I don't understand how you see a story about terrible treatment of Google contractors, followed by severe retaliation when they try to negotiate better conditions, and your main takeaway is, "Huh, these union people seem to spend all their time trying to protect themselves from retaliation. Sounds fishy."

These people were offered benefits that never materialized and generally treated unfairly. I don't know why some people instantly assume it's the billion dollar company that's in the right, and the guy or gal making $15/hr who's trying to take advantage of the system.

But did the union do anything about the working conditions for these contractors, or just the retaliation for this one person who got fired?

I don’t have anything against the worker here, I feel for them. It just seems like the union is very ineffective, and it’s goals don’t even seem to be aligned with the workers (other than those who get fired for being in the union).

If unionizing is so pointless, why did Google suspend her for even talking about unionizing? Also, the article states quite explicitly that management did not want employees talking about wages. Now employees can. Is successfully protecting freedom of speech really such a small thing to you?

To put myself in the shoes of the worker, of course I want better working conditions and pay.

To put myself in the shoes of management. My company has a class of workers who do activism instead of their job. If one of my employees wants to join that class, I’m probably going to be disappointed - although firing them for this would be idiotic, because it’s illegal and will get me in trouble with the NLRB.

I think the workers here absolutely deserve representation that can get them paid more than $15 an hour, but this union doesn’t seem to be it. It seems more like an institutionalized pissing match between a clique of employees and management. It’s like a hack that exploits labor law to protect workers from the peril of at-will employment. Don’t like the expectations of your job, but still want to get paid? Join the union! Now if they fire you, it’s retaliation!

Why "instead of their job"? It's perfectly possible to both do your job and engage in activism.

If you look at the history of activism at Google, a lot of former organizers have been terminated. The union is there to protect current organizers from similar retaliation.

Why should activist employees (who, I should note, are activists for their pet political causes rather than actual working conditions) not get reprimanded/terminated?

There should be no discrimination, if you a non activist and an activist did the same thing (posted same shit on FB) then you both should have the exact same treatment. What I read from this and other articles is that management goes hunting for reasons to fire people they don't like. In this case someone posted about bad work conditions and got fired, in other casaes people posted "wrong political thoughts" and got fired, maybe there needs to be a reasonable reason for firing somebody and there should be a body that would have the job to try and defend the worker.

I agree with that interpretation of the facts on the ground. It just seems like an unconventional reason to have a union. Generally I think the purpose of unions is to advocate for the interests of the workers at large, not to be a kind of employment guarantee for people who want to do activism instead of their job.

If I worked at Google and I had some complaint about my health insurance or something, it doesn’t seem like the union would even be the right people to talk to, because they don’t seem to represent the well-being of the workers like an ordinary union.

If you were a member of AWU, that would very much be a legitimate issue to bring to your workplace unit chair.

AWU does advocate for the interests of workers, as demonstrated by this article. It's just that full-time employees don't tend to have as many issues as the temps do.