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Google must tell workers they can discuss pay and working conditions

Google and Modis did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

Google

Google will post signs in its data center in South Carolina to tell workers they can discuss pay, working conditions and worker organizing.

Photo: John Nacion/Getty Images

Google and its contractor, Modis Engineering, will post signs in a South Carolina data center facility that tells workers they can discuss pay, working conditions and worker organizing as part of a settlement of unfair labor practices claims.

The claims, filed by the Alphabet Workers Union on behalf of data center worker Shannon Wait in February, alleged that Modis Engineering (the contractor that hired Wait to work in Google's Berkeley County, South Carolina, facility) had dismissed Wait for publicly discussing salary and in retaliation for her participation in the Alphabet Workers Union. To settle the charges with the National Labor Relations Board, Google will post public signs that tell employees they have the right to form a union and discuss working conditions, and that Google and Modis cannot interfere with those rights.

Google and Modis did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

"It's far too easy for contractors like Modis to make us believe that we aren't allowed to publicly discuss our working conditions or join unions, and Alphabet and Google turn a blind eye to this gaslighting. Now, because I had the support of my union to call them out on it, they'll be forced to inform us all of our rights," Wait said in a press statement.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

googlealphabetunionsunionalphabet workers uniondataworkers
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