Google UK Signs ‘Sweetheart Deal’ With Employer-Friendly Union

Google UK has been accused of signing a “sweetheart deal” with an employer-friendly union to undermine workers’ ability to organise within the tech company. 

Google signed an access agreement with Prospect union on Monday to make inroads among its 7,000 UK workers – excluding DeepMind staff – after new rights for unions to access workplaces in Britain came into force last week.

However, critics say Prospect lacks a strong record of organising with Google employees – known as Googlers – in the UK. The two largest and most active unions in Google UK are Unite and the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) via their United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) branch. 

Prospect was granted access to the Google UK workforce over Unite and the CWU, despite the latter two unions applying for access as soon as formally possible. This means Prospect can now communicate with non-unionised workers and encourage them to join. 

In a joint Unite and CWU statement to members seen by Novara Media, the two unions warned that Prospect’s agreement with Google is only for “occasional meetings and an internal page, falling far short of the legal minimum requested by your unions”. 

A Google UK software engineer and UTAW rep, speaking to Novara Media on the condition of anonymity due to fear of professional reprisals, called the deal “a huge slap in the face for me and all UTAW and Unite organisers in Google”.  

The software engineer said: “We have worked diligently over the past few years to represent our fellow Googlers’ needs through collective action. We fought to keep as many jobs as possible during redundancies, we demonstrated against Google’s military contracts, and we demanded a stronger, worker-led regulation on Google and DeepMind’s AI direction. 

“For all of our fastidious work, our request for a right as basic as access has been ignored and given to Prospect, a union with laughably low membership in Google which has not participated in a single one of our aforementioned struggles.”

Unite and the CWU are asking why Prospect, which has not engaged in member-led unionising activity at Google, was granted access so quickly and alleging that the Prospect deal was pre-planned because Prospect may be considered a “tamer” or more employer-friendly union.

The Google software engineer added: “This conduct by Google is an insidious way to undermine worker organisation while veiling themselves in the guise of a benevolent, pro-union company. It is telling that this deal was conducted by Google UK’s current senior labour relations consultant, Philip Bickerstaffe, an ex-national officer at Prospect.”

Bickerstaffe worked at Prospect as a national officer from 2004 to 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile, before going on to roles with BT, Boeing, Amazon and Google. 

The Prospect-Google deal follows a similar agreement between Prospect and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Meta employs roughly 5,000 people in the UK. 

Right of access to workplaces in the UK – even where employers are hostile to trade unions organising onsite – was included in the Employment Rights Act 2025, and came into force on 30 October. 

Unite and the CWU say they put in an access request at the stroke of midnight on 30 October, and received a formal acknowledgement from Google on 3 November, which said their request would be considered and responded to “within the appropriate time frame”.

Employers then have 15 days to respond and a further 25 days to negotiate. The Prospect deal was announced on 2 November, suggesting that little, if any, time was spent negotiating the terms of the deal, which has added to the impression that the deal is favourable to the employer.

Unite, the CWU and Prospect are all members of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), which means they must respect the principle that a union shouldn’t organise at a workplace where another union already has the majority of workers as members or is actively engaged in significant organising activity. 

Unite and the CWU say Prospect has violated this national cross-union agreement by signing the access deal with Google UK. 

A Prospect spokesperson said: “These allegations are false and seem designed to undermine union organising at Google. Our access agreement with Google was agreed in accordance with the TUC principles and does not include Google DeepMind where other unions are making a recognition bid.” 

A spokesperson from Google UK said: “To comply with new UK workplace legislation, we have established a structured access agreement with Prospect union for Google’s UK employees, but not including Google DeepMind. This step builds on our established work with internal employee representative groups, allowing us to fulfill these new requirements while preserving the respectful, direct dialogue our culture is built on.” 

Unite and the CWU have assured members that they are escalating the matter through the appropriate channels.