the announcement, but noted they typically do n’t find out about the news before it becomes public.
Cwa said there had been a mixup in the messaging. Cwa spokesperson said there was a mix-up in the message.
On January 25th, awu called an emergency meeting. She stressed that she’d never said the quote attributed to her in the press release.
Koul did not respond to a request for comment from the verge. koul did n’t respond to the requests for comment.
Uni told the verge that mcenany was’very involved’ in the alliance. mcenany spoke to the verge three days prior to the article’s publication.
Koul announced mcenany’s departure from his role with awu. He is not leaving CWA altogether. mcenany will not leave CWA altogether.
Cwa sent out a newsletter that, again, falsely attributed the quote to koul. On January 29th, CWA wrote a newsletter, which falsely attributed it to koul.
In 2019, Google fired Kathryn Spiers and four other workers who were engaged in workplace organizing. When CWA offered to pay the workers’ legal fees, the group agreed, with the understanding that CWA would not publish information about the case without first getting their approval. Despite that understanding, workers say CWA put out a press release mentioning Spiers, before she’d been fired and her name had become public, and without getting her approval.
Spiers spoke about her experience with CWA and said she wanted to acknowledge that the announcement was not an isolated incident. Now, she’s participating in a campaign to disaffiliate from the larger organization.
The campaign could threaten to destabilize awu, a nascent union still in its first month of public life. But it might also be a sign that the organization is working as intended.
In 2020, the Communications Workers of America launched code-cwa, a campaign dedicated to unionizing workers in the tech industry. Losing Google could make it more difficult for CWA to organize staff at other big tech companies.
Disaffiliation might be the only option for some Google workers. If the campaign fails, they say they are likely to leave the organization.
