Court wants Google docs on union strategy

Google will have to turn over documents outlining its anti-union strategy in response to a National Labor Relations Board complaint against the online search giant, according to a court order.

The board first filed its complaint against Google in December 2020, accusing the company of spying on employees, blocking employees from speaking with each other about work conditions and firing several employees in retaliation for attempting to unionize, all of which are illegal under federal labor law. In June of this year, the board expanded its complaint to include three more former workers who allege that the company fired them for protesting its work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

At stake is a weighty question for American workers in the tech sector and beyond: Do workers have the right to protest at work?

The precedent is clear for some areas, but when the NLRB added the workers who claim they were fired for organizing against Google’s work with the border agency to the complaint, the case’s scope grew to include the possibility that protesting the broader business decisions of an employer could be protected under labor law.

Google has said in the past that it fired the workers in the complaint not for their workplace activism, but for violating its data security policies.

The new ruling revolves around Google’s work with IRI Consultants, a labor relations firm that Google retained in 2019 to create a campaign of “antiunion messaging and message amplification strategies and training” tailored to Google’s workforce.