Alphabet AI Workers Were Illegally Silenced About Pay, Complaint Alleges
Union says staffer was fired for discussing compensation in an online forum.
The Alphabet Workers Union filed a complaint with the US National Labor Relations Board against a vendor’s subsidiary for restricting a group of Google AI contract staff from discussing pay.
Photographer: Damian Lemanski/BloombergAn Alphabet Inc. vendor, Hitachi Ltd., illegally restricted a group of Google artificial intelligence contract staff from discussing their pay and fired one of them for starting conversations about wages, a union alleged in a federal complaint.
The Alphabet Workers Union filed the US National Labor Relations Board case Tuesday against Hitachi’s subsidiary GlobalLogic Inc., which it said manages a group of around 1,800 employees doing rating, labeling and training for Google’s AI products. The complaint accuses GlobalLogic of creating a policy prohibiting discussion of wages in its online internal forums, while allowing employees to discuss other non-work topics in those “online social spaces.” The company created the policy in response to employee Ricardo Levario raising pay issues, and then fired him for it, according to the complaint, which said his termination “resulted in a chill” on his co-workers’ willingness to exercise their rights.