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The biggest news in tech and media this month is the formation of Google’s Alphabet Workers Union, a minority union partnered with the Communication Workers of America. As a minority union, AWU has not organized for collective bargaining rights through the NLRB. Rather, for now, they are simply a group of Alphabet employees and contractors who are rallying together to stand against and for social issues affected by the tech giant. Whether or not the group uses this collaboration as a stepping stone to formal representation remains to be seen.
In Texas, the newspaper industry has seen a jump in union membership. When 2020 began there were zero newspaper unions in the state. Today, there are two: one at the Dallas Morning News and another at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. These two newspapers are the first Texas newsrooms to organize in modern times. The last unionized newspaper in the state, the San Antonio Light, closed in 1993.
