Also Joining a Silicon Valley Union: Waymo's Food Service Employees

"Food service employees at the autonomous driving company Waymo are forming a union," reports NBC News, calling it "the latest push by support workers to organize at Silicon Valley's most prominent companies."The cafeteria workers at the Mountain View-based company cite the high cost of living in the Bay Area and the lack of strong benefits while working for one of the world's most valuable companies. Waymo is owned by Google parent company, Alphabet. The workers are employed by Sodexo, which contracts service work for Google and other companies. Organizers say they have a majority of union cards signed from the roughly two dozen-person bargaining unit.... Workers say the $24 an hour they make from the company is not enough to live adequately in the Bay Area. They also cite the prohibitive cost of the company's health plan, which has a $5,000 deductible. The living wage in the San Jose-Sunnyvale area is $27.74 for a single adult, and $52.74 for a single adult with a child, according to MIT's living wage calculator.... The workers are part of Silicon Valley's ranks of contractors who support and supplement the work at tech companies. Union campaigns have coursed through the industry as tech company profits - and the cost of living in the Bay Area - have escalated steeply in recent years. At Google, more than 4,000 of these workers have joined unions since 2018, including 2,300 cafeteria workers at its headquarters and satellite offices in the Bay Area in 2019, according to Unite Here.... "[Workers] see all the money around tech," said D. Taylor, the president of Unite Here. "And that's great. But they want to have a piece of the American dream." Ironically, one of the workers said they were inspired by Hasan Piker, who NBC News describes as "a leftist Twitch streamer and political commentator" with large followings on Twitter - and on Google-owned YouTube.

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