[jariel]

Google and Amazon unions represent quite fundamentally different kinds of organizing principles.

The Amazon union is of the much more classical form, is well past due, it's not entirely necessary, but it would be beneficial.

I don't actually think that regular Google employees should be unionized, rather, it should be the non-technical staff, contractors and so many people not in privileged positions that should be probably be unionized to the exclusion of the talent, who want to form their union for entirely different reasons. I do not believe that the Google Union is oriented towards helping those who actually are powerless.

Google technical staff are the most privileged and well taken care of workers literally in the entire world.

[rjstreur]

So whether workers should be allowed to unionize should depend on which changes they are fighting for? Where's the line of powerlessness a union's beneficiaries need to be under in order for the union to be valid in your perspective?

It seems like the main actions taken by the Google employees' union so far have been to push the company to behave more ethically, not to enhance their already-significant (indeed, outrageous) privilege. I see that as using their privileged positions as leverage for positive change, and I hope they succeed.

[jariel]

The Google Union is being formed so that specific employees to try to parlay their version of ethics - the assumption being that what they think of as 'ethical' is universally applicable, but this is definitely not the case.

I don't trust Google Employees one bit more than I trust Google Management, as far as certain issues of ethnics, I'd much rather have intelligent and pragmatic regulation.

Also, I didn't really hint at 'what was within their rights' or not.

Finally, and ironically, if we're going to be concerned about 'ethics' it might start with tidying up their own household and using the tools of organizing like Unions for which they were intended, which is to say helping those who have no power i.e. the gazillion of 'secondary' actors at Google.

If Googlers want to have more influence I'm not sure the Union model is it, because far more often than not, it's a system of entrenched power that will use their base to carry out the wishes of the vanguard. Student unions for example, tend to take positions that are wildly inconsistent with what the average student would want, but voter participation is low, the system is opaque, and many students don't pay any attention and are just resigned to the system. I don't know what the answer is, but it's probably not a union.