A Year of Racism & Disinformation
Googlers for Ending Forced arbitration release podcast on the anniversary of #GoogleWalkout
NEW YORK, NY (Nov 1, 2019 at 8am EST) — For some, the Google Walkout was the climax of anger. For Googlers for Ending Forced Arbitration, the walkout was just the pistol that fired at the beginning of a marathon. The walkout was a moment; the activism that ensued is the movement.
Last year, we made a decision to go deep on arbitration, but go wide on our coalition building to end forced arbitration for everyone. So we launched educational campaigns on social media, told the stories of numerous victims, published essays, organized phone banks and held private and public panel discussions with experts to speak to workers and organized trips to DC on our personal time to advocate for the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act (FAIR Act, HR1423 / S610). We had hundreds of conversations with workers in after hours meetups, walking workers through their contracts and connecting them to lawyers.
But even though those efforts may have prompted Google to end forced arbitration for full-time employees, we see our job as far from over. Our two biggest opponents in the fight to end forced arbitration are 1) those who deny the racial inequities associated with the practice and 2) those who try to convince workers and consumers it’s okay to be stripped of their fundamental legal rights.
Many are surprised when we talk about forced arbitration as a racial justice issue. They associate the Google Walkout and all that came afterward as related to the #MeToo movement. But any attempt to separate sexual harassment from racial inequity is misdirection. The group most affected by forced arbitration is black women making under $13.00/hour. When companies like Google eliminate forced arbitration for their primarily white, wealthy tech workers, but don’t demand the same for their Temp, Vendor & Contract (TVC) suppliers, whose workers are primarily low-wage black and brown workers, they reinforce this systemic racism.
Over the past year, we’ve continued to advocate for TVCs and colleagues at other companies within Alphabet by respectfully appealing to VPs and Directors for help. But the buck, we’ve found, stops nowhere. We’ve been profoundly disappointed by the non-answers we’ve received from our VPs, and at this point, we’ve abandoned hope that our leadership team recognizes or is willing to work towards changing this persistent and racist difference.
This is why we’ve focused 100% of our advocacy on passing the FAIR Act. Only this bill ends the abusive practice of depriving workers of access to the court system, forcing corporations like Alphabet to reckon with their own policies. But when advocating for this bill in DC, we saw firsthand the disinformation campaign perpetuated by bodies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We heard preposterous arguments attacking the lawyers on the front lines of holding corporations accountable for their misdeeds. So we spent the summer and early fall talking to trial lawyers across the country to hear their side of the story. Today, we share excerpts of conversations with 8 trial lawyers in our first ever podcast.
Available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Anchor.
Thank you to all the lawyers who talked to us and the many workers who have shared their stories:
- Chris WIlliams, National Legal Advocacy Network
- Deepak Gupta, Gupta/Wessler
- Gordon Kaupp, Kaupp & Feinberg
- Jason Fuiman, O’Dwyer & Bernstein
- Joseph Sellers, Cohen Milstein
- Matt Dunn, Getman, Sweeney & Dunn
- Peter Romer-Friedman, Outten & Golden
- Teresa Becvar, Stephan Zouras
You haven’t given up on the fight for justice, and neither will we.
