Shannon Wait, an organizer with Alphabet Workers Union-CWA (AWU-CWA), recently spoke with Power at Work Blog writer Dane Gambrell. Their conversation covers the work AWU-CWA is doing to protect workers from risks posed by AI and the importance of unionizing the tech industry. They also discuss Shannon’s experience winning an unfair labor practice dispute against Google after being illegally suspended by the company in 2021.
The following is a transcript of their conversation, recorded on January 11, 2024. The transcript has been edited for clarity.
Dane Gambrell: Can you start by telling me a little bit about your work with the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA: What’s your role in the union, and what are some of the things that you are working on as an organizer?
Shannon Wait: My name is Shannon Wait. I'm an organizer at Alphabet Workers Union-CWA. I've been working with this union since March 2021. The campaigns that I focus on primarily are the Raters campaign, which we'll get into a little bit further. But for a broad overview, they rate the search ads and AI algorithms for Google to test for accuracy. And also I work on various issue campaigns, and in the past, I've done some policy work with our legislative political committee as well as doing some of that work voluntarily on the side with some of our external partners. For example, I volunteer as a policy advisor for Tech Equity Collaborative. Together, we have advocated for legislation in California such as Pay Transparency for Pay Equity (SB1162), the Protect Laid Off Workers Act (AB1356), and the End Caste Discrimination bill (SB403). As an organizer, I have seen how policy work and workplace organizing must move forward in lock-step fashion in order to guarantee more rights in the workplace and protect workers.
(Photo from AWU-CWA)
Dane Gambrell: Can you tell me more about the union’s AI and Labor campaign – what are some of the changes – or protections for workers – that you are advocating for when it comes to artificial intelligence?
Shannon Wait: In general, when it comes to organizing around issues pertaining to AI, the number one thing that employers, the workers who are doing the organizing, their unions, and other organizers need to keep in mind is that workers need to have a voice in everything that comes down to AI. They're the ones who are the experts on AI. They know how it impacts their work, and they also know how their work and their working conditions impact the product – the AI. So in that case, you know, workers need to have a very hands on approach. This must be a member-led movement when it comes to organizing.
Also, I do want to emphasize that the workers that are creating – as far as Google goes, this is known as Project Gemini – the workers creating and rating Project Gemini are paid poverty wages with almost no benefits. So in the history of our campaign around AI, and around the temporary and contracted workforce, at Alphabet Workers Union, we found that there was a group of workers who are basically testing Google's search algorithm. And we all know the word, “Google,” – that's like a common phrase that we use every day in our lives for the past 20 years or 25 years, I believe. And so these workers are fueling the bread and butter of the company by making sure that the search function is accurate. At Google, I found out that they were making $9 an hour when a member came to me to talk about his working conditions. And I had no idea that anyone at Google in the U.S. and Canada made less than $15 an hour, because that is Google's stated minimum standards for all their workers, including the extended workforce. So when I found this out - that some of them were making $9 an hour, I was shocked.
We started talking to many other people within that section of the extended workforce: Now we have won an hourly minimum wage for the Appen side of the raters. So there's many companies that Google subcontracts for these functions. One of them is Appen and it is based out of Australia. But in the U.S. They pay their Google Raters now $15 an hour. The $15 is subject to how much time they spend on tasks. So in this case the raters are treated like gig workers. They have to wait for the tasks. There might not be tasks available for them to work on. When the tasks do become available, they may have to read 30 pages of medical documentation to say if the output from Google's AI, Bard, is accurate and relevant, but the company tells them, “We will only pay you for ten minutes of this. Good luck.” It’s a tragedy that a company that Google uses as a supplier to develop their most loudly proclaimed champion of all of their product line is exploiting workers to basically work either for free or for very low wages in order to develop a product that is supposed to be accurate. I would argue that a lot of workers would bill for that ten minutes and really put ten minutes of work into that and move on to the next thing, because the way that they get paid is, like, how many tests are they actually doing an hour? So, you know, it’s not, “I sat on my computer for 8 hours, today I made 15 times 8, take away taxes.” It's not like that at all. They may sit there for 12 hours and only get 4 hours of paid work out of their day, at $15 an hour.
(Photo from Pixabay)
So when you think about these conditions, you also need to consider the people doing this work, who chooses to do this work. It's gonna be people who feel that the flexibility of working from home is a requirement in their life. We have found that most of our raters and our Alphabet Workers members in this campaign are disabled, they're caretakers of someone who is disabled, they might be a single parent, they may be taking care of their parents. They are veterans. They may have social anxiety. A lot of times, they may be queer or under-represented people who choose to work from home because it's more comfortable for them. And they understand that the work that they do is very important to the world.
And think about the fact that this product that Google is so proud of is created by exploited workers who basically subsidize Google's profit margins on this work. So in this case, like when it comes to AI, the product itself, the workers must have a voice. But when it comes to their organizing, like the working conditions for such a valuable product that has such a high profit margin, those profits need to go back and into the workforces creating them. Instead, what it does is it goes to the shareholders, it goes to executives, it goes to investors. People who are actually not in the trenches doing the work themselves. So I think that it's important that people are aware of the dangers of a product that may not be accurately rated, based on the guidelines that the companies themselves give these workers, like I said. They get prompts, like, “Does this medication go with this medication, if you're already on this medication. You have 10 min to answer this question.” And most of the people doing this work have degrees, but they are not doctors. So you can imagine the kind of source checking that needs to go on in the background in order to accurately rate Google's Gemini.
And then, secondly, I think it's important to emphasize that the regulations that are happening right now around AI, I mean the AFL-CIO is heavily involved in that. They take a lot of their perspectives from workers, which should be lauded. However, I believe that when it comes to who is actually going to write the regulations in the Senate, we all know it's the same companies sitting there. They send executives to sit there. They hired so many lobbyists over the past year for 2024 in California and for the federal level. And you have the AFL-CIO having a seat at the table, but there does need to be more representation of labor sitting there. Especially the workers. And we see that disparity playing out in the most recent 2023 Senate hearings. And so hopefully, you know, moving forward in the future, it is not so top-down when it comes to the regulations, because we all know why companies like to write their own regulations. I mean, we've seen this play out so many times throughout history, and it ends in workers getting the raw deal.
AWU-CWA protesting Starbucks' union busting (Photo from AWU-CWA)
Dane Gambrell: You mentioned the AFL-CIO. One of the biggest pieces of news around AI and labor recently is the agreement signed last month between the AFL-CIO and Microsoft. So those two parties agreed to enter partnership and engage in dialogue around AI “to ensure workers have a voice in the process and that their needs are understood.” What's your reaction to that agreement? Do you expect it to protect workers from the risks posed by AI?
Shannon Wait: As someone who's an organizer, and a professional organizer who was not involved in that process of Microsoft coming to an agreement with the AFL-CIO, the way that I see it on a personal level is that, you know, Microsoft’s Activision-Blizzard already had a neutrality agreement with CWA by this time – a union neutrality agreement. And that was actually a really big deal, because they are a huge tech company pledging to take a neutral stance on their workers’ union organizing. Traditionally and typically, most companies take a not-neutral stance where they engage in union busting tactics and anti-worker narratives, anti-union narratives. Anything but giving the workers a voice would be their end game.
But I do want to say that Microsoft, by the time this deal with the AFL-CIO came around, they have a history of working with CWA on neutrality. So I believe that CWA, in a way, paved the way for the AFL-CIO to come in and say, “Hey, we have this other very important issue here. Your company can be the first to take a stance on this. That is going to speak volumes about why the workers are impacted by AI. And how can we make sure that your company is moving forward in a way that is worker-friendly and also friendly to the user of the products.” So I think that's really amazing, that that was able to happen.
I do want to emphasize that when it comes to the fight around AI and organizing, that Alphabet Workers Union, through that work, we've pretty much paved the way for those things to take place. So you know, Google is one of the oldest and longest standing tech companies on the planet next to Microsoft. When it comes to search function, I mean, it's probably the most widely used tool on earth. And so when it comes down to the workers who are engaging in this fight, I do sense that when it comes to AI, there was a lot that was spearheaded from AWU. And I see other unions like SAG-AFTRA, like WGA taking on their own AI fights, and I just think that all roads lead to Rome, you know. So I'm just happy to see that a lot of unions are engaged in what could be when it comes to AI, and that the AFL-CIO is doing what it takes to bring a lot of those voices together and come out with an agreement that is going to benefit workers at Microsoft.
I do think that other companies need to follow Microsoft's example and work with the AFL-CIO on what a fair AI product and a fair labor workforce looks like around AI. And I do think that in that way, they can also follow what was already happening with Microsoft and CWA around Union neutrality. So the fact that Google has not voluntarily taken those steps speaks volumes, in my opinion, about their stance on unions, and their stance on workers. Just today, we got news that Google laid off thousands of workers again. I mean, you know, this is not a worker friendly company. Am I surprised? No. But I do hope that what Microsoft and the AFL-CIO were able to work out, and what Microsoft and CWA were able to work out is going to lead towards more unionization in the tech industry.
Dane Gambrell: In recent years, Alphabet companies have attempted to undercut worker power in a number of ways. Google refused to bargain with a group of YouTube contract workers who voted to unionize in April – in violation of federal labor law. Reportedly, the company has also retaliated against Google Help workers in their attempts to unionize. And those are just a couple of examples. Why do you think that the company is taking such a contentious stance against workers who are speaking up and trying to improve their working conditions?
AWU-CWA members striking at YouTube (Photo from AWU-CWA)
Shannon Wait: Well first of all, I do think that it's important to hammer home that this playbook is over a century old in the United States. Companies do not want workers to have power. Companies do not want workers to have a voice, because the workers are the ones with the leverage. Union members have more leverage than workers who are separated and not coming together. We see that the YouTube music workers and the Google Help workers coming together is such a good thing for tech, because what they did this the last year is show that the government can recognize contractors as jointly employed by the host client company. So both of these groups of workers were recognized as employees of Google. This is pretty historical. This is the first time this has happened in one of the big tech companies. And also it gives those workers a lot more leverage when it comes down to bargaining, in my opinion.
I think that we can compare Google as the Walmart of the tech industry. You know, they're one of the big guys who are the least worker friendly. They do have amenities within the company. I like to refer to that as like the “breads and the circuses” inside the company that keeps the workers placated, keeps them happy. A lot of times we see workers – myself included as a previous Google worker – excited about the fact that I go to work at a place that has free meals. But, you know, you are just a number. You're just a number at the end of the day, and when you're standing there by yourself, when you're standing there trying to advocate for yourself to your manager, your voice is very small. You don't have a lot of power. So I do believe that no matter what your paycheck looks like, no matter what company you work a – if it's fast food or a company like Google –you do need to speak to your coworkers and start to unionize, because we see the exploitation at these companies, and the way that companies like Google are so quick to turn on you. Once you decide, “Hey, It's my turn to have a voice in these processes. It's my turn to have a voice in what our contract looks like between the company and us.”
So Google, yeah, refusing to meet with the Youtube music workers – it's abhorrent. Even last week, I believe Elon Musk said that he thought that the NLRB was illegitimate, I mean, these megalomaniacs are trying to just maintain a control of the American economy. But the most American tradition, in my opinion, over history, is workers standing together, fighting back, getting in the trenches with each other, and forming unions and wielding their power.
Dane Gambrell: Shannon, you have a unique experience here as someone who won an unfair labor practice dispute after being illegally suspended by Google. For those who don't know the story, could you explain what happened, how you fought back and what the outcome was?
Shannon Wait: So I was a data center technician at Google’s Data Center here in Charleston, South Carolina. I started working there in February of 2019. The interview process for that position was so simple. I thought it was too good to be true, almost. I just remember having an over the phone interview on my birthday, February 6th that year, in 2019, with someone who was saying what role I would be performing, which at the time was referred to as hardware operations, or H-WOPS.
And I was excited because I was like, “Oh, this is different than what I'm building towards for the past several years,” which was at this point, I obtained a bachelors in history. I was going for my master's in history. I wanted to be a professor in history. And so I thought, “Oh, this is good, that I'm getting this opportunity because we all know how PhD programs are so competitive in this country.” So I just wanted, you know, to have this other option. And I was already kind of in the tech industry doing telecommunications. So I thought, it's a good opportunity, and the starting wage was $15 an hour. There were some benefits. Also, I was told that we would get free lunch and breakfast every day. And the fact that it's Google, you know, like, I was super excited about this. It wasn't until I started doing the paperwork for the job that I realized I was getting contracted through the company, Adecco. They have a subcontractor called Modis. Now the company is referred to as Akkodis.
But when it came down to it I was just excited that I was getting this opportunity, and on the first day, you know, during onboarding, I was told, if you do well here, it's very likely that when it comes down to having a head count, or, you know, when the company is looking for more workers to work directly for Google. They tend to pull from their best and brightest of the contractors from Adecco. So you know, I still thought it was a good opportunity. $15 an hour in South Carolina in 2019 seemed good. So I went ahead, and a guaranteed 40 hours a week.
So I went ahead, and started working there. You know you walk into the, like, cafeteria portion of the campus and the carpet was green, the ceiling lights, the fixtures were made to look like clouds. There's video games all over the wall. Vintage video games. Modern video games. There's freezers filled with Choco Tacos (R.I.P Choco Tacos). There’s the cafeteria, and you go through it like it's a buffet style, and it's very good food. A chef works there and manages a whole team of unionized food workers through UNITE HERE. So that's great. And so I was excited to be there because everyone was approachable – “Hey! How are you doing today?” – like the friendliest people I ever met in my life. Including the management. So very quickly I bought into the concept that this company was different than any other company and corporation out there.
It wasn't until we all started discussing together as workers – “When is Google going to hire us? When is your contract coming up? When is your end date?” – that we started realizing that it's too good to be true. Because they hired us in three-month contracts, with a max two years end date. Like, that's the max you can be there. So they roll those contracts every 3 months. And so it's scary. Everyone's on a different set, you know. If someone didn't get renewed, it's like, “Oh, does that mean when mine's up, I'm not getting renewed?” Things started getting very tense around there. And then, there started a rumor that the company would use only TVCs, or temporary, vendor, or contractors, (those are three different things), to do the work that my team was doing. So they were going to use only TVCs for that work. So in that case there was no hope for a hiring or a headcount to come in and take some of us and make some of us Googlers.
When I realized this, and being the person that I am who has studied history – you know, I have two degrees in history – who has always grown up working class, and and knowing that the companies don't have the workers’ best interest at heart – they have the shareholders’ and the executives’ best interests at heart – I quickly snapped out of it. And I realized, hey, we are not going to have this luxury of being Googlers. We should probably do something about it. I tried everything. I tried talking to management. I tried talking to the Modis management. I did talk to my coworkers. I tried emailing my Congressional representative. There came a point where I decided I felt like I couldn't do anything. I didn't know what to do. But Alphabet Workers Union launched publicly in January of 2021, and I got a notification on my phone about it. We get news notifications on our phones depending on what we search around for and things like that. So I got a notification about this, and immediately there was a link to join AWU in the article. So I joined and I thought this could be the only way that I'm able to make a difference.
But less than 2 weeks later, I had this issue with a water bottle. It's so simple. But my water bottle broke at work. and I asked the person who was in charge of PPE [personal protective equipment] – we referred to all equipment on site as PPE even before the pandemic – and I asked for a new water bottle, and I was told, because I was a contractor, that only Googlers get unlimited PPE refills, and that contractors only get it one time. And I was upset because, you know, I'm doing this difficult labor. My whole entire team are contractors at this point, and all of the Googlers are, you know, sitting in conference rooms doing diagnoses. And they're doing more like backend Linux work. It's comfortable work. They can eat and drink food where they're at. The contractors are working on the data center floor. We can't take food and drink in there. I was upset about this. I felt like, yeah, because I am producing so much for this company, I am entitled to a water bottle. In fact, as a worker working at Google, you are entitled to a wage that exceeds one-third of your rent. You're entitled to the benefits that are going to, you know, take care of your family, because this is a multi-trillion dollar company.
So I started speaking out about this that same day, and security escorted me away from the floor. You know, I'm a big scary, 5 '2” woman who is speaking out about a water bottle and Google's profits. And I invited people to join Alphabet Workers Union at that moment. And I was suspended with pay, and then I was brought back after AWU and I filed an unfair labor practice — or multiple unfair labor practices – around this instance. And the company. Google and Modis, they moved to settle very quickly. I was back to work within 2 weeks. And I think it just speaks to the fact that these companies didn't expect workers to start organizing. They didn't expect the traditions of workers in the manufacturing industry to continue through big tech.
And so I feel very good about the path that this has led me to, because I truly believe that workers need to see that their power comes from standing together, and it comes from having a voice in the workplace. And so I hope that my story and what happened to me can actually inspire people, not to stand up and rabble-rouse, but to stand up with multitudes of their coworkers together in unison, singing the same song, saying, “Enough is enough. You exist because of us.” That's it. That's what you need to do.
Dane Gambrell: Over the last few years, there's been a wave of labor activity, not just Alphabet and its subsidiaries, but in other tech companies as well. Why do you think that's happened? What are the issues or conditions that workers in the tech industry are responding to by organizing and by striking?
(Photo from Pixabay)
Shannon Wait: I think it's worth reiterating that the beginnings of the tech industry and Silicon Valley are beginnings of very unserious leadership. Like Mark Zuckerberg – you see in The Social Network how they even had his cameo character walking around with Adidas sandals in the snow at Harvard. You have Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] at Google, the ping-pong tables, the nap pods, the free food, the amenities that they provided, the hackathons where people would have these hacking competitions. And they would have so much like, drinking, and you know, it was like a fraternity, almost. And think over time that has evolved into a way to kind of make workers feel like they made it if they landed a role in these tech companies.
And I do want to say that policy plays a big role in why companies were able to, you know, achieve this with the Ronald Reagan administration and whatnot. I mean, we eventually came into this era of the right to work state. I think that the timing is everything. So we leave this era of manufacturing industries, being very union heavy, very worker-led as far as what the standards were. This was an era that people could own homes on one income. Gone are the days. And now, it’s like we’re in the 80s. We have right to work laws. We have, you know, corporations having more power than ever. We have new regulations in the stock market that lead to Wolf of Wall Street scenarios.
And then also we have the big tech industry, and it's cool and it seems hip and easy and not like manual labor. During this time, the amount of wealth that was brought into workers’ pockets because of the tech industry was so much because of the investments that people made in these companies in their early years that they were in. Some of them still are making great wages and benefits by working at one of these companies.
However, I will argue that all of those things combined led to a slowdown of unionization in a new sector. This is a new sector, you know, big tech. So because of that, now we're faced with a time where manufacturing is sent overseas. More and more often factories are closing down in more blue states. Today, in 2024, we see auto manufacturers – and I'm in South Carolina, we now have Volvo here, Boeing is here for airlines, we have Mercedes here, and they're sending electric vehicle plans down here in the upstate. We have this shift going on where companies are avoiding unionization even in the old traditional sectors of the economy where unions are very common. So for that reason, we're looking at a place where there's a gap in unionization. A low percentage of people approved of unionizing through this time because they were given this impression that they didn't need it. But the companies actively worked in a way that would make sure that was the case. I call that the “honey tactic” of the union busting playbook. But I digress.
We're now looking at the tech industry 25 years later that is void of unions. So workers now – through these layoffs, through sexual harassment at executive levels, through pregnancy, discrimination, through retaliation – they're seeing, “Hey, I don't actually have a lot of power against these companies. So we need to stand together. How can we do that? By forming unions.”
So we are 100 years after huge UAW [United Auto Workers] fights in Detroit. We are now seeing the same history play out again, but this time in the tech industry. And so there's unions out there leading the way in this fight, like I mentioned earlier, like Communications Workers of America. And we are a part of that – SAG-AFTRA, and WGA – I think that workers are starting to see that the jig is up.
And I also want to say that one thing that Google does is it contracts out most of their workforce. So over half of the workers that work at Google in the U.S. are contracted out. And they're not paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even a six-figure income to do technical work. So I think that people are starting to see, “Hey, I work at Google. And I can't afford a one bedroom apartment in South Carolina. That's weird. I should do something about that.” And Google treats workers like gig workers and also attempts to pass that responsibility off to those subcontractors in the meantime– So, “Hey, it's not us paying $15 an hour, it's Adecco paying $15 an hour.” When in reality, Google turns around and pays Adecco $45 an hour for that same labor. Why don't you just pay that to the worker directly?
And then also Google and other companies extract natural resources from red states. They rely on right-to-work states for long term and underpaid work. A lot of tribal communities in the Pacific Northwest are very upset about the way that Google uses water to cool their data centers. I mean, Google has a data center in Nevada. They need to cool it with water. This is just another way that Google is circumventing what workers and community members would like to see when it comes to a big tech company coming to their town.
And so I just see a future where workers and communities stand together. And they actually force policymakers – decisionmakers – to change this. Because unless something changes, we're looking at a world where there's more climate crises that happen more rapidly over time. And we're also going to be looking at work, at a world where workers are still not making enough money to pay rent for a one-bedroom apartment. They're paying $2,000 premiums every month on their health insurance. Never before now have so many people understood that in the tech industry - workers - we need to form unions.