Can the union drive Google back to doing no evil?

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Editor's note: The top management at Google couldn’t have expected this kind of a start to 2021. Before the hangover from new year parties could even dissipate, they were facing the most unprecedented labour issue in the company’s history. On Monday, 226 employees at Google—mostly engineers—came together to form the Alphabet Workers Union, with support from the Communications Workers of America, one of the largest unions in the US, with 700,000 members. The move is a culmination of years of workplace activism at one of the world’s largest companies and a rare moment of success for labour organizers in the audaciously anti-union Silicon Valley.  The AWU will be open to all employees, including temporary workers and contractors, across Alphabet companies in the US and Canada. It will have an elected board of directors and paid organizing staff and will be supported by dues-paying members who will contribute 1% of their annual salaries. (For perspective, median pay at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was $258,708 in 2019, one of the best in the industry.) Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw, executive chair and vice-chair of …