On Thursday, Alphabet Workers Union members held a press conference at Google’s Mountain View campus to draw attention to their demands for stronger worker protections.
“Google, Google, can't you see? We deserve security. Google, Google, you can't hide. We can see your greedy side,” chanted Google employees.
Kaylee Lubick is a Senior Software Engineer at Google, union member, and speaker at yesterday’s conference. She flew in from across the country to help hand-deliver a petition to Google’s management.
“We had sent out emails to let the SVPs and CEO know that we were coming to deliver the voice of the people. And all the SVPs happened to be out. Lights off in their suites, door locked, nobody's home. And when we got to Sundar [Pichai]'s, there was a spokesperson kind of waiting for us… you know, all we want is to be able to sit down with management and discuss how [we can] make this company better for everybody,” she said to KALW.
The union is asking for better severance packages, stronger job protections, and for voluntary layoffs to be offered before involuntary layoffs are mandated. The petition, which received over 4,500 signatures from Google employees, reflects a growing sentiment of fear over job security among tech workers.
“When our company laid off 12,000 people overnight in January 2023, that finally was the last piece for me of like, ‘Oh, they don't really care about us as people.’ We're just lines on a spreadsheet trying to make the number go up. And then I was like, 'It's not gonna get better if I just hope that it'll get better or hope that the executives have our best interests in mind,'" said Lubick.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported a market value of $4 trillion in July this year. Yet layoffs are still happening en masse there and across the tech industry. Other tech giants like Meta, Amazon, and Oracle have all issued layoff notices this year.
Google management hasn’t outright stated the reason behind the ongoing cuts. But Business Insider has linked their layoffs to the company’s top-down push for efficiency and staunch embrace of AI.
A spokesperson from Google told KALW, “We’re aware of the activity at our Mountain View campus and as always, we respect people's right to voice their opinions freely and gather safely.”
The Alphabet Workers Union requested that Google management respond to the petition within two weeks.
