Alpha Global
Alpha Global represents a corporation with optional membership around which the employees of the Alphabet group have the opportunity to join to ask the company for a series of useful measures to keep the corporate ethics bar straight, so that all workers can continue to identify with that brand that often has represented a dream even more than a job.To understand the heart of the protest you need starting not so much from the first sentence of the Alpha Global manifesto (pdf), but from the last one:
Alphabet has long since lost its “Don't be evil”, but we haven't. […] Together we will change Alphabet.
A chimera, perhaps, but able to aggregate part of the group's workforce around a virtuous ideal, which defends that primordial spark from which Google has taken shape.
Alphabet has long lost its commitment to stick to its original mission: 'Don't be evil.'
💥Well, we haven't.
🤲Together, we will hold Alphabet accountable.
🗣️ #AlphaGlobal https://t.co/zkvtw3cDAR
- UNI Global Union (@uniglobalunion) January 25, 2021
What is asked of Google is greater adherence to specific ethical standards in terms of freedom of expression, abuse, surveillance technologies, Artificial Intelligence applications and more. What is asked is to open an open debate with a representative of the group's workforce, so that there can be a full commonality of intent and a more serene effort to increase the technical skills of Mountain View.
Go beyond national borders means shifting the focus from a local to a global orientation, commensurate with the company's market projection to testify not specific claims, but the desire to unite around a principle. What is this principle? "Don't be evil", always, anyway.