The YouTubers union demands changes. This is not new to Google

At the end of last month, IG Metall, a 125-year-old German union that was rooting in the fight for metalworkers, launched a new unlikely target: YouTube.

In an unusual couple partnership, the union has partnered with YouTubers Union, a group of creators, to ask for more information on how the video-sharing service makes decisions to stop or demonetize its job. The pair has created a new organization, FairTube, that asks YouTube, a Google-owned company, to set up a call process overseen by a third-party advisor. Until August 23, YouTube has the power to "begin negotiations".

The poster of this effort is just as unexpected as the alliance itself. This is not a high level creator like Lilly Singh or MatPat. Jörg Sprave, spokesperson for FairTube, is not your typical YouTube influencer. He is a 54-year-old, bald and sturdy German, who makes videos on slingshots.

"We are fighting for every YouTuber," Sprave said in an interview.

S "attacking Google, one of the most valuable and influential companies on the planet, is a long shot – even with the awesome goal of Sprave. YouTube, one of the divisions of the Google Internet empire, is the largest video platform in the world and hosts more than 2 billion visitors a month. And Silicon Valley is famous for its individualistic approach to the world. Unions are not really part of its DNA.

Still, if there is a tech giant who is used to discussing organized work, that is good Google.

In recent years, Google employees have protested against projects and rules that they consider unethical. Last year, workers criticized Google's work on Project Maven, a Pentagon initiative to use artificial intelligence to improve drone image analysis. About 4,000 Googlers signed a petition and a handful have resigned. Googlers also protested against the Dragonfly project, which aims to create a research product for China after its withdrawal from the market in 2010.

The crescendo of activism Google arrived last November, when 20,000 Google employees spread around the globe moved to protest that the search giant had been dealing with the allegations of sexual assault against Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile operating system and former leader. At the time, group organizers, like IG Metall, sent a list of requests to Google management.

YouTube says the company needs to invest in the success of creators, while ensuring that marketers feel safe to advertise on the platform. "We are taking a lot of comments while we work to get that balance," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

The situation with FairTube is, of course, different from previous Google events. The organizers are not the employees of the search giant, but the YouTube users who populate the content platform. And Google employees did not use an outside union to advance their projects. The dynamics, however, are similar from the point of view of labor relations, say the job experts.

Thomas Lenz, lecturer at the University of Southern California Law School, Gould, and a former lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board, explains Thomas Lenz.

The company has seen more than its fair share of mass dissensions and Google has had various reactions. In some cases, it is assigned to requests. After the walkout, for example, Google has terminated the practice of forced arbitration, which usually requires an employee to waive his right to sue in the face of a company investigation. (Google also reportedly retaliated against employee organizers and the company rejects the request.)

"If you've seen the different facets of these issues come up, you study them and how best to respond to them," Lenz said, referring to Google's direction. "You will be more savvy with these problems."

"Just a beginning"

The main goal of FairTube is to increase the transparency of YouTube. In addition to a third-party appeals committee, the organization also wants human contacts, rather than software tools, to be available to creators with disputes over dismantling or demonetizations. The group also wants the violations to be "precisely explained" to the creators, so that they can better understand the decision-making process.

The work done by Google employees at Google was an indirect precedent for the FairTube effort, says Tyler Breisacher, a former Google engineer who resigned last year because of the Maven project.

"Many people in the industry, not just Google, are starting to think about the organization and the unions," Breisacher said in an interview. "Our interests – employees and users – are different from the interests of the leaders and the companies themselves."

In the digital economy, discussions about unionization are becoming more commonplace. Pilots Uber and Lyft have sought to organize, as have European video game employees. Earlier this year, employees at NPM, a San Francisco start-up that makes coding tools, reportedly attempted to unionize, but their efforts failed and some of the employees involved were fired. The pressure to organize is so strong that comedian Hasan Minhaj has dedicated an episode of Patriot Act, his Netflix show, to operating conditions in the video game industry.

Breisacher is not sure of the success of the FairTube push, but he supports it. "Hope this is only a start," he said.

In the meantime, Friday's deadline is fast approaching. IG Metall has threatened to sue employee status under EU law, but there is no guarantee that it will win, even in Europe, which is more user-friendly than the United States. When asked to comment, a spokeswoman for YouTube denied that the creators claim legal status.

And then there is the practical consideration of the needs of the YouTubers union. Its more than 600 members, a fraction of the millions of YouTube creators, rely more on the streaming video giant than it does on him.

Sprave, of which Slingshot Channel has 2 million subscribers and has been online since 2013, is one of them. In a video announcing the FairTube training, Mr. Sprave explained that the problem for YouTube's creators dates back two years back: "the adpocalypse", when herds of brands fled the site because of the fact that it was not the same. they did not want their products to be advertised for extremist content.

Last year, he formed the Union of YouTubers in an effort to defend "independent" creators, which he believes YouTube is unfairly dealing with professional publishers and videographers. Until recently, the effort had not taken a lot of speed. (The website has not been updated since last year).

"The only problem is that until now we have not managed to get much," the video explains. "But exactly that will change now."