Kate Conger, in the New York Times:

The new union, called the Alphabet Workers Union after Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was organized in secret for the better part of a year and elected its leadership last month. The group is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents workers in telecommunications and media in the United States and Canada.

But unlike a traditional union, which demands that an employer come to the bargaining table to agree on a contract, the Alphabet Workers Union is a so-called minority union that represents a fraction of the company’s more than 260,000 full-time employees and contractors. Workers said it was primarily an effort to give structure and longevity to activism at Google, rather than to negotiate for a contract.

Google has, in many ways, been representative the challenges that face this generation of tech workers. They have a large, very socially liberal and activist employee base that embodies many of the (at least purported) ideals of the Bay Area. At the management level, though, Google has struggled with managing explosive growth, how the company deals with government, and issues of diversity and inclusion. Google was where James Damore went off on his pitiful tirade about an “ideological echo chamber” and it’s also the company that recently fired Timnit Gebru for doing her job as an ethicist. The union, with 250 members (Google currently employs over 120,000 people) and affilication with the Communication Workers of America (who also represent unions at media orgs, like the Times), is a great start and one I’m happy to see.

Collective Action in Tech has a solid explainer about non-contract unions and what the Alphabet Workers Union is hoping to accomplish. This piece in Vice is also good and includes some additional background details about the CWA’s efforts to unionize tech employees.