Organizing Update

RaterLabs/Google

After months of mobilization efforts demanding fair pay and working conditions, thousands of Alphabet contract workers won the first ever raises in the history of RaterLabs, a vendor whose only known client is Google. Workers, known as raters, are responsible for training, testing, and evaluating Google’s search algorithms. The workers were previously paid as little as $10/hour, directly contradicting the standard minimum pay and benefits Google had announced for its extended workforce workers in 2019. In May of 2022, the workers launched a petition on behalf of Alphabet Workers Union-CWA (AWU-CWA) and met with management in October of 2022 to demand that all of Alphabet’s extended workforce were included in Alphabet’s standards, and that these standards themselves are just.

Thanks to efforts led by AWU-CWA Local 1400 members, starting on January 1, 2023, workers will now be making $14.00 or $14.50/hour, based on years of experience. This is the first ever salary increase to be won by AWU-CWA workers and the second instance in which members of AWU-CWA received their fair share with support from AWU-CWA. In 2021, AWU-CWA members organized and led workers at Modis data centers to win back hundreds of thousands of dollars in hazard pay.

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Lake Michigan Credit Union

South Division branch workers at Lake Michigan Credit Union (LMCU) in Grand Rapids, Mich., voted last week in favor of forming a union with CWA in an official National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election, the first successful NLRB election in the financial services industry in decades. The workers, who organized with the Committee for Better Banks-CWA, join more than a hundred banking and credit union workers at CWA including workers at Beneficial State Bank and Genesee Co-Op Federal Credit Union, who won voluntary recognition for their unions. With their new union and a voice on the job, LMCU workers are looking to improve working conditions, transparency, and communication at their branch. Read more here.