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GOOGLERS UNITE IGNORE UNIONS USE THE HONG KONG METHOD

This article is directed at Google employees who participated in or wanted to participate in recent  walkouts  and signed  open letters  to management.   Googlers stop wasting your time trying to form a union or engaging in public organizing efforts, there is a more effective way to get management to bow to your demands and without the risk of termination. There is no need to risk losing your job like  Laurence Berland, Sophie Waldman, Paul Duke and Rebecca Rivers.   Google management will squash your efforts to align with the Communication Workers of America. The CWA only wants your union dues and will never protect you from discrimination and retaliation under federal and state employment laws.

Back in the fall of 2019, the NY Times published an  article  about how disrespected Google employees were embracing and becoming inspired by a recently republished short  book  about labor organizing and solidarity to effect changes within the company.   Curious, I purchased the small paperback to understand why Googlers were continuing to protest under the following call to action: œA company is nothing without its workers. From the moment we start at Google we’re told that we aren’t just employees; we’re owners. Every person who walked out today is an owner, and the owners say: Time’s up. (Source).

The NY Times story summarized the current movement at Google as follows: œSome workers argued that they could win fairer pay policies and a full accounting of harassment claims by filing lawsuits or seeking to unionize. But the argument that gained the upper hand, especially as the debate escalated in the weeks after the walkout, held that those approaches would be futile, according to two people involved.  Those who felt this way contended that only a less formal, worker-led organization could succeed, by waging mass resistance or implicitly threatening to do so

For Googlers, the way forward in their labor battle to effect positive change should not and cannot in any way remotely relate to a œlabor organization as that term is defined under the  National Labor Relations Act.   Management at Google has already brought in their consultants to œfix the problem, mainly by convincing employees not to organize.  There is a new way to maintain a collective voice but without the fear of reprisal and termination.

JUST SAY œNO TO UNIONS

Googlers must vote œNo to unionization and collective bargaining, but vote œYes
to a decentralized and leaderless collective.   Liz Shuler, the secretary-treasurer of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. stated in the NY Times article above, œYou don’t have the law behind you to protect you like you would if you have recognized agents like a union, Either you accept Ms. Shuler’s mantra, and that of union activists nationwide, or you move forward, all the way forward, and accept the  advent of a new non-unionization movement  that is happening right now. The NLRA won’t catch up to this new momentum because the statute is irrelevant.   Management will not know how to quell this collectivism because there is no centralized labor organization to bargain with and that’s the essential point, it is leaderless and decentralized.

THE HONG KONG PROTEST METHOD

Employees can now realize their true leverage to invoke change within their organizations, without the need to form a represented collective bargaining unit to address their concerns with management.  I now propose the  Hong Kong Protest Method  to employment civil disobedience, but without the element of violence. A decentralized and leaderless movement that has no discernable identity for government regulators to challenge them. Yet the protest movement in Hong Kong fully describes its’ strategy of inclusion via  Wikipedia, œ[t]hrough a  participatory process  of  digital democracy  activists are able to collaborate by voting on tactics and brainstorming next moves in an  egalitarian  manner in which everybody has an equal say.  Telegram  chat groups and online forums with  voting mechanisms  to  make collective decisions  have facilitated this type of flexible co-ordination.

Googlers now have access to technology on their phones to air their concerns collectively under the radar in order to defeat a formidable opponent like management. Under the cloak of pseudonyms on message boards, airdrop communication broadcasts and other forms of subversive communications, employees can complain about important issues such as forced arbitration, sexual harassment, ending pay inequality, boycotting Project Dragonfly, without the fear of retaliation. What has worked in Hong Kong can work here inside of Google.

It is time to begin and give the real owners of Google a fair say in the direction of the company. Management will have no choice but to tolerate your dissent, because Google can’t fire all of you!

Googlers Unite Ignore Unions Use the Hong Kong Method. If you would like more information about this article, please contact our employment attorneys in Connecticut and New York, Carey & Associates PC at    or 203-255-4150.

Employees Do Not Need Unions in This New Era of Employee Activism