Labor News & Commentary October 30, 2024 Google's union announces unfair labor practice charge & more

https://onlabor.org/october-30-2024/

By Everest Fang

Everest Fang is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s news and commentary: Google’s union announces unfair labor practice charge, NLRB shows growth in certified student bargaining units, and USW counts on clean energy projects for new membership.

Yesterday, the Alphabet Workers Union announced that they have filed a charge with the NLRB over Google management’s request that workers “refrain” from talking about its ongoing antitrust case. The union charges that Google issued an “overly broad directive” on discussing the case to employees. On August 5th, immediately following Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling that “Google is a monopolist” in the online search marketplace, president of global affairs Kent Walker sent an email directing employees to “please refrain from commenting on this case, both internally and externally.” Walker sent a similar message at the start of the trial last fall. The union alleges that these gag orders violate their rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

On Monday, the NLRB released data showing that it has certified 54 bargaining units for more than 50,000 student employees since 2022. The data comes a year after the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal of a rule proposed by the Trump administration that would have made it much harder for graduate students on private college campuses to form unions. The Biden administration’s 2021 action fueled growing student interest in unionizing. Roughly half of the 54 unions certified since 2022 were for graduate teaching and research assistants, the students most likely to unionize historically. Since April 2023, however, the number of unions certified for undergraduate students who work in housing and dining facilities (16) has actually outnumbered the units approved for graduate teaching and research assistants (13). The NLRB also noted that elections are pending on petitions for unions at numerous campuses, including for 2,200 graduate student instructors at Vanderbilt University, for 1,300 undergraduate students at Berea College and for 57 student employee dining workers at Pomona College.

FULL story at link above.