[kbenson]

The thing about collective bargaining is that it's collective and a strategy to help yourself, and even when it's a stand to help some other union, it's to help strengthen unions in general, which helps your own Union, and those your own bargaining power.

Oh, and it's all done under a group to make help avoid consequences.

All sane choices to make, but not exactly what I meant to convey by taking a stand on moral or ethical convictions. I more meant being willing to deal with the consequences when you don't really have enough power to force that change. I wasn't trying to paint Google employees as overly noble, just somewhat that and also priveleged and naive. And of course that's just my perception from the outside.

[chrisseaton]

Maybe it's different where you are - but here in the UK working-class unions do often take stands on moral and political issues outside their own interests.

A major example is the massive action they took against South African apartheid in the 1980s - a political issue many thousands of miles from their interests.

https://www.aamarchives.org/who-was-involved/trade-unionists...

Many students' unions vote to ban newspapers they don't like from campus, and things like that as well.

Google employees aren't even remotely near that kind of practical stand yet.