A group of 40 YouTube Music workers went on strike Friday. Striking workers employed by Alphabet subcontractor Cognizant allege that management at both companies used unfair labor practices to obstruct union activity.
“Now the majority of our department is ready to vote yes. [National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)] election,” YouTube Music generalist Sam Regan watched in a Facebook livestream of the strike in Austin, Texas. “In retaliation for our efforts to organize, our employers are enforcing the end of remote work before voting. This dramatically reduces the fair voting conditions mandated by federal law. It will hinder you.”
YouTube Music’s content operations team is scheduled to return to the Austin office on Monday. But according to the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), the majority of workers are employed remotely, and almost a quarter are not based in Texas.
AWU said in a press release that “workers are paid only $19 an hour and cannot afford to pay for travel, travel and childcare.”
On January 23, AWU, which is affiliated with Telecommunications Workers of America, filed unfair labor practices charges against the NLRB. Under national law, it is illegal for employers to interfere in employee organizing or retaliate against workers who participate in organizing activities.
Two weeks ago, the company laid off 12,000 people, or 6% of its global workforce. Despite the job cuts, Alphabet said in its quarterly earnings report on Thursday that he made a profit of $13.6 billion. About 50 employees protested the recent layoffs outside his nearby Google store when Alphabet announced the results.
Another group of Google employees, a group of “search evaluators” who train, test and evaluate search algorithms, took action at Google headquarters on February 1st. In addition, there are other benefits such as medical care, tax-free tuition reimbursement, and employee assistance programs. But search evaluators say they’re “earning the wages of poverty for no benefit.” The group filed a petition with Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, asking leadership to include these workers in his Alphabet expansion workforce.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
