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Better together: Unions have been dying out across the developed world for decades, could they mount a comeback?

Better together: Unions have been dying out across the developed world for decades, could they mount a comeback?

David Crowther

This week more than 200 Google employees did something quite unusual for employees at a tech company — they formed a union. Officially called the Alphabet Workers Union, the goals of the group are similar to many traditional unions with one major exception — they aren't explicitly looking to better their pay. Instead, the group is focused  on fighting for fair and inclusive working conditions as well as "the freedom to decline to work on projects that don’t align with our values".

Although 230 people might not be very many in an economy with millions of workers the AWU is interesting for a number of reasons. The first is that unions are pretty uncommon at technology companies where individual bargaining has long been the norm. The second is that unions in have been on the slide for decades across the US, and indeed the wider developed world, so it's curious that a new-economy company like Google (Alphabet) is seeing unions crop up.

‍A dying breed

‍In the 1950s, more than one-third of American workers were in a union, collectively bargaining for better pay and working conditions. Last year that number had fallen to just 10%. We won't call it a comeback, but if unions fighting for better pay don't make as much sense in a globalised economy, where low cost labour is readily available overseas, they may find better traction in fighting for values.

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