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by langfan 1149 days ago
>Held via mail-in ballot, the election creates a bargaining unit with the Alphabet Workers Union — an organization affiliated with the Communications Workers of America that, until now, has represented only one office of unionized Google workers, a contracted Fiber retail shop in Missouri. Those workers opted to drop Google from their petition.

>A spokesperson for Google said the company has no objection to Wednesday’s union vote but reiterated its stance that Cognizant is the sole employer. A Cognizant spokesperson said the company is “committed to continuing our mission as a team and delivering for our client” in the wake of the election.

>“My coworkers and I have spoken, time and time again — we want, and have won, a protected voice on the job to bring both Alphabet and Cognizant to the negotiating table so that we can win the fair working conditions we deserve,” Maxwell Longfield, a YouTube Music contractor through Cognizant, said in an AWU statement.

>Google and Cognizant have until May 3 to file an objection to the election.

>As the unionization process moves forward in Texas, the NLRB is investigating an unfair labor practice complaint by AWU, which contends that Cognizant and Google illegally interfered with the union’s formation — a practice known as union busting. After workers filed a petition for unionization, Cognizant changed its return-to-office policy and moved work to other offices, the complaint says.

>Cognizant allegedly told workers that failure to move to and work from the Austin office would be treated as “job abandonment” and a “voluntary termination.” The return-to-office change prompted 40 workers to protest with an “unfair labor practice strike” — such strikes prevent employers from laying off workers. AWU said in a statement that the costs of in-person work, from sudden relocation to child care, aren’t affordable for YouTube Music workers, who make as little as $19 an hour.

1 comments

> as little as $19 an hour

That is about $40k per year.

Median individual income in San Francisco was $63,934 in 2021[1].

USA incomes are usually given for the household and are usually given as the average, which makes it hard to compare against an hourly amount. median individual income was $37,522 for the USA[2].

[1] https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/san-francisc...

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

It’s hard to really grok what the means for this type of comparison. For census data, information is self-reported and often under reported income doesn’t include many common sources of money.

Additionally, median income driven down by the number of people living on social security, and many of those get benefits like housing subsidy that aren’t income.

It’s a good metric to compare areas, not jobs.

$40k/year in Austin (approximately the median individual income, per Google) probably goes further than $64k in SF.