In the United States, Google takes out its claws against the union temptation in Silicon Valley

It's a social conflict of a new kind for Silicon Valley. The dismissal by Google of four of its employees, Monday, November 25, caused a stir in the small world of California tech and challenged the mythic culture of transparency that had made his reputation.

First, the causes and conditions of dismissal of employees are difficult to pass. Officially, Google has accused them of "repeated violations" of security procedures for accessing sensitive internal documents. But some of the "googlers" suspect their management of wanting to get rid of people who had the presumption to openly criticize the policy of the group. One of the licensees was behind an internal protest against collaboration between Google and the immigration authorities at the border with Mexico, while another had called YouTube (owned by Google) to to be more severe about homophobic videos.

I was just informed by @Google that I am being terminated.

Google accused of leading a hunt for activism

These evictions were also perceived as a signal, sent to all employees who would be tempted by militancy. For more than a year, Google has been going through protests and petitions to demand equal pay between men and women, to ensure that complaints of sexual harassment are more taken into account, or to force Google to abandon the development of a search engine compatible with Chinese censorship.

In an open letter published on the Medium site on Tuesday, November 26, a group of Google employees exposed his grievances against a management accused of conducting a hunt for militancy the previous year. Symbol of this hardening of the social climate: the use of IRI, an external company specialized in the fight against unionism.

Since the 1950s, these consultants, lawyers or "business psychologists" have been part of the arsenal of employers in the United States to kill in the bud any attempt by employees to form a union or organize themselves. to make their claims heard better, "says John Logan, a historian at the University of California and specialist in American anti-unionism, contacted by France 24.

The anti-union market is flourishing in the United States, and it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Unrecognized in Europe - where the anti-union culture is less strong - structures similar to IRI can employ thousands of employees, run campaigns over several months, billed several million dollars. "They are largely responsible for the decline of unionism in the United States in recent years," writes John Logan in his study of the history of American anti-unionism.

"IRI is not one of the best-known companies in this field, but it is renowned for being very active in the hospital and health sector, which has been an important battleground between unions and structures anti-union, "says John Logan.

Facebook, Salesforce, Kickstarter

The methods used in recent months by Google seem directly inspired by the traditional practices of these modern "strikebreakers". The decision made in early November by Sundar Pichai, CEO of the group, to dispense with weekly meetings where employees were invited to report their grievances, in favor of monthly appointments much more framed seem to be part of this logic. The same is true of the recent addition of an extension to the Internet browser used by all employees that can be used to identify if meetings of more than 100 people have been recorded in the employee calendars.

If the use of IRI by Google shocked, it is that Silicon Valley seemed spared the undermining work of these anti-union consultants. The mecca of high-tech "has always been considered as a separate ecosystem where there is a certain consensus between employers and employees on the uselessness of unions," says Alan Hyde, a specialist in labor law at Rutgers Law School in New York. Jersey. This expert has also conducted extensive interviews with employees of Silicon Valley in recent years.

"Silicon Valley is bathed in a libertarian culture, and employees see themselves as independent workers who do not need unions to represent them," says Logan. Major groups such as Apple, Facebook and Google have also "pioneered the adoption of internal communication systems to escalate grievances so that problems can be addressed internally on a case-by-case basis," said Alan Hyde. , the historian.

This cult of transparency, along with attractive salaries and bonuses "formed a set that seemed to satisfy everyone for a long time," notes Alan Hyde. But this consensus has begun to crack in recent years. Google is not the only company facing pressure from employees. The Salesforce enterprise software giant in 2017, Facebook in October, or the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter were confronted with their dissatisfaction.

Google's wages are no longer enough to guarantee social peace

This revival arises partly because of the cost of living that has exploded in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The average rent for a single studio is $ 3,000, and the city's planning department estimates that to have a decent standard of living, you need to earn more than $ 117,000 a year $ 10,000 per month), almost three times the average salary in the United States. Attractive wages are simply no longer sufficient to guarantee social peace.

Moreover, "the central idea of ​​the start-up culture, according to which employers and employees are in the same bath, becomes less and less viable for companies that have transformed into multinationals and in which it has become simply impossible to keep a direct link between leaders and employees, "notes Margaret O'Mara, professor of history of the American tech sector at the University of Washington, contacted by France 24.

All these factors contribute to the fact that "we are witnessing a turning point in the history of Silicon Valley, marked by a desire on the part of employees to find new forms of organization to bring their claims," ​​Alan Hyde analysis . He believes that these white-collar - engineers, computer scientists, developers - are not yet convinced that "old-fashioned" trade unionism is the best answer. Hence the multiplication of open letters, spontaneous demonstrations or ad hoc groupings like the Google Workout for Real Change which was formed following complaints of sexual harassment against several executives of the Internet giant, last year .

Microsoft and HP opposed to unions

In this context, Google's decision to seek advice from anti-union professionals and dismiss certain wage-earning employees "seems very aggressive, because it does not correspond to the customs of Silicon Valley," notes Alan. Hyde. Above all, it is like taking out the very big artillery so that "there did not seem to be any real will on the part of the employees to regroup in syndicate", he underlines.

Google's decision to engage IRI would be, in the eyes of the historian, an anomaly unprecedented in the history of Silicon Valley. "If the leadership persists in this way, it may harden the movement, pushing the protesters to seek to get closer to a real union," he said.

John Logan and Margaret O'Mara do not agree with this finding. "The only thing out of the ordinary in this case, in my opinion, is that Google has failed to keep the work of these backstage consultants secretive in breaking the dispute," says Logan.

Prior to the founding of Silicon Valley in the 1990s, "the history of the American tech sector has been marked by the fierce opposition of groups like Microsoft or HP to any attempt to create a union," notes Margaret O'Mara. It does not seem surprising to him that, pushed into their entrenchments by increasingly dissatisfied employees, the employers of Silicon Valley adopt the same brutality as their elders. The Google case would then be the first act of a new chapter in the history of Silicon Valley that promises to be socially bloody.