Anti-Union Campaign in Full Swing at Google Express
Source: SF Weekly
By Julia Carrie Wong
While the rest of the on-demand economy struggles to come to terms with the fallout from start-ups' reliance on classifying employees as independent contractors, Google Express — which does not use independent contractors but instead subcontracts its workforce through a staffing agency — is facing labor troubles of its own. And the battle is heating up.
Workers employed by Adecco, which has about 140 people staffing the Palo Alto warehouse from which Google Express operates its South Bay on-demand delivery service, filed for a union election in late July, seeking representation from the Teamsters Local 853. At the time, Google and Adecco declined to comment on whether or not they would remain neutral in the election, which is scheduled to take place next week.
Now the union is alleging that Adecco is running an anti-union campaign and has retaliated against one worker who spoke to SF Weekly about his support for unionization by suspending him from work.
When Gabriel Cardenas, a 26-year-old warehouse worker who has been at Google Express for about eighteen months, agreed to an interview with SF Weekly, he invoked comments that Laszlo Bock, Google's Senior Vice President of People Operations, had given on KQED's Forum. Asked by a caller how Google would respond to "interference" in union organizing or retaliation by its own subcontractors (specifically referencing Google Bus drivers), Bock responded:
“Well, what I’ll say is that you know we have folks who are unionized, we have folks who are non-union, across the company. Folks have a legal right to organize without fear of retaliation. And that’s a critical and important thing and we respect that. I mean, there would not and will not be retaliation.”
FULL story at link.
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Read more: http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/08/14/anti-union-campaign-in-full-swing-at-google-express
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