Court documents show Google runs secret projects to convince employee unions that it sucks

A ruling by the National Labor Relations Board revealed Google's highly secretive anti-union movement, which one executive explicitly described as a move to "convince employee unions that suck." The campaign, known as the "Vivian Program," was conducted at Google in late 2018 and early 2020 to combat the company's employee activism and union organizing efforts, according to court documents.

Michael Pfyl, Google's director of employment law, described the Vivian Project as an initiative to get employees more actively involved and convince them that unions suck. In its Jan. 7 ruling, an NLRB judge wrote that Google must immediately provide 180 internal documents related to Project Vivian activities, including those described by Pfyl. So far, Google has refused to hand over the documents to lawyers representing former Google employees who were victimized, citing the privilege of lawyer clients.

The sacked employee submitted a subpoena asking for the documents as part of a lawsuit the NLRB is filing against the company. Google fired the employees in 2019 as they organized against the company's contract with immigration detention agencies. In late 2020, the NLRB filed a federal complaint against Google for illegally firing and monitoring the four software engineers. Google claimed and insisted at the time that it fired them because of a breach of security protocols.

In 2019, Google employees discovered that Google hired a union circumvention company called IRI Consultants. IRI Consultants is known for assisting employers in their anti-union activities by gathering information on employees' personalities, finances, work ethics, motivations, and race to thwart union activities. At the time, Google was facing an unprecedented wave of employee protests and activities related to sexual harassment and contracts with the Department of Defense and customers and Border Protection.

In his ruling on documents related to the Vivian program, judge NLRB described the evidence he reviewed that a Google lawyer proposed finding a respected person to publish an article outlining what a unionized tech workplace would look like and advising employees at FB, MSFT, Amazon and Google not to do so.