Source: Yahoo News Singapore
Reports from this week specify how Microsoft Corp has stated that it will not resist efforts for unionisation from its employees. This was confirmed by Microsoft President Brad Smith on Thursday, June 2. Clearly, this was indicating the increasing receptiveness in the tech industry that has appeared unconcerned about organised labour for a while now.
From a blog post posted Thursday, the tech company confirmed that it recognises the legal right of its workers to form or join a union. However, they pointed out, that the workers would never require ‘to organise to have a dialogue.’ Evidently, this statement is somewhat opposed to the history of recent uneasiness from employees at various companies in the tech sector.
Moreover, a small collection of workers in the division of Activision Blizzard voted in favour of unionising in May. As we know, Microsoft Corp is taking over the ‘Call of Duty’ videogame maker. As a response to the vote, Activision stated that it is under the impression that 19 employees should not necessarily have the ability to make a decision that would impact a bigger group of employees at the videogame maker.
Instances of anti-union efforts by tech giants:
For a while now, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com Inc has been against unionisation efforts by its warehouse workers. Moreover, the company was accused last month of threatening its staff over a union vote, leading to workers hesitating to unionise in some of its warehouses. However, Amazon workers at a Staten Island warehouse in New York City appeared to successfully form a union weeks back, despite the company spending large sums of money in anti-union efforts in the last couple of years.
Other tech giants such as Apple have also appeared somewhat opposed to efforts to unionisations as it similarly took steps towards combatting unionisation. Resultantly, workers at an Atlanta Apple store withdrew their request for a union vote, unlike its Maryland location where the vote is set for this month.
Microsoft President Smith stated how ‘recent unionisations campaigns’ in the US, especially in the tech industry inspired them to take this step. This led them to concluding that ‘inevitably these issues’ would reach more businesses, possibly Microsoft as well.
Additionally, he noted that the company holds the belief that neither the employees, or its other stakeholders would gain anything by being against ‘lawful efforts’ to take part in activities such as unionisation.
