Punching In: Google Union Members Make Asks in Antitrust Suit

Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.

Google Union Intervenes | ICE Raids Cometh

Parker Purifoy: One of the most prominent unions in the tech industry is stepping into the US Justice Department’s historic legal fight to break up Google LLC.

The Alphabet Workers Union, affiliated with Communications Workers of America, is pushing a federal judge to include worker protections as he weighs how to remedy Google’s unlawful monopoly, according to an amicus brief filed May 9.

Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia should ensure mechanisms for confidential reporting and anti-retaliation protections for employees who are critical of the company, the brief said.

Mehta ruled last summer that Google broke antitrust laws in both online search and search text ads markets, in a case filed by the Justice Department. DOJ and a conglomerate of states asked the judge to force Google to sell off Chrome and place limits on its investments in AI last fall.

The union argued in the brief that the government’s divestment requests don’t consider the impacts to the laborers, calling it “a mistake.”

“Too often, people think that labor law and antitrust are at odds with each other,” Stephen McMurtry, a senior software engineer at Google and the union’s communications chair, said in a May 9 statement. “As the only wall-to-wall union in the tech industry, we want to chart a new path and hope that the government will recognize the role we and other tech workers can play to advance job security, fair competition, and the public interest.”

Under former President Joe Biden, federal antitrust enforcers got tough on employers for their anti-competitive impacts on the labor market, but it’s unclear whether the Trump administration will continue the same strategy.

AWU said its amicus brief comes after Google agreed to lift an order that barred employees from speaking on the ongoing antitrust litigation as part of a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge against the tech giant over the order and the company settled in March 2025.

The union has also tangled with Google recently in its effort to organize workers at its vendor Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in April that Google doesn’t jointly employ the Cognizant workers because it cut off its contract with them.

The union alleges that the contract termination was retaliation for the employees organizing.

The CWA is affiliated with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents employees of Bloomberg Law.

Demonstrators during an Alphabet Workers Union rally in New York, on Feb. 2, 2023.

Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Andrew Kreighbaum: Business owners and workers in Washington, D.C. were on edge last week as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on restaurants in the area as part of an enforcement operation.

While those visits were widely described as raids, the actions by ICE agents stopped short of carrying out searches or arrests backed by judicial warrants. But they may be a precursor of larger actions to come, and are affecting workplaces already, industry insiders said.

Shawn Townsend, president and CEO of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, said some of the group’s members received notices of inspection initiating audits of I-9 documentation. Others had visits that appeared to be more “observational or questioning” in nature, he said.

No arrests were made, but the actions still had a chilling effect across the industry, Townsend observed.

“Owners are on edge, and many are reluctant to speak publicly out of fear of being targeted or mischaracterized,” Townsend said. “They want to comply with the law, but they’re trying to avoid the kind of spectacle that can harm their workers and their business reputation.”

An ICE spokesperson said the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations unit served more than 100 notices of inspection to local employers. The agency is conducting worksite enforcement across the country, including in the D.C. area, to ensure compliance with immigration and employment laws, the spokesperson said.

An actual ICE raid—an even more high-profile, disruptive event at a workplace—would follow the signing of a judicial warrant by a federal judge. Several D.C. business owners said they asked to see warrants when agents tried to enter.

Even in the absence of worksite raids, the agency is managing to put employers and workers on notice, said John Mazzeo, senior director and associate general counsel at Vertical Screen Inc. And the end result is often the same, he said—some immigrants without authorization lose their jobs and others flee their workplace out of fear.

“It serves notice to similarly situated people that they may be on the list,” said Mazzeo, a former DHS attorney. “The big raid hasn’t happened but the impact is being felt.”

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