2019 must be the year to end forced arbitration.
#endforcedarbitration
Tomorrow, our CEO Sundar Pichai will testify before Congress to answer questions, many about issues of trust and privacy. But just as Google wants to convince the public that it can handle consumer privacy matters behind closed doors — it tells the same to its employees by forcing arbitration, requiring them to waive their right to sue or participate in a class action lawsuit in all cases of discrimination. And just as it will try to convince Congress that it has the public’s best interest in mind in company decisions, it has neglected to fully engage with its workforce’s broader demands for a more equitable workplace.
Six weeks ago, 20,000 Google employees and TVCs (Temps, Vendors and Contractors) walked out to protest discrimination, racism, sexual harassment and a workplace culture that only works for some. One week after the walkout, our leadership team responded to our five original demands with a handful of partial policy changes. The other ‘changes’ they announced simply re-stated our current, ineffective practices or introduced extraneous measures that are irrelevant to bringing equity to the workplace.
Our first demand was to end to forced arbitration for the entire Google workforce and allow every Google or Alphabet worker to bring a co-worker, representative, or supporter of their choosing when meeting with HR.
Google leadership responded with the following three changes:
Arbitration: We will make arbitration optional for individual sexual harassment and sexual assault claims. Google has never required confidentiality in the arbitration process and it still may be the best path for a number of reasons (e.g. personal privacy), but, we recognize that the choice should be up to you.
Bring a colleague: We’ll establish a global process that will allow Googlers to be accompanied by a companion during an HR investigation, or when raising/reporting any harassment or discrimination concerns to HR. We’ll start with a Q4 pilot of sexual harassment concerns to learn from, and scale this to all types of harassment and discrimination concerns in Q1.
Investigations Practice Guide: We’ll commit to implementing & publishing internally an Investigations Practice Guide, outlining expectations for how concerns are handled within Google. This Guide will clearly outline what Googlers can expect during the investigation process and/or how their concerns will be handled. We’ll seek input from Googlers who have participated in the investigations process before finalizing the Guide. We’ll commit to reviewing the Guide annually and updating it as required.
Here’s our assessment:
Partially Met
- Arbitration is now optional for individual cases of sexual harassment / assault for full-time employees only.
Denied
- Temps, vendors and contracts (TVCs) compose over 50% of our workforce, but might still be forced into arbitration in all cases, including sexual harassment / assault, based on their Supplier’s employment terms.
- Arbitration is still forced for any case of discrimination related to race, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or disability. Google uses Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS) as the arbitration firm, a for-profit company. JAMS does not publicly disclose the diversity of its arbitrators anymore. However, when we looked at that same diversity web page 2017, JAMS confirmed their arbitrators had an “overall composition of 22% female and 9% persons of color”.
- An employee still cannot bring a class action lawsuit even in cases of sexual harassment.
- Reporters of harassment or discrimination can bring only a colleague, not any other type of representative (such as outside counsel). Currently, these reporters are left outnumbered when reporting an incident.
Ill-defined
- U.S. employee contracts still have the arbitration waiver in effect. We have not heard of any plan to render these waivers null and void. Google operates in 52 countries where arbitration laws vary, and leadership has not addressed these variances. What should we expect?
- For the policy change around bringing companions, we have no insight into the parameters and / or success criteria of the pilot. Will we be privy to the results?
- The rules around whether the companion can / cannot be a witness are still ill-defined. Will they be advised of potential testimony invalidation?
- Google also needs to specify during which part(s) of the process these companions will be allowed. The response statement indicated a practice guide, but does not commit to a timeframe for publication.
What’s next?
20,000 Googlers walking out of work was the first moment in an escalating movement. Since then, we’ve heard from tech workers at 15+ other major tech companies about their experiences. We vow to fight together in 2019 until forced arbitration is abolished for all our FTE and TVC colleagues.
When the US Congress comes back into session in January, it will debate the Arbitration Fairness Act, sponsored by Senator Blumenthal, and the Restoring Justice for Workers Act, sponsored by Representative Jerrold Nadler. These laws would call for the end of forced arbitration for not just cases of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination, but all forms of discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or disability. We call on our elected officials to ensure we get a vote on these measures and require they extend to an employer’s suppliers to provide equality for all workers.
Today we ask all our fellow workers industry-wide to join our fight to end forced arbitration for all forms of harassment or discrimination. Click here or direct message us via Medium / Twitter @endforcedarb to join us as we build our coalition.
We are already engaging with multiple organizations and can help connect the dots through educational materials and organizing resources.
2019 must be the year to end a system of privatized justice that impacts over 60 million workers in the US alone.
Signed,
Tanuja Gupta, Program Manager
Vicki Tardif Holland, Staff Linguist
Tory Voight, Program Manager
Sophie Gerrick, Software Engineer
Liz Ott, Program Manager
Tyler Holsclaw, IT Resident
Olivia Curzi, Brand Specialist
Colin McMillen, Software Engineer
Kat Cass, Program Manager
Mike Morton, Software Engineer
Douglas Rohde, Engineering Manager
Tom Wang, Software Engineer
Shawn Lauriat, Sr. Software Engineer
Gabriela Bermudez, Account Manager
Lauren Longacre, Program Manager
Miguel Yanez Barreto, Software Engineer
Annie Ryan, Interaction Designer
Kate Hardwood, Software Engineer
Caroline Liu, Revenue Lead
Katen Manion, Software Engineer
Aaron Homer, Software Engineer
Xavid Pretzer, Staff Software Engineer
Valerie Streit, Partner Operations Manager
Dana Jansens, Staff Software Engineer
Pierre Fite-Georgel, Sr. Software Engineer
Aaron Wheeler, UX Engineer
Sharifa Sahai, Software Engineer
Alice Lemieux, Software Engineer
Seth Troisi, Sr. Engineer
Jeff Listfield, Software Engineer
Steven Bills, Software Engineer
Aysha Kureishi, Program Manager
Emily Metcalfe, Security Engineer
Kate Donahue, Software Engineer
Michael Powell, Software Engineer
Kris Kooi, Software Engineer
Josh Chik, Program Manager
Jennifer Shap, Brand Media Lead
Christopher Schmidt, Sr. Software Engineer
James Woodyatt, Staff Software Engineer
Kylie Poppen, Interaction Designer
Cristina Munoz, Software Engineer
Thea Mann, UX Designer
Aidan Holloway-Bidwell, Software Engineer
Kelli Ireland, Software Engineer
Viet-Tam Luu, Sr. Software Engineer
Jacobo Tarrío Barreiro, Software Engineer
Sidney San Martín, Software Engineer
Matthew Garrett, Staff Security Engineer
Craig Chasseur, Sr. Software Engineer
Michael Saunders, Product Manager
Nina Ilieva, Software Engineer
Ammar Aijazi, Software Engineer
Amanda West, Strategy & Operations Lead
Miguel Mendez, Site Reliability Engineer
Pedro Gonnet, Sr. Software Engineer
Paul Duke, Software Engineer
Natasha Ross, Administrative Business Partner
Riley Mancuso, Software Engineer
Max Kaehn, Sr. Software Engineer
Thomas Vander Stichele, Site Reliability Engineering Manager
Rebecca Hardy, Global Operational Efficiency Lead
Julia Ferraioli, Developer Advocate
Mark Fickett, Software Engineer (Verily)
Daniel Finnie, Software Engineer
Stevie Strickland, Software Engineer
Miriam Zimmerman, Software Engineer
Matt Carson, Sr. Software Engineer
David Andersen, Staff Site Reliability Engineer
Obasi Shaw, Technical Program Manager
Leo Rudberg, Software Engineer
Rose Valle, Software Engineer
John Herman, Software Engineer
Lauren Bilbo, Software Engineer
Liam Hopkins, Software Engineer
Mukesh Agarwal, Software Engineer
Jesse Welch, Software Engineer
Emily Maier, Site Reliability Engineer
Christopher Neffshade, Data Scientist
Evan Brown, Software Engineer
