not gained traction in silicon valley many tech workers shunned them arguing that labor groups were focused on issues like wages not a top concern in the highearning industry and were not equipped to address their concerns about ethics and the role of technology in society labor organizers also found it difficult to corral the tech companies huge work forces which are scattered around the globeonly a few small union drives have succeeded in tech in the past workers at the crowdfunding site kickstarter and at the app development platform glitch won union campaigns last year and a small group of contractors at a google office in pittsburgh unionized in 2019 thousands of employees at an amazon warehouse in alabama are also set to vote on a union in the coming monthsthere are those who would want you to believe that organizing in the tech industry is completely impossible sara steffens cwas secretarytreasurer said of the new google union if you dont have unions in the tech industry what does that mean for our country thats one reason from cwas point of view that we see this as a priorityveena dubal a law professor at the university of california hastings college of the law said the google union was a powerful experiment because it brought unionization into a major tech company and skirted barriers that had prevented such organizingif it grows which google will do everything they can to prevent it could have huge impacts not just for the workers but for the broader issues that we are all thinking about in terms of tech power in society she saidthe union is likely to ratchet up tensions between google engineers who work on autonomous cars artificial intelligence and internet search and the companys management sundar pichai googles chief executive and other executives have tried to come to grips with an increasingly activist work force but have made misstepslast month federal officials said google had most likely wrongly fired two employees who protested its work with immigration authorities in 2019 timnit gebru a black woman who is a respected artificial intelligence researcher also said last month that google had fired her after she criticized the companys approach to minority hiring and the biases built into ai systems her departure set off a storm of criticism about googles treatment of minority employeesthese companies find it a bone in their throat to even have a small group of people who say we work at google and have another point of view said nelson lichtenstein the director of the center for the study of work labor and democracy at the university of california santa barbara google might well succeed in decimating any organization that comes to the floorthe alphabet workers union which represents employees in silicon valley and cities like cambridge mass and seattle gives protection and resources to workers who join those who opt to become members will contribute 1 percent of their total compensation to the union to fund its effortsover the