
Google shuts down Amazon unionization website - ftfb
https://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/05/23534490/google-shuts-down-amazon-unionization-website
======
Animats
The union group may have good cause to sue Google for defamation. Google has
the right to terminate their use of Google services. But for Google to say
that unionization information violates their terms of service [1] may be
defamatory. Nothing in the terms of service prohibits this.

On top of that, Google's action may violate the National Labor Relations
Act.[2] This could be construed as collusion between employers to violate the
rights of workers to organize. Google has a record of colluding with other
employers to violate labor law, from the famous "anti-poaching agreement".[3]
So Google could have a hard time in court over this, since a pattern of
illegal anti-labor activity has already been established.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/intl/en/sites/help/program_policy.htm...](https://www.google.com/intl/en/sites/help/program_policy.html)
[2] [https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-
act](https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act) [3]
[http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-
order/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)

~~~
brbsix
With perhaps the rare exception for specific kinds of discrimination, can't
Google pretty much terminate use of it's services to anyone, for any reason?
Assuming they aren't paid customers, it's not like Google has a contractual
obligation with said group. Of course these sorts of douche moves reflect
poorly on a company and people may choose to boycott or campaign against in
response, but that's about it.

~~~
Animats
This is a specific kind of discrimination. Labor organizing is one of the
specific kinds of activity protected by law.

~~~
gozur88
Sure. There are things that _Amazon_ can't do to interfere with organizing at
Amazon. I would be surprised to learn the law covers third parties.

~~~
Animats
It's an issue involving third parties if the third party colluded. If there
was any communication between Amazon and Google in this matter, that would be
a problem.

The NLRB has recently been deciding cases involving employee criticism of
employers in social media.[1] "The focus of many of these recent rulings has
been the protection of the right of employees to communicate with their
coworkers about their terms and conditions of employment. Indeed, the NLRB has
increasingly defined the contours of this right expansively." There are
lawyers who take on such cases.[2]

[1]
[http://www.postschell.com/site/files/post__schell__nlrb_arti...](http://www.postschell.com/site/files/post__schell__nlrb_article__kate_kleba.pdf)
[2] [http://employee-rights-atty.com/the-censor-he-has-a-face-
and...](http://employee-rights-atty.com/the-censor-he-has-a-face-and-he-is-
us/)

~~~
gozur88
Neither of those address third parties. They both involve relations between
employers and employees. Even if Amazon did somehow convince Google to take
the site down, there are plenty of other avenues for employees to communicate.
You would have a very hard time selling this in court.

------
graeme
It wasn't very clear to me how google could "shut down" a site. So I checked
the archive of the site in the wayback machine, linked in the article. Here's
the url:

[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)

So they were running on Google site's. The site violated _that_ TOS. While I
don't know the particulars, this seems like less of a story than if Google had
somehow wiped an ordinary domain from search results.

~~~
powertower
What part of the TOS did they violate?

~~~
chillingeffect
There's this from [1]:

"Google may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits
to our Services at any time."

[https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/](https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/)

~~~
kafkaesq
Yes, of course there's an ass-covering provision in there that says they _can_
shut you down at any time, with no recourse.

We'd still like to know _why_ they did so, in this case.

~~~
gnu8
They were advocating for the interests of labor over the interests of large
high tech companies. Any success that group attains against Amazon would also
damage Google's interests.

~~~
elevenfist
Why has this been downvoted? Remember all the stories we've heard about Google
refusing to give earned bonuses to employees who shared their salary
information? What about the google exec who was blacklisted for the offhand
comment that software engineers should probably unionize? We've seen plenty of
evidence on HN of this sentiment. Though Google today might have changed its
views.

~~~
gyardley
Probably because we have no idea why Google shut down the site - they're not
always clear and it's not always obvious.

Stating that Google shut this particular site down because 'they were
advocating for the interests of labor over the interests of large high tech
companies' is long-jumping to a completely unsupported conclusion.

~~~
elevenfist
That makes sense--the comment wasn't speculative, and we do not know for sure.
Given the history though it might very well be true.

~~~
gyardley
It might. I don't think it passes the Occam's Razor test, though - given
Google, I'm more inclined to go with 'an algorithm did something automatically
somewhere.'

~~~
true_religion
I don't know about Google, but many companies automatically block any resource
that receives X number of DMCA or abuse letters.

While a human being looks at it; they just put up a generic "this blank has
been blocked for terms of service violations".

------
dgacmu
This article seems stale - the site is working again:
[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)
.The link in the article is a bit deceptive: It's not to the site, it's
directly to an error message.

Did someone here verify that the site ever actually down, or was this a cool
publicity stunt?

~~~
aarestad
The site was definitely down a few hours go with a terse message about it
breaking "terms of service".

------
jimrandomh
Here is the site that was disabled, as it was on Jan. 18 on archive.org:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160118052937/http://sites.goog...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160118052937/http://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)

"Amazon has a management abuse problem. This was made clear in the August
article by the New York Times. Even worse is that Amazon is in denial about
this problem and claims that all employees should report their management
problems to HR or to Jeff Bezos himself. This site documents all of the cases
where Amazon managers have mistreated their employees and escalating only made
it worse and never helped the employees deal with their bad managers.

Amazon is a great company for its customers. It's about time that it became a
great company for its really hard working employees as well.

To add your story to this site, email theFACEofAmazon @ gmail.com or
anonymously leave a voicemail at (425) 310-2347. We will never disclose your
personal information, so please include as many details as you are comfortable
sharing."

------
pinewurst
I saw the original posting while it was still alive and found it really
helpful. Yet more similar stories to the ones I occasionally hear (I'm in
Seattle). The immediacy of those stories tends to slip away and I find myself
applying for interesting AWS jobs. Reminders like this make me press their
"Withdraw from All Jobs" button. Better me pressing it now, than it being
pressed for me later.

------
MrTonyD
You know, multi-level boards have a long history in the United States and the
world. I would like to see other representatives on boards. I know that
Denmark has required employees on boards for years, but I think that system
can be improved. I would like to see something more like "corporativism" \-
where interest groups can be represented on boards in order to force
corporations to consider society as a whole, and not just their own obscene
profits.

------
yuhong
[http://web.archive.org/web/20151222211210/https://sites.goog...](http://web.archive.org/web/20151222211210/https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)

I am particularly interested in the "FIRED FOR CONTACTING JEFF" story.

~~~
alanh
The site’s back up, so your wish has been granted:
[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-
for...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for-
contacting-jeff)

~~~
yuhong
Doesn't go into much detail either unfortunately.

------
thisisnotatest
From the article: UPDATE (2/7/2016, 4:33 p.m.): Google tells us that the
website was flagged by another user as spam. After Google manually reviewed
the site and found this was not the case, they put it back online.

------
jedisct1
And you can tell whether one is a chemist by the way they pronounce
"unionization".

~~~
cperciva
"unionized" is a bit better for this purpose. It's rare for chemists to talk
about the process of ceasing to be ionized.

Another shibboleth is "coax": One syllable or two?

------
kafkaesq
Definitely a very heavy-handed move on Google's part. They could at least have
told these people _why_ their site was being shut down. The fact that they
didn't says a lot about how Google actually views its customers.

I would love to be able to donate to the site's owners to keep their site
running on another hosting service.

------
marvel_boy
This is blatant violation of the terms of service of Google. Time to sue
Google.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
They brought the website back. So what does that mean? Someone made a mistake,
problem undone.

~~~
protomyth
It means that a lot more people will read the articles on the site than
before.

