Was it really a bluff? How do you know if growth projects or other company investments had to be canceled?

If a company defers a merit increase of their own employees for “other company investments” then I as a worker would absolutely want a union to call them out on it. A company wouldn’t even have money for those investments without the merit of the employees.

And the employees wouldn’t even have jobs to complain about if the company had not made the investments to grow large enough to hire them. So that’s kind of one-sided.

Just because the union made them do it, doesn’t mean it was a bluff or the right decision. And if those investments pan out, the stock gains are often worth substantially more to the employee than the token merit increase.

You make it sound like the management couldn't have communicated this to employees and that they wouldn't vote for what is beneficial; like, perhaps you think they're too naive to understand longer term interests, or whatever.

Sure, management have to turn realise they can no longer dictate what is solely in their interests, but in most companies they're probably up to the task.

Plenty of workers have forgone monies owed in order to keep their employees companies afloat. If both parties respect one another a lot can be achieved.

These people don’t respect Google though. They’re indoctrinated activists who fight invisible enemies, merely for the sake of feeling like righteous heroes. The union chair appears to have worked at Google for less than a year, having just moved to the US for college and freshly graduated. It’s a little entitled and ridiculous.

We know because we got the merit increase. Do you think they'd give up so easily if they had a good case against it?

For the same reason little shops pay protection money to gangs. Just because the money went somewhere does not mean it was the best place. Absolutely, the company likely was acting in bad faith, but it is not guaranteed. Maybe merit increases means they have to cut something else that affects their ability to complete, or maybe it just means less bonus for executives. Just saying that there are two sides. It is not always an evil company. I guess this is an argument for collective bargaining. I’ve never experienced its benefits however, and have seen negative effects.

That's a lot of whataboutism.

It's not like it's in the best interest of the workers to see the company go belly up. Or be less competitive. If the company can show that this is why they're defering merit pay there's no reason to believe that unions won't accept it and agree with them.

It gives employees leverage, and healthy competition in all aspects should just strengthen the company.

Of all the comments in here this has to be the most naive.

That really depends on whether the union is larger than the company it's making demands of. It may be in their best interest to bleed a company faster if it will yield greater benefits over the now-altered life span of the company.

There's a real consideration of whether X% of employee compensation over N years is better than the same over M years.

Well US auto manufacturers went bankrupt because the choice was: 1) agree to maintain unaffordable union benefits or 2) end up in a worse situation with a prolonged strike that hurts the business even more.

So they kicked the can down the road and chose 1 until they just went bankrupt and the courts allowed contracts to be renegotiated and high cost union employees to be replaced with younger employees at a far lower compensation package.