Mass layoffs are becoming the norm — here’s how you can protect yourself 

For the second year in a row, my Google colleagues and I have spent the month of January feeling anxious. sudden mass layoffs. This is new.

During Google's first 20 years, we carefully cultivated the impression that we were a great place to work.Its founders claimed that they were overturn the status quo We explained what it's like to work in the corporate world. The press and public were captivated by the color scheme, bean bag chairs, happy hour, on-site laundry and yoga classes, and regular Q&A sessions with the CEO.Remember “internship?”

While this image may still influence the public imagination, the internal situation has changed decisively, and for the worse. And there is no end in sight.

After a year with Alphabet, our friends and colleagues are having their lives forever changed by late-night emails. stock Up 52%, the company made a profit of $70 million. Stock buyback.Recent report Alphabet's cash reserves are estimated at $118 billion. We make a lot of money at Google, but time and time again we wake up in the morning to the news that our colleagues are being fired en masse for very vague reasons.

Management has given little explanation to those of us who remain on the job about the layoffs, and no indication as to when they will stop cutting hundreds or thousands of roles. It is clear that we, the workers, are paying the price for management's mistakes. We do not organize companies or create financial projections. We start by building products and services that generate profit for the company.

Meanwhile, we come to work and see the confusion, dissatisfaction, and instability that layoffs leave behind. The general fear that your entire team will disappear overnight is not good for productivity or innovation. We painfully watch as our former colleagues struggle to find new jobs in an increasingly tight market for technology workers.

This corporate practice of rolling layoffs isn't just happening at Google, so the market continues to get tighter.is happening in meta, Amazon Software companies large and small in Silicon Valley and technology hubs around the world. This is an industry-wide problem.

Few, if any, recently laid-off employees in the technology industry are covered by union contracts, and neither are the overwhelming majority still working in the industry. Until that changes, workers will continue to lose their jobs by the thousands, without any say.

As president of Alphabet Workers United Communications Workers of America, I know how difficult it is to win a majority of my colleagues to the cause of changing this situation and helping us negotiate with the world's largest companies. I am. AWU-CWA has broken new ground as the first full-scale labor union at a major U.S. technology company. We have achieved victories, including reinstating contractors who had been terminated. was illegally dismissed For speaking out about the harm in its AI training work and forcing Google to commit to stopping it. caste discriminationand won unpaid wages for previously employed data center workers. Refusal of COVID-19 hazard pay. But even after three years of hard work and organizing, there's still a long battle ahead to negotiate the first deal with Google. And we remain the only labor union at a major U.S. technology company.

This generation of tech giants was founded on the premise that keeping employees happy drives innovation and, in turn, profits. This is a myth that has kept us as tech workers from organizing and collectively acting in our own interests for far too long. This leaves us all painfully vulnerable to a new reality of blanket layoffs and role replacement by temporary and contract workers. Receives almost no benefits or compensation They deserve it, and corporate enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is also growing.

Just this week, Google announced: terminate the contract We work with thousands of employees who ensure Appen's search and AI products are secure. Author Cory Doctorow recently said, I have written“We are in the middle of nowhere.” [AI] Stealing your job definitely means that your boss will fire you and Fail [at] doing your job. ”

What can we do to stop it? Right now, tech workers are at the mercy of their employers, and employers have proven to be ruthless. If you went into your boss's office tomorrow and demanded a halt to layoffs, or tried to negotiate the terms of future layoffs, all you could expect would be blank stares and vague platitudes.

The only way we can negotiate and win is if we come together and bargain collectively. That's why if you're an engineer, you need to talk to your colleagues about what you're going to do. If you work at Google, you're in luck because there's already a union you can join. Every other big tech company in the US has to build it. It is possible and it is your right to do so.

The industry is changing. And we, the ordinary workers who enable companies to succeed, need to change with them. We need to gain the power to communicate to business leaders that we are not disposable, in language they can hear and understand.

Over the past year, we've been inspired by what we've seen from workers in other industries. auto worker, Writer, actor, video game workers, UPS driver And so on – face bosses and win. At AWU-CWA, we'll keep fighting until we can protect each other from management's worst impulses and force Google to do right by its employees. You too can fight to protect your jobs today. Until then, stay tuned for the next round of layoffs.

Parul Koul is a Google Software Engineer. Alphabet Workers Union-CWA.