By Jeonghun Kim
Introduction
“Don’t be evil” was the opening and closing remarks of Google’s code of conduct until 2018.It was pronounced first by its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in their 2004 founders’ letter: “Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.” This ethical vision that Google makes the world better via technology has attracted and retained the exceptional star players. Google has also materialized this vision into egalitarian and innovative cultures, and participative work practices by which the talented workers have displayed their ingenuity. The ethical discourse and innovative culture and practices have served as competitive advantages of Google and made them become a leading company of the 21st century.
Ironically, “Don’t be evil” was a main impetus of the birth of Alphabet Workers Union (AWU). With its rapid growth, Google started forsaking its vision and implementing immoral policies to maximize profits. Against the hypocrisy of the management, Google’s workers have been fighting for protecting their vision and making their company a better place. For example, in 2018, thousands of employees participated in a protect called “Walkout for Real Change”, calling for the company to handle sexual harassment cases in a proper way. As a result of a culminating years of activism, they organized AWU to protect “Alphabet workers, our global society, and our world” in January 2021 (https://alphabetworkersunion.org/principles/mission-statement/). On the contrary to what Google has done, one of the main goals of AWU is to ensure the company to act ethically and use its technology to serve the public good.
The case of AWU is an exemplar of how workers can reclaim ethical discourse and voice from employers and use them to build power resources in the knowledge economy. As knowledge is becoming a critically important component of competitive advantage, ethical or communal discourse and participatory work practices are being widely diffused in the world of business these days to facilitate producing and sharing knowledge within organizations. Against this backdrop, the lessons we can take from AWU’s success in organizing knowledge workers might provide valuable insights applicable to organizing workers in the other industries.
Case description
Ethical discourse and participatory work practices
Creativity is a core capability of IT companies. In this sense, attracting, retaining, and leveraging talented employees are essential activities for the companies to survive in the fierce competition in the IT industry. On top of that, to leverage talented employees’ creativity, it is necessary to design organizational practices that effectively coordinate a horizontal and vertical division of labor. Specifically, a trust-based coordination mechanism is known to be more effective than a price or authority-based mechanism in dealing with knowledge-based assets (Adler, 2001). In this sense, Google’s moto, “Don’t be evil” and participatory work practices can be understood. The ethical vision gives the workers a sense of doing right thing. As mentioned in the 2004 founders’ letter, such symbolic resources or ideological currency can attract and retain talented employees in Google (Coyle-Shapiro et al 2019). Furthermore, prosocial motivation spurred by this vision can be the wellspring of creativity, combined with internal motivation (Grant & Berry, 2011). This ethical discourse has synergy effects on creating and sharing knowledge when it is supported by egalitarian culture and participatory work practices (Alder, 2001). For example, Google has held TGIF meeting on a regular basis for the top management to directly communicate with their lay employees. Also, Google’ employees can subscribe to their coworkers’ calendars to check out what is going on in the company. Lastly, Google’ employees can search for everything related to the company from cafeteria menus to project information by using Moma, a company intranet.
A culmination of years of activism
The establishment of AWU is a result of the culmination of years of Google workers’ mobilization. Since 2011, there has constantly been worker-led mobilizations when the management mistreated the workers and betrayed its ethical vision to pursue profits. One of the interesting points of these unionizing processes is that ethical discourse and participatory work practices, originally designed to maximize profits, were utilized as tools to mobilize and organize workers. The next mobilizations are representative cases showing why and how Google workers have been going against the company.
In 2011, Google announced the Google+ “real names only” policy requiring its users to reveal their real name. In response to this policy, many google workers were outraged because it can make people who are LGBTQ and activists in authoritarian countries silent. The workers working on this project pointed out the potential harmfulness, and a Google worker, who is known online as Skud, launched the “My Name is Me” campaign, a website to collect voices of internal and external supporters. Over three years, this campaign kept pressuring the company, eventually leading to the withdrawal of the “real names only” policy. This case shows that Google workers strongly internalize the “Don’t be evil” vision, and company’s violation of its vision sparks workers’ collective actions to restore justice.
The “Walkout for Real Change” in 2018 is an excellent case documenting that the hypocrisy of the company leads to a massive mobilization of workers. In 2018, Google gave a $ 90 million exit package to an executive who was accused of sexually harassing a worker. In response to this inappropriate handling of the sexual harassment issue, many workers believing in the “Don’t be evil” vision felt outrated and shamed, and wanted to “display their value.” These feelings, such as anger and shame, were strong drives to make them to participate in many activities against the company’s misconduct. In this climate, seven core organizers launched the “Walkout for Real Change” campaign and opened @GoogleWalkout, a Twitter’ account. The walkout images and videos went on viral via the account, and over 60 percent of Google’s offices around the world participated in this movement, leading to the concession of the management.
Apart from motivation to take collective actions, Google’s participatory work practices has provided workers with tools against Google. In 2017, Google made a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense and launched a project known as Marven planned to develop AI to monitor people and vehicles in video footage by drones. Even though it was undisclosed, the basic information about the project was posted on a launch calendar. Hearing rumors about the project, several activists started digging deeper the details of the project. Resonating with an internal blog post uploaded by an activist, other workers began showing their concerns about the unethical purpose of the project. To foil the project, a lot of workers signed petitions and put pressure on the management at the town-hall meeting. Finally, in 2018, the management announced that Google would not renew the project. In a similar way, activists had success in stopping another secret project called Dragonfly, designed to filter search results on behalf of the Chinese government. These struggles vividly show how Google workers utilized participatory work practices, such as internal search tools and blogs, Google Docs, protests letters, discussion on Google Plus, and town-hall meeting, to protect their labor rights and ethical values.
In response to workers’ resistance, Google started changing their directions. The management removed its vision “Don’ be evil” from its code of conduct in April 2018. Also, in May 2018, announcing a “need to know” policy, Google restricted workers’ open access to projects, and warned them that workers who access confidential materials could be disciplined and fired. It came into play in November 2019. Google fired four activists in the name of accessing need-to-know documents. This backlash served as an important turning point. Workers started seriously thinking of organizing union to protect themselves from the company’ aggressive reactions. Some of activists reached out to the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and embarked on unionizing workers. Finally, their efforts came to fruition with the establishment of Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) in January 2021.
Reclaiming workplace democracy and ethical vision
AWU introduces its identities and orientations on its website by quoting their members answers to several questions: why did you join the union, why do you think a union is necessary, what do you want the union to be, what do you want the union to do, what is the one thing you would change at Alphabet. Two common threads running through these answers are as follows. First, internally, AUW’ members consider workplace democracy as one of the most important goals of AUW. Many members think that joining union is an effective way to protect themselves from the management’ retaliation and restore democratic decision-making processes in organizations as cited below: “I’ve seen a lively culture of internal discussion and debate about workplace policies and product decisions become stifled and limited by leadership. I believe a union is necessary to help restore a real culture of worker participation and protect those who speak out against discrimination, unethical product decisions, and other issues in the workplace.” Furthermore, their conception of workplace democracy is beyond workplaces. Many members think that contractors, vendors, and temporary workers are also core members that union should represent and stand together. Solidarity with other workers is another important pillar of AUW’ vision of workplace democracy. Second, externally, many workers mention that AUW should bring back “Don’t be evil” again into Google. Based on their democratic power at workplaces, AUW’ members believe that AUW should foil unethical decisions of the management and lead Google to make the world better. One member’ quote epitomize this spirit: “Google’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” I know that by standing together with my coworkers, we can actively fight for good for each other in the workplace and for the millions of people who use our products every day.”
Analysis of Power Resources
1) Societal Power & Associational Power
The ethical vision of Google is deeply ingrained in workers’ identities so that they feel shame and anger when Google abandons its ethical principle to pursue profits. Against this backdrop, a narrative reclaiming their ethical vision from the management serves as a powerful tool to elicit participation and support from workers. In the culmination of activism, this narrative tapped into workers’ shared identities and help mobilized them into collective actions, leading to unionization. Likewise, the AWU case show how the intangible and ethical discourse can be transformed into associational power. In addition, hypocritic decisions made by the management, which were contrasted with workers’ collective actions demanding social justice, drew attention from the media and received much coverage. The public opinion favorable to Google workers strengthened workers’ legitimacy and put pressure on the management to withdraw their decisions.
2) Structural Power
Producing software is highly knowledge intensive. Also, it needs sophisticated collaboration and coordination among workers. Thus, it is not easy to replace Google workers who participate in collective actions with substitute workers. Also, participatory work practices designed to elicit creativity from workers provide workers with power to access the information of secret projects and share it with coworkers. Based on this information, activists publicized the ethical issues of the projects and encouraged coworkers to withdraw their efforts from the projects. As such, because individual Google workers played an important role in operating Google’ business, collective actions of the workers had success in influencing the management’ decisions.
3) Institutional Power
AWU is a minority union. AWU have not yet attained legal status from National Labor Relations Board. However, because Google workers are witnessing that the management keep busting union and threatening its members not to speak up, AWU continue to gain legal status to protect their workers and conclude a legally legitimate collective bargaining with the management.
Comparison with unions in the IT and game industries in Korea
In 2018, workplace democracy came to the fore in the IT and game industries in Korea. It is because new unions sprung up in the industries, demanding horizontal and democratic communication. Especially, four unions affiliated with the Chemistry & Textile Federation of Unions were leading the labor movement in the industries: Naver union, Kakao union, Nexon union, and SmileGate union. To build workers’ power and make a real change, these unions adopted new strategies and had success in concluding collective agreements with employers. Recently, these successes are resonating other workers in the industries, leading to the establishment of unions in other IT and game companies.
These unions have much in common with AWU in terms of demanding workplace democracy. Similar to Google, in their early stages, these companies had egalitarian and family-like cultures, where workers were able to speak up their concerns and suggestions. However, with the growth of the companies, the management started bureaucratizing organizational structures and monopolizing information necessary to make decisions. Using this informational asymmetry, the management arbitrarily made decisions about workers’ working conditions, such as performance pay, deployment, working hours, and layoff. Because such arbitrary decisions are main sources of workers’ discontents, these unions have striven to expand workers’ power to intervene in making decisions at workplaces. Also, like AWU, solidarity is an important principle of these unions. For example, unions members in software development branches use their structural power to put pressure on the management to conclude collective agreement with unions in operation branches whose employees are mostly temporary workers.
However, differing from AWU, these unions adopted rebranding strategy to build collective identities among individualistic workers. In the case of Google, Google workers already shared collective identities revolving around the “Don’t be evil” vision. Activists and AUW were able to easily utilize pre-existing collective identities to mobilize and organize workers. In contrast, workers in the IT and game industries did not have shared collective identities. Rather, many workers shared stigmatized union images; unions are bureaucratic, self-serving, and outdated. Thus, union activists strove to find out the point of optimal distinctiveness between newness and oldness to build positive and collective identities. For example, each union named themselves after their occupational identities or visions. Naming after the way to call themselves in the company, one union named their union as Crew union. Also, by using their marketing skills, union activists distributed union merchandises or goods to their members. Lastly, instead of staging strikes in a traditional way, one of the unions went on strike by watching together a movie, Avengers. As such, these unions rebranded union activities in a way effectively resonating with their members, and ameliorated workers’ resistance to unions.
Lastly, compared to AWU, bread-and-butter issues are more central to the IT and game unions in Korea. While it seems that Google hires contract, temporary, and vendor developers to deal with market uncertainty and cuts costs, the unionized companies in Korea spin off their projects in the form of independent branches or corporations. As a result, although most software developers in the companies are regular workers, they felt that their jobs might be removed or spun off. Because the management used the centralized information to justify or hide spin-off or job change related decisions, it was an urgent issue to conclude collective agreements and secure power to intervene in decision-making processes. In addition, differing from the United States, it is easier for workers to establish unions which have basic legal labor rights. Thus, as soon as unions were established, they embarked on collective bargaining with employers and negotiated about bread-and-butter issues.
Lessons Learned
- Workers can utilize resource pools formed by employers to build workers’ power. The case of AWU shows that the ethical vision and participatory workplaces, originally designed to elicit creativity from employers, were used by workers to build collective identities and go on collective actions against employers.
- Resources pools which workers can utilize are different according to the characteristics of companies’ strategies, labor market, national institutions. Although, commonly, workplace democracy is an important goal of AWU and the IT and game unions in Korea, the unions in Korea employ a different strategy to build collective identities, and mainly focus on bread-and-butter issues. It might be because while the unions in Korea did not share pre-existing collective identities, they faced more bread-and-butter issues and had more institutional resources to handle them with collective bargaining.
References
Adler, P. S. (2001). Market, hierarchy, and trust: The knowledge economy and the future of capitalism. Organization science, 12(2), 215-234.
Coyle-Shapiro, J. A. M., Pereira Costa, S., Doden, W., & Chang, C. (2019). Psychological contracts: Past, present, and future. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 145-169.
Conger, K (2018). Google Removes ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Clause From Its Code of Conduct. GIZMODO. May 18, 2018. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all- mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393.
Grant, A. M., & Berry, J. W. (2011). The necessity of others is the mother of invention: Intrinsic and prosocial motivations, perspective taking, and creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 54(1), 73-96.
Google (2004). 2004 Founders’ IPO Letter.
Mackinnon, R & Lim, H (2014). Google Plus Finally Gives Up on Its Ineffective, Dangerous Real-Name Policy. SLATE. July 17, 2014. https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/google-plus-finally-ditches-its-ineffective- dangerous-real-name-policy.html
Scheiber, N & Conger, K (2020). The Great Google Revolt. The New York Times. February 18, 2020.
Telford & Dwoskin (2018). Google employees worldwide walk out over allegations of sexual harassment, inequality within company. The Washington Post. November 01, 2018.
Solidarity and Campaigns 