About 40 staff contractors for YouTube Music have gone on strike to protest a company order to return to the office.
The group of workers is employed by Cognizant, a subcontractor for Alphabet, which owns YouTube as well as Google. The workers claim that the return-to-office mandate is retaliation by Alphabet over their attempt to unionize.
- The YouTube Music Content Operations team workers have been asked to return to Google's office in Austin, Texas.
- However, many of them said they were hired to work remotely and cannot afford the cost to relocate or live in the city.
- The contractors have been seeking to unionize with the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), which recently submitted an unfair labor practice charge against Cognizant and Alphabet.
- In the charge, the workers claimed the return-to-office order was an attempt to "interfere with the fair voting conditions mandated by federal law."
- In response, Cognizant said it has repeatedly communicated to the workers that their roles were in-office jobs and that the workers would be given 90 days' notice to return to the office.
