Worker Activism

How It’s Developing

Big technology companies operate in a highly politicized environment, especially since the 2016 elections and the rise of misinformation online. As New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo noted in 2018, many of the largest tech platforms relied on a mostly hands-off approach to content, allowing them to achieve globe-spanning scale without bearing too much social cost for the content that spurred their rise – but as their influence has grown and their roles in society have become more deeply embedded, the hands-off approach will be challenged internally and externally and a hands-on approach will have significant ripple effects. [1] As just one example, a 2019 Wall Street Journal investigation found that Google has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged, often in response to pressure from businesses, outside interest groups, and governments around the world [2] The active and intentional shaping of these platforms will be closely scrutinized and will likely contribute to a “techlash” that shapes public opinion as well as employees’ own perceptions of the firms in which they work.

The role that technology platforms play in freedom of speech issues – and the resulting proliferation of hate speech online – has created tensions between workers and corporate leaders. In light of YouTube’s handling of complaints of homophobic and racist jokes made on the video sharing site, Google employees urged the organizers of the 2019 San Francisco Pride parade to drop the company as a sponsor of the parade as well as exclude it from having a presence at the event – the protesting employees stated that as long as Google’s video service “allows abuse and hate and discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons, then Pride must not provide the company a platform that paints it in a rainbow veneer of support for those very persons.” [3]

In addition to concerns over content, technology firms’ growing roles in the development and deployment of new artificial intelligence and facial recognition technologies have led to tensions between the workers who research and develop the technologies and the business decisions around the technologies’ uses. In 2019, researchers from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and several universities issued an open letter urging Amazon to stop selling its facial recognition technology to law enforcement, citing flawed algorithms that reinforce biases against marginalized communities. [4] In 2018, Google dropped out of a bidding process for a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud (JEDI), saying the project conflicted with its corporate values – the decision followed a previous announcement that Google would not renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program after extensive protests from employees. [5] And in 2019, Microsoft rejected a California law enforcement agency’s request to install facial recognition technology in officers’ cars and body cameras after the company concluded that such use could lead to innocent women and minorities being disproportionately held for questioning because the artificial intelligence had been trained on mostly white and male pictures. [6]

Workers are also holding their companies accountable for their roles in broader global issues, including urgent issues like climate change and the #MeToo movement. At Amazon, as part of 2019’s youth-led global climate strike that planned hundreds of events around the world, over 1,500 workers supported a walk out to protest the company’s environmental impact and demand a reduction in the company’s carbon footprint. [7] The workers’ walk out helped drive some attention, as Amazon committed to meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years ahead of schedule and be carbon neutral by 2040, part of a larger Climate Pledge from the company that included investment in 100,000 electric delivery trucks. [8] Google similarly faced employee demands for greater action on climate change, with over 1,000 workers signing an open letter to Google's chief financial officer, demanding the search giant release a plan addressing carbon emissions and political lobbying – among the letter’s demands are a commitment from Google to zero emissions by 2030; an end to contracts that "enable or accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels"; a ban funding to climate-denying or climate-delaying think tanks, lobbyists or politicians; and a commitment not to collaborate with groups that harm refugees or other groups affected on the "frontline" of climate change. [9] In 2018, Google employees staged a walkout in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment and demanded several changes to company policy (an end to forced arbitration, a commitment to end opportunity and pay inequity, and a sexual harassment transparency report) – the walkout and demands followed a New York Times report about the company’s handling of harassment accusations against Android software creator Andy Rubin, who received an exit package of $90 million even after the company found the harassment allegations to be credible. [10]

Even if worker activism succeeds in influencing companies’ decisions, companies are simultaneously working to limit the public reach of this activism. In 2019, after firing four employees for what Google said were violations of its data-security policies, supporters of the fired workers said worker organizing activities led to their dismissals and cited management moves, such as implementing a tracking tool on employee’s web browsers and hiring a consulting firm known for anti-union work, as evidence of attempts to curb activism. [11] Google, once noted for its open work culture, issued revised community guidelines in 2019, explicitly discouraging workers from discussing politics on Google’s thousands of internal mailing lists and forums and enacting policies to prevent employees from making statements that “insult, demean, or humiliate” the company’s employees, business partners, or “others” (including public figures). [12]

Why It Matters

Many of the indicators from the technology sector confirm what many have already known – that few organizations operate in isolation or without scrutiny. Broader conversations about bias, oppression, human rights, and climate justice will all enter the conversations organizations must have with the publics that they serve and the workers that support them. For libraries, this feels very much aligned with professional conversations around neutrality.

While traditional perceptions of worker mobilization center on blue collar, part-time, or non-managerial workers seeking equitable pay and working conditions, many of the most recent worker mobilizations in the technology sector have been led by white-collar or middle management workers, often focused on what might be termed “external concerns” that are not directly applicable to a worker’s ability to earn a livelihood, such as climate change or partnerships with government administrations. [13] These differences also result in different types of actions, including the rising popularity of open letters, hashtag campaigns, and other more public-facing communications.

Most traditional notions of loyalty to a workplace or employer are being upended. Newer and younger generations of workers may be more motivated by an ethical commitment or a drive to do good through the workplace. There may also be a more critical approach to the workplace, applying critical theory to question existing power structures.

As libraries depend on many of these technology platforms as tools for information access or even as partners in initiatives, there is the potential for libraries to become involved in the conflict sparked by some worker activism and the media coverage surrounding it.