Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday December 18 2019, @01:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the with-great-responsibility dept.

Kathryn Spiers says Google terminated her after she created a browser tool to notify employees of their organizing rights.

[...] Back in September, Google reached a settlement with the NLRB over earlier alleged violations of federal labor law. Under the settlement, Google was required to post a list of employee rights in its Mountain View headquarters.

[...] So when Google hired a consulting company known for its anti-union work, Spiers wrote a notification that would appear whenever Google employees visited the firm's website. The notification stated that "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." That's a legal term of art for worker organizing efforts. It also included a link to the worker rights notification mandated by the NLRB settlement.

[...] Two weeks later, on December 13, Spiers was fired.

[...] The complaint argues that her firing was an "attempt to quell Spiers and other employees from asserting their right to engage in concerted protected activities."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/engineer-says-google-fired-her-for-browser-pop-up-about-worker-rights/

Previous stories:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/12/04/0029250
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/11/26/1411249

Seems like a pattern of abuse to me. Just not necessarily by the employees.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday December 18 2019, @03:39PM (1 child)

    by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday December 18 2019, @03:39PM (#933747) Journal

    We also have it codified in law that all unions in the US are one of a duopoly [AFL-CIO & Teamsters]

    I'm interested now. Teamsters are part of a trade union coalition called Change to Win Organizing Center [wikipedia.org] (CTW), which broke off from AFL-CIO in 2005. Where in U.S. law are AFL-CIO, CTW, and no other organization recognized as reputable coalitions?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by TheReaperD on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:56AM

    by TheReaperD (5556) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:56AM (#938111)

    I'm not a lawyer so I don't know the actual legal code. What I learned the info from was farm workers in California were striking and formed their own private union among a list of things they charged the leader of the workers was forming an illegal union and they reported that the existing unions were the only unions allowed to exist in the US and no new ones can be formed without the existing two backing it. In the end, the charge was dropped when the AFL-CIO agreed to underwrite the farmworkers' union (much to the farm owners' ire).

    --
    Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit