Alphabet's refusal to negotiate with YouTube Music contract staff was 'illegal': US Labour Board

livemint.com:

Alphabet’s Google, which owns YouTube, has consistently denied being their boss, even after NLRB officials last year deemed it a “joint employer" of the workers – a company with enough control over them to be liable for their treatment and obligated to negotiate with them if they unionize. A Google spokesperson said the company plans to appeal the ruling in federal court.

“As we’ve said before, we have no objection to these Cognizant employees electing to form a union," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We simply believe it’s only appropriate for Cognizant, as their employer, to engage in collective bargaining." The treatment of contract workers has been a constant point of contention for Alphabet, which relies heavily on staffing firms.

Contract staff became the majority of the company’s global workforce in 2018, and the Alphabet Workers Union, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, has been pushing to organize both those workers and Alphabet’s direct employees since it launched in 2021. In their ruling Wednesday, a trio of Democratic NLRB members ordered Google to “cease and desist" from refusing to recognize and negotiate with the union, and “in any like or related manner interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed" under federal labor law.

The Alphabet union filed a complaint with the NLRB early last year accusing Alphabet and Cognizant of responding to the union campaign by making threats, transferring work abroad and using new return-to-office rules to try to derail organizing. Cognizant has said the allegations have “no merit." That complaint is still pending.