In Zurich it seems that they managed to organize a Workers council: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/google-agrees-to-work...

Can't seem to find anything else.

There is a Workers Council being formed in the London office too.

How does a Workers Council differ from a union?

They're entirely different things.

A Workers' Council is a legally recognized body representing employees of a single employer. It has very limited rights and duties, like being informed in the case of mass layoffs.

A union is a body that represents workers in an entire industry. It can have whatever duties the employees feel like giving it.

Unions can represent workers in a single company. Most countries have laws about the rights and duties.

In other countries, employees enjoy different protections in general, and in general Google complies with the regulations of other countries regarding employment.

This doesn't preclude them from making decisions that favor the company over individual employees' best interests if the law allows it, but I can't think of an example of Google breaking employment law in, for example, Germany.

They are as friendly as the law makes them, like any other company.

Note also that although France is often cited it actually has a very low unionisation rate, lower than the US, and e.g. the UK is massively more unionised. Unions are mostly active in the public sector. A specificity is that the right to strike is a constitutional right with quite lax requirements and it is a recurring debate that it is abused by unions. Union activity is also extremely protected so if you get elected as union rep it is virtually impossible to fire you for any reason.

There is a huge difference between unions in the US and Europe. When you organise a union in the US, you often do it in order to have some rights that employees in Europe already have. So normally there is little incentive to form such a union in Europe among white-collar workers.

In the UK firing someone for being a member of a union is unfair dismissal.