Google’s walkout is a new kind of worker activism
It seems to have been about values, specifically the value of moral condemnation of workplace sexual harassment
The global walkout by Google workers, a response to Alphabet Inc.’s reported protection of executives accused of sexual misconduct, may be a harbinger of something new in employer-employee relations: empowered workers’ moral-political protest directed as much against the general culture as against management.
Although the walkout is connected to workplace conditions, this isn’t the trade union strike of old. Google’s workers are mainly professionals: engineers, not labourers. They have well-paid, high-prestige jobs at a company known for recruiting top employees. Not all the workers who walked out were personal victims of workplace sexual harassment.
Rather, the Google walkout seems to have been about values, specifically the value of moral condemnation of workplace sexual harassment. The news that fuelled the Google walkout was the New York Times report that the company had protected a series of very senior men associated with the company and accused of inappropriate sexual conduct connected to the workplace.
The charges resonated with the #MeToo movement. The employees who walked out were taking a collective stand in the conversation about sexual harassment. They were able to make that statement in part because they were Google employees, whose actions would make news and whose cultural prestige put significant weight into their protest.
In an email, Pichai acknowledged that the problem of harassment “had persisted for far too long in our society.” But Google’s employees are going a step further with their walkout. And the accommodating response from management may contribute to it.
In the future, it’s possible to imagine employees at other companies staging similar walkouts. The most apt analogy may be student walkouts and protests, which don’t necessarily reflect dissatisfaction with their own educational institutions. The national student walkout over gun control is a good example. If students can walk out over an important political-moral issue with solidarity and support from many of their teachers, there is no reason employees can’t do the same.
Unlike the general strikes of the 1920s, the goal of such symbolic walkouts wouldn’t be to paralyse industry in order to win structural victories for workers as workers. There would be relatively little economic cost, if any. The consequence for companies whose employees walk out in a show of political-moral solidarity is rather that the company may come to be identified with a particular political position. When that position is universal, or doesn’t harm the company in some consumer market, or is strongly shared by management, there is reason to expect management acquiescence.
Things would be much trickier if employees were taking positions that the companies don’t want to associate with themselves. But that would represent a different stage in the future development of this new practice. Getting bored once in a while is quite normal. But getting into such a mood on a daily basis proves that you could be moving away from your life’s mission.
The most important reason why you get bored is that you are confused as a result of not adopting the basic art of living. You have may have become aimless and rudderless. Such people find themselves under great distress and negativity takes over their thinking and behaviour.