According to a tweet posted on Thursday by the Alphabet Worker’s Union, a union of employees and contractors for Google’s parent company, more than 650 Google employees have signed a petition requesting that CEO Sunder Pichai and other top executives protect people’s search and location data related to abortion.
The AWU is requesting that benefits be expanded and made available to all employees who work for Google in addition to requests to secure user data. The AWU considers it intolerable that only full-time employees who are members of employee resource organizations have access to reproductive care.
This excludes contractors, suppliers, and temporary workers, who, according to the AWU, make up more than half of Google’s workforce. The union demands more perks to aid with travel expenses and lost pay, such as an increase in compensation for those who seek medical attention.
Additionally, the AWU is pressuring Google to cease funding anti-abortion politicians and PACS.
An inquiry for feedback from the AWU did not receive a prompt response.
Best Google Workers Sign Petition Demanding Protection
The petition was started in response to news earlier this month that Facebook had given law police access to messages made between a girl and her mother over Messenger. The mother is accused of assisting her daughter in having an abortion, burning, and burying the child. The mother entered a not-guilty plea. On Messenger, Facebook has already started testing end-to-end encryption.
Democratic legislators have urged digital corporations to safeguard the information of those seeking reproductive healthcare, as well as to correct Google Search’s falsely positive results for crisis pregnancy centers and anti-abortion clinics. For tech firms, advocates, and lawmakers, the possibility that information from geolocation, messaging, and period-tracking software may be used to punish women has led to a dilemma.
Google’s chief people officer, Fiona Cicconi, informed staff members of their health care benefits, which include out-of-state medical procedures, in a letter following the June Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jason Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that made access to abortion a constitutional right. Additionally, Google employees are free to move to another state without cause.
Google declined to respond to the petition but instead referred readers to prior letters and postings about the company’s initiatives to assist staff members and users in the wake of the Dobbs ruling.
