More than 225 Google LLC workers are joining forces to form a union that will represent full-time employees and contractors at Alphabet Inc., the search giant’s parent company.

The news was first reported by The New York Times today. The newly announced Alphabet Workers Union is structured as a “minority union that represents a fraction of the company’s more than 260,000 full-time employees and contractors,” according to the Times, rather than as a traditional union that represents the majority of a company’s employees. 

Another key difference is that, thanks to the way it’s structured, the Alphabet Workers Union can accept not only full-time employees but also contractors. That’s significant because contractors reportedly form the majority of the search giant’s workforce.

“We deserve a workplace that respects us, where we can work for a fair wage without fear of abuse or discrimination,” the Alphabet Workers Union stated on Twitter.  “We deserve meaningful control over the projects we work on & the direction of this company.”

The union is associated with the Communications Workers of America, the largest communications and media labor union in the United States. The Alphabet Workers Union organized for more than a year before formally launching, with its 225-plus current members having agreed to contribute 1% of their compensation to supporting the union’s activities. Most of the initial members are based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, while the rest are in other cities where Alphabet has a presence including Seattle and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The formation of the union follows a series of recent controversies over Alphabet’s workplace policies. Last month, more than 1,200 Google staffers signed a public letter criticizing the company over its ouster of prominent artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru. Also in December, the National Labor Relations Board accused Google of violating U.S. labor laws by using “terminations and intimidation in order to quell workplace activism.”

In a statement responding to the launch of the Alphabet Workers Union, Kara Silverstein, Google’s director of people operations, said today that “we’ve always worked hard to create a supportive and rewarding workplace for our work force. Of course, our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we’ve always done, we’ll continue engaging directly with all our employees.”

Photo: Google