Google Illegally Lays Off AI Workers For Forming Union
by Shahnawaz Alam Human Resources 04 August 2023
The Alphabet Workers Union accused Google of violating federal labor law. The labor law prohibits the retaliation of employers against the employees who are organizing.
Alphabet Inc. has allegedly ended employment contracts with a massive number of Google Help Workers because they were trying to unionize. These unionized people had complained to the US Labor Board about this fact.
The Alphabet Workers Union has complained to the US labor board against Google’s act to retaliate against employees who are organizing or unionizing. According to federal law, any company cannot retaliate against employees for unionizing.
However, in July, Google informed employees (118 writers, graphic designers, and launch co-ordinates who created both internal and external Google Content) that they would lose their jobs as per the Thursday filing with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board).
A vendor called Accenture Plc. Employees people who are responsible for improving the quality of answers by the Google search engine or the AI chatbot provided by Google.
But, according to the Union, Alphabet Inc. is also the boss of these employees. It has requested the NLRB to designate Alphabet as a “joint employer” of the employees of Accenture. It means that a company with immense control over a group of employees needs to be responsible for their treatment of the employees had they choose to unionize.
Anjail Muhammad, who was told that her contract with Accenture would be terminated because of organizing, has said that the decision “feels retaliatory,”
However, there was no immediate response from Accenture regarding the employee cut-off. However, a company spokesperson did address that Accenture is not against, in fact, supporting the employees’ right to form a union.
Later, they said – “As conveyed to our people recently, these workforce decisions were made prior to any notification to us of potential union activity.”
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