谷歌員工大罷工，對硅谷個人主義說“不”

The most remarkable aspect of the walkout at Google last week may not have been that an estimated 20,000 people participated or that it had global reach, or even that it came together in less than a week. It was the way the organizers identified their action with a broader worker struggle, using language almost unheard-of among affluent tech employees.

上周谷歌員工罷工最引人矚目的方面可能不是約兩萬的參加人數(shù)，也不是它的全球影響力，甚至不是它在不到一周的時間內(nèi)就組織在一起。最引人矚目的是，組織者將他們的行動與更廣泛的工人斗爭關(guān)聯(lián)起來，他們使用的語言，是富裕的科技員工之前聞所未聞的。

“This is part of a growing movement,” the organizers wrote in a news release, “not just in tech, but across the country, including teachers, fast-food workers and others who are using their strength in numbers to make real change.”

“這是一個不斷發(fā)展的運動的一部分，”組織者在新聞稿中寫道，“不僅是在科技領(lǐng)域，而是在全國各地，包括教師、快餐工作者和其他正在用自己的力量做出真正改變的人。”

At the beginning of their protest near the company’s San Francisco offices, the organizers even expressed support for Marriott workers on strike in the city.

抗議在公司舊金山辦事處附近開始時，組織者甚至表達了對在該市罷工的萬豪國際(Marriott)工人的支持。

For decades, Silicon Valley has been ground zero for a vaguely utopian form of individualism — the idea that a single engineer with a laptop and an internet connection could change the world, or at least a long-established industry. Class-consciousness was passé. Unions were the enemy of innovation, an anchor to the status quo.

幾十年來，硅谷一直是某種個人主義的模糊烏托邦的起點——一個擁有筆記本電腦和互聯(lián)網(wǎng)連接的工程師可以改變世界，或者至少能改變一個歷史悠久的行業(yè)。階級意識已經(jīng)過時了。工會是創(chuàng)新的敵人，是現(xiàn)狀的支柱。

But the issues that contributed to the walkout at Google — the company’s controversial work with the Pentagon on artificial intelligence, its apparent willingness to build a censored search engine for China, and above all its handling of sexual harassment accusations against senior managers — proved too large for any worker to confront alone, even if that worker made mid-six figures. They required a form of solidarity that would be recognizable to the most militant 20th century labor organizers.

但導致谷歌罷工的問題——該公司與五角大樓合作在人工智能方面進行的爭議性工作;為中國建立一個審查版搜索引擎的明顯意愿;最重要的是公司對高級管理人員性騷擾指控的處理——證明它們太大了，任何工人都無法獨自面對，即使這個工人擁有六位數(shù)的收入。他們需要一種團結(jié)一致的形式，它可以在20世紀最激進的勞工組織者身上看到。

“The myth of Silicon Valley is that all the power you need is embodied in you as an individual — if you want more money, go somewhere else,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “What they were saying here was that all the economic power they had as individuals wasn’t enough.”

“硅谷的神話是，你需要的所有權(quán)力都體現(xiàn)在你個人身上——如果你想要更多錢，就去其他地方，”加州大學伯克利分校的勞工專家哈莉·謝肯(Harley Shaiken)說。“而他們在這里說的是，作為個人，他們擁有的所有經(jīng)濟權(quán)力都是不夠的。”

And the consequences of that dawning realization, Shaiken and other labor experts said, could reverberate across the entire tech sector.

謝肯和其他勞工專家表示，這一覺醒的后果可能會影響到整個科技行業(yè)。

Tech executives have long maintained that unions are inefficient — Intel co-founder Robert Noyce once described unions as an existential threat — and that skilled tech workers don’t need formal protections because employers can’t afford to alienate them. Many tech companies also promote themselves as inherently pro-worker because they are less hierarchical, and more democratically run, than old-economy businesses.

科技行業(yè)的高管長期堅持認為工會效率低下——英特爾聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人羅伯特·諾伊斯(Robert Noyce)曾將工會描述為生死攸關(guān)的威脅——嫻熟的技術(shù)工人不需要正式保護，因為雇主離不開他們。許多科技公司也宣傳自己天生親近員工，因為他們比舊經(jīng)濟企業(yè)更少等級制度，運作時更民主。

Google, for example, points to countless ways for workers to communicate with senior executives: Employees can raise a concern with the chief executive at a TGIF meeting that happens a few times each month. They can ask questions on an internal company platform before meetings, and management will respond to the ones that receive the most “up-votes.” Workers can even circulate petitions, and those that prove especially popular can earn their authors a sit-down with management.

例如，谷歌指出，它的工人與高級管理人員有無數(shù)溝通方式：員工可以在每月舉行幾次的TGIF(意為“感謝上帝，到周五了”。——譯注)會議上向首席執(zhí)行官發(fā)問。在會議之前，他們還在內(nèi)部公司平臺上提問，管理層將對那些獲得最多“支持票”的問題做出回應(yīng)。工人之間甚至可以傳閱請愿書，那些被證明特別受歡迎的請愿的作者可以同管理層進行交流。

Underlying the back-and-forth is the belief that truth bubbles up from an unregulated exchange of ideas. But some employees complain that it rarely leads to lasting change.

這種反復交流的基礎(chǔ)是一種信念，即真理會從不受管制的思想交流中涌現(xiàn)出來。但是一些員工抱怨它很少能帶來持久的變化。

“As far as mechanisms for expressing feelings, there are plenty of them,” said Meredith Whittaker, a 12-year Google veteran who oversees a research group at the company and helped organize the walkout. “But as far as opportunities for agency and power — for real power over decision-making — some of what you’re seeing is a recognition that the former doesn’t equal the latter.”

“說到表達情感的機制，這里有很多，”梅雷迪斯·韋特克(Meredith Whittaker)說，她是一位12年的谷歌資深員工，負責監(jiān)督公司的一個研究小組，是這次罷工的組織者之一。“但就代理和權(quán)力——在決策上的真正權(quán)力——的機會而言，你看到的一些事情在告訴你，兩者是不平等的。”

When The New York Times reported in late October that Google had given a high-ranking official a $90 million payout as he left the company after allegations of sexual harassment, organizers said, it ignited these simmering frustrations.

《紐約時報》于10月底報道稱，谷歌在一名高管因性騷擾指控離開公司時，給了他一筆9000萬美元的賠付金，組織者說，這點燃了人們心中醞釀的失望情緒。

The question is how far this sense of individual powerlessness has spread within Google. The walkout organizers argue that the feeling is quite widespread — extending from software developers to hardware engineers and from employees to contractors.

問題是這種個人的無力感能在谷歌中傳播多遠。罷工組織者認為這種感覺非常普遍——從軟件開發(fā)人員到硬件工程師，從員工到承包商。

Some observers agree. Michelle Miller, co-founder of CoWorker.org, which educates workers in tech and other industries on how to assert their labor rights, said that employees at Google “had to start thinking of themselves as some kind of collective” last year after a memo by an employee asserted that women tend to be innately less capable of certain technical work.

一些觀察者同意這一點。對科技和其他行業(yè)員工進行維護勞工權(quán)益教育的網(wǎng)站CoWorker.org的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人米歇爾·米勒(Michelle Miller)表示，在去年一名員工發(fā)布備忘錄聲稱女性天生就缺乏某些技術(shù)工作的能力后，谷歌員工就“不得不開始將自己視為某種集體”。

She said workers who criticized the memo and defended diversity efforts on internal forums were threatened by people sympathetic to the memo’s author, James Damore, and had to band together to defend one another.

她說那些批評這份備忘錄并在內(nèi)部論壇上為多元化努力辯護的工作人員，受到了那些同情備忘錄作者詹姆斯·達莫爾(James Damore)的人的威脅，并且不得不聯(lián)合起來互相爭辯。

Since Damore’s ouster, Google workers have steadily received evidence that management will only heed collective action, Michelle Miller argued. That includes an ad hoc worker revolt that preceded the end of the company’s controversial Pentagon contract.

米歇爾·米勒認為，自達莫爾被開除后，谷歌員工已經(jīng)確信管理層只會留意集體行動。這包括在該公司有爭議的五角大樓合同結(jié)束之前發(fā)生的臨時工人抗議。

Google may have been uniquely vulnerable to a worker uprising given its ostensibly progressive values, including the company’s longtime exhortation, “Don’t be evil,” and the openness of its corporate systems. Organizers note that they executed the entire walkout using Google’s internal platforms and other company resources.

考慮到其表面上的進步價值觀，包括該公司一直以來秉守的“不作惡”箴言，以及公司系統(tǒng)的開放性，谷歌可能特別容易受到員工反抗的影響。組織者提到他們使用谷歌內(nèi)部平臺和其他公司資源實行了整個罷工。

They say they’re confident that the protests will only escalate if the chief executive, Sundar Pichai, and his team don’t put forth a plan to act on some of their demands, among them a worker representative on the board of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and an end to employment contracts that prevent class-action lawsuits and require individual arbitration for discrimination and harassment cases.

他們表示，如果首席執(zhí)行官桑達爾·皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)和他的團隊沒有給出計劃對他們的一些訴求采取行動，他們相信抗議只會升級。這些訴求包括在谷歌母公司Alphabet董事會中設(shè)置一名員工代表，以及終止那些阻止集體訴訟并要求對歧視和騷擾案件進行個人仲裁的雇傭合同。

“Employees have raised constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes going forward,” Pichai said in a statement. “We are taking in all their feedback so we can turn these ideas into action.”

“員工已就如何改進我們的政策和未來的進程提出了建設(shè)性意見，”皮查伊在一份聲明中說。“我們正在吸納他們的所有反饋，以便我們能夠?qū)⑦@些想法變?yōu)樾袆印?rdquo;

Labor experts said any changes precipitated by the walkout could spread through Silicon Valley.

勞工專家表示，罷工引發(fā)的任何變化都可能在硅谷蔓延。

“These companies are competing for employees,” said Matthew Bodie, a law professor at St. Louis University who is a former lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board.

“這些公司正在為員工競爭，”圣路易斯大學(St. Louis University)法學教授馬修·博迪(Matthew Bodie)說，他是全國勞動關(guān)系委員會(National Labor Relations Board)的前律師。

“If employees at Facebook are looking at this and saying ‘Wow, that was impressive,'” Bodie said, then Facebook may have to follow suit.

“如果Facebook的員工正在關(guān)注這件事，并說‘哇，這真是令人欽佩’，”博迪說，那么Facebook可能不得不效仿。