>Engineers at Google are very well paid and have very nice perks (at least that the general perception), so I think what many people might wonder is what better deal do they feel they need strongly enough to unite in order to get it?

Also hope to gosh that there is a membership rate cap.

1% of every Google engineer's salary every year is an absurd amount of money. I don't understand why Sally Joe making $200k needs to pay more for her protection than Billy Bob making $150k.

How else do you pay dozens of union leaders $500k salaries? Someone has to cough up the dough.

Power. It's the hunger that is never satiated.

The article is quite clear: they don't intend to unite to strengthen their bargaining power.

"Arranged as a members-only union, the new organization won’t seek collective bargaining rights to negotiate a new contract with the company"

It's not really a union. It's a political faction that calls itself a union to benefit from laws protecting union members from being fired for "organising". The assumption was that unions would "organise" to benefit their workers via better pay or conditions, but that isn't the case here.

Presumably in their case a union offers a better way to voice their concerns over eg. objectionable business practices, or just affecting the role out of more routine policies - eg. around time tracking, remote working, childcare, etc.