
Labor board rolls back employee email rights after Google recommendation - aaronbrethorst
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028033/google-labor-board-employee-email-block-organizing
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jakelazaroff
Google's position here is utterly disingenuous. They have been one of the
leading forces blurring employees' home and work lives, and have reaped the
productivity benefits thereof. But now that it's negatively impacting Google,
they're advocating for a strict separation between the two. (Limited to
organizing, of course — you're still free to push commits from home or stay
late to play foosball with your coworkers and talk about work.)

~~~
NovemberWhiskey
What does organizing have to do with 'blurring ... home and work lives'? Union
organizing seems like a focal case of a workplace activity.

I feel many commenters didn't take the time to read the NLRB decision or
understand it properly. The NLRB's position (now, and also prior to 2014) is
that companies should not be _compelled_ to allow organizers the use of
corporate IT if other non-business use is not permitted.

That doesn't mean that companies are allowed to have discriminatory policies
that permit some non business-related IT usage but ban use for organizing.
This puts email back on the same footing as employer-provided telephones,
bulletin boards and photocopiers etc.

~~~
jakelazaroff
I agree that organizing is a workplace activity. But if that’s the case, why
should companies be allowed to prohibited it on corporate IT? What other job-
related activities are outright _banned_ on company-provided equipment?

Google’s position is clearly that organizing is _not_ a workplace activity.
That’s why the point about breaking down the boundaries between home and work
is salient. They are happy to blur those lines when it means their employees
donating their personal time and equipment to benefit Google, but when it
means employees organizing they try to prevent what they see as “personal” use
of company property.

~~~
NovemberWhiskey
_I agree that organizing is a workplace activity. But if that’s the case, why
should companies be allowed to prohibited it on corporate IT? What other job-
related activities are outright banned on company-provided equipment?_

It's a _workplace_ activity; but it's not a _business_ activity. By
definition, companies are allowed to make rules about employee conduct and, in
most cases except workplace safety/conditions, restrict activities that are
not business-related when employees are working.

Imagine a company has a policy that says "company mobile phones can only be
used for business purposes". So if you're making a sales call or rescheduling
a meeting, that's fine - it's a business purpose.

On the other hand, chatting with colleagues about plans for the weekend would
not be permitted; nor would calling overseas relatives and so on.

The NLRB has _always_ held that if a company had such a policy on telephone
usage then it was also acceptable to restrict the use of that company mobile
phone for union organizing purposes. That is because the policy is _non-
discriminatory_.

If the policy said, on the other hand, "company mobile phones should be used
primarily for business purposes but reasonable personal use is permitted, but
you cannot use the phone for labor organization purposes", then that policy
would not be acceptable because it's _discriminatory_.

The question is whether policies are discriminatory in treating labor
organization less generously than other non-business usage.

The case in 2014 created a special case for email, where even if the employer
didn't permit non-business use of email, then they still had to permit use for
labor organizing. The recent decision simply undoes that special case and puts
email back on the same footing as (e.g.) company telephones.

Given Google seems to have a vastly permissive policy on the use of company
IT, it seems very unlikely they'd ever be able to restrict use of that same
company IT for labor organization purposes; and there is _nothing_ in this
ruling that suggests otherwise.

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tyingq
That's fairly interesting, as employers then benefit from the progression of
tech over time.

For example, building entrances and break rooms used to be significant places
for unions to spread messaging.

With campus sprawl, "work from home", globally spread workforce, etc...that
doesn't work.

The equivalent of the physical entrance is now often an employee portal. And
break rooms / water cooler chat might now be company email or MS Teams /
Slack.

~~~
close04
> the Obama-era standard “should be overruled” and a broader, pro-employer
> ruling reinstated

Yes, you can never have enough pro-employer ruling. I wonder if the fact that
this is Google had any influence on the decision. Would Walmart have convinced
the labor board of the same?

~~~
ggggtez
Kinda weird they didn't mention which "Las Vegas casino" it was. I didn't read
the case, so for all we know it might have been decided the same way without
the Google petition.

Still, rather a surprising decision...

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oneepic
I imagine the next best thing would be setting up a site/mailing list outside
of the company. But I also imagine the company would take action to shut that
down anyway. A very absurd situation.

~~~
wmf
Instead of trying to take it down they'll just make it very difficult for
employees to even find out about it. Organizers are going to have to contact
people one by one now.

~~~
Bartweiss
And if you're an organizer relying on obscurity instead of NLRB protections,
would you really feel safe starting that process by telling prospective
members "hey, PM me your personal email" over a corporate channel?

If your company is too big or remote to talk in person, establishing wholly-
external connections is not going to be an easy task.

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1023bytes
So would this apply if a Google employee used their personal Gmail account?

~~~
gnicholas
No, it’s about email provided by the employer to the employee _qua employee_.

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GoodJokes
Google doesn’t want its employees organizing. Why? One of the most crucial
things about organizing is being able to contact your fellow employees. Yes
the equipment is Google’s, but also I would contend that conversing with your
fellow employees is in service to the company, in service of making the
company better.

If I am trying to organize I would just send a blast asking everyone to add
their personal emails to list. Could google call that organizing and penalize?
What if I just wanted a personal email so I could schedule getting a beer.

~~~
tssva
In many companies purposely sending an all employee email such as that would
potentially be grounds for dimisal. I know of people that have been fired for
accidently sending all company emails too many times.

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goatinaboat
Everyone has a smartphone and a dataplan now. This ruling won’t stop anyone,
it will just drive them underground. Secret WhatsApp groups are the future of
social networking.

~~~
ggggtez
With all the talk about tech trying to unionize, and people being fired for
unionizing at Google... Why haven't we actually seen any... you know...
unions?

I keep seeing news about this, but I have a lot of trouble buying the argument
that it's union busting behavior when I don't see any evidence of anyone
actually trying to form a union in the tech world.

(That said, yeah it makes sense that Google and other tech companies would
want to prevent it).

~~~
SaberTail
I'm not sure I follow your logic. You present as evidence that we see no
unions forming. Wouldn't that equally well support the hypothesis that there
is union busting behavior going on (to great success)?

You are also ignoring that Google is enlisting a union-busting consulting
firm[1]. This seems like furher evidence that union-busting is happening.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/Google-
union-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/Google-union-
consultant.html)

~~~
ggggtez
Not so. I don't present it as evidence, but I present it as a startling lack
of evidence.

Take the other news story in the news today, about someone at Google who made
a notification about something to do with labor organizing I guess. I read the
blog post and the news article, and I'm just not convinced by the union-
busting argument.

I keep seeing things like "X behavior is _like_ posting a flyer on a public
bulletin board". So where are the articles talking about people getting fired
for _actually putting up flyers on a public bulletin board_? That's the thing
I don't understand. There is a startling lack of unionizing going on in these
supposed cases of union busting.

To bring it back to this article, do I think the ruling is bad? Yeah I do. I
disagree with the ruling a lot. Maybe there should be some kind of
organization where workers could fight against that sort of thing... Hmmm...

