Bloomberg News reports that employees of the largest search engine Google took to the streets. The reason being job cuts and lower wages. These protests were staged on both the West and East coasts this week to highlight labor conditions. This scenario has been mainly for the subcontracted workers and thousands of co-workers that were recently shown the door.
Sites of Protest
One rally was held on Wednesday at Mountain View California, which is Google headquarters. The other one was held at the corporate offices in New York City on Thursday. The rally on Thursday was staged after Google announced the biggest-ever layoff removing 12,000 positions accounting for around 6% of the workforce globally. Recently, other tech companies laid off their workers as well. These companies include Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp, and Salesforce Inc.
Layoffs Despite Profits
The protest that was staged in New York was held after Alphabet Inc revealed its $13.6 billion in profit in the fourth quarter results. The rally had as many as 50 employees on Ninth Avenue, just outside the Google store when they started to protest.
Alberta Devor who has been associated with the company as a software engineer said that Google managed to debunk a rationale of its own for firing 12,000 co-workers. He also said that there are clear indications that the menial savings the company is putting into its pocket by firing workers are nothing compared to the billions the company is making from the last quarter’s profits and buybacks.
Alphabet Workers Union
Demonstrators from Alphabet Workers Union staged rallies. It is a “minority union” that does not enjoy collective bargaining rights. The members of the group include employees as well as subcontractors.
Devor revealed Bloomberg News reports that today it is clear that the issues that have been taken up have impacted the lives of all Google workers irrespective of their title or job status. Devor has been associated with Google for more than three years. He is a member of AWU.
At the rally that was staged in California, several dozens of subcontractors were blamed for substandard conditions existing. This also includes what they referred to as “poverty wages and no benefits”. They have been looking into stuff like content review for helping train the algorithms that are AI-powered and screening YouTube clips and identifying offensive and sensitive material. However, workers have accused that the payment they received was way below the minimum standards of Google and is beneficial for the direct contract workers of the company.
