Google Dodges Joint Employer Bargaining Order Via Court Test (2)

Google LLC escaped a National Labor Relations Board order directing it to negotiate with a union representing contract workers it jointly employed through a now-expired contract for YouTube staffers.

The NLRB case involving Google and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.’s shared responsibility to bargain was rendered moot when Google let its labor contracting deal with Cognizant run out, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday.

Beyond vacating the board’s bargaining order, the court also voided the agency’s finding that the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary jointly employed the Cognizant workers. That holding could have helped the Alphabet Workers Union’s pending unfair labor practice charges filed against Google and Cognizant as joint employers that are related to the workers’ organizing.

The case underscores the litigation and business tactics available to companies that want to get out of labor law obligations to contract workers who they jointly employ.

Google in 2019 hired a group of Austin-based Cognizant employees to work on its YouTube Music service, renewing the contract each year before letting it end in 2024.

Alphabet Workers Union filed a petition with the NLRB in 2022 to represent the workers, naming both Cognizant and Google as joint employers. An NLRB official found that Google exerted the direct control over the workers needed to qualify as a joint employer under the board’s employer-friendly standard set during the first Trump administration.

The workers voted to unionize in April 2023. The NLRB ruled in January 2024 that Google and Cognizant violated federal labor law by not negotiating with the union, and ordered the companies to bargain.

Google’s contract for the Austin-based Cognizant workers expired in February 2024. Under a different contract with Cognizant, the work formerly done by the team in Austin is done overseas.

End of Contract, End of Case

The expiration of the Google-Cognizant contract was at the core of the D.C. Circuit panel’s ruling to nix the NLRB’s decision and order in the case.

“The Board and the Union seek to have the D&O enforced and Google and Cognizant seek to have the D&O vacated,” Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, wrote for the panel. “However, the expiry of the Google-Cognizant contract means that there is no longer any relationship between the two companies that could support the joint-employer finding upon which the D&O is premised.”

Although D.C. Circuit precedent holds that the possibility of a remedial notice usually keeps an unfair labor practice from becoming moot even when the parties resolve the underlying dispute, that assumes there’s the type of ongoing relationship that isn’t present in the Google-Cognizant case, the panel said.

The D.C. Circuit panel said it was appropriate to vacate the NLRB’s joint employer finding, noting that the companies didn’t take actions to moot the case.

“The Google-Cognizant contract expired on its own terms,” Henderson wrote. “And neither Google nor Cognizant raised mootness—indeed, all parties opposed mootness at oral argument.”

During oral argument in January, the parties’ lawyers said that one of the reasons the case wasn’t moot was the pending unfair labor practice charges filed against Google and Cognizant as joint employers that are related to the workers unionizing.

But the attorney for the companies, Matthew Silveira of Jones Day, told the D.C. Circuit that those pending ULPs wouldn’t justify keeping the case going so long as the court also nixes the NLRB’s holding that Google jointly employed the contract workers.

“We do need that underlying joint employer ruling vacated, otherwise we’ll be stuck with it,” Silveira said at oral argument. “We will have lost the ability to legally challenge it.”

The D.C. Circuit panel also included Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, and Justin Walker, a Trump appointee.

Silveira and the union’s lawyer, Karla Campbell of Stranch Jennings & Garvey PLLC, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The NLRB declined to comment, agency spokeswoman Rachelle Owen said.

The Alphabet Workers Union is an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America. The CWA is affiliated with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents employees of Bloomberg Law.

The case is Google LLC v. NLRB, D.C. Cir., No. 24-1003, 4/22/25.