Just after 9am on Thursday, roughly 100 Google workers gathered outside the company’s Mountain View headquarters, placards in hand, to press a demand that would once have sounded quaint: let us keep our jobs.
The rally, organised by the Alphabet Workers Union, ended with the delivery of a petition signed by more than 4,500 staff to chief executive Sundar Pichai and three senior leaders.
The union, which operates as CWA Local 9009, has spent roughly 18 months building its Googlers for Job Security campaign, undeterred by earlier claims that the company built a surveillance tool to monitor unionising staff.
It is not the only workforce pushing back, with Meta employees having staged their own protest over mouse-tracking before that company’s latest round of cuts.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!The union’s four demands are unusually specific. Workers want guaranteed severance for anyone laid off, set no lower than the packages Google paid in January 2023, and voluntary exit packages offered before any involuntary cuts.
