‘We’d had enough’: Why are Google employees unionizing?

More than 400 employees of Google and the parent organization Alphabet Inc. announced the creation of an employees union on Monday. Dubbed the Alphabet Workers Union, it is a watershed moment in staunchly anti-union Silicon Valley, where no other union of this kind exists. This union is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a union that represents workers in telecommunications and media in the United States and Canada.

The group has already received an outpouring of support with both Senator Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. “I stand in solidarity with @AlphabetWorkers who are organizing to form a union at Google. What these workers are fighting for is not radical. They want fair wages and a workplace free from abuse, retaliation, intimidation and discrimination. And that is exactly what they deserve.” tweeted Sanders. Google software engineer Kimberly Wilber, an activist with the new group, told Bloomberg that the union was their way of building power “so executives can’t ignore us”. “We’d had enough,” wrote the union’s vice chair and executive chair in an op-ed piece in the New York Times.