Organised labour comes to Silicon Valley
There is a growing trend in favour of Silicon Valley tech workers forming trade unions.
There is a growing trend in favour of Silicon Valley tech workers forming trade unions. Google software engineer Andrew Gainer-Dewar recalls how a walkout of staff at the search engine in November 2018 sowed the seeds for the Alphabet Workers' Union, named after Google's parent company, which was formed earlier this month. Professor Louis Hyman is a historian of work and business at Cornell University, and puts the development into historical context. And we find out more from Veena Dubal, who is a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Also in the programme, Google is pulling the plug on Project Loon, a network of balloons carrying antennas, which would float high above the ground and transmit internet signals to remote areas. Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones tells us why, and we hear what other technologies might bring internet to rural Africa from Johannesburg-based telecoms and internet analyst Arthur Goldstuck. Plus, as release of the new James Bond film No Time to Die is postponed for a third time, we hear about the impact on cinemas from Annabel Turpin who runs the ARC Stockton Arts Centre in northeast England.
(Picture: A person cycles past a Google building. Picture credit: Getty Images.)
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- Fri 22 Jan 2021 15:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except East Asia & South Asia