'Not to interrupt, but they just laid us all off': Unionised YouTube workers in Texas are told in the middle of a live City Council meeting that they don't have jobs anymore

YouTube Music contractors were informed mid-speech, during a publicly-recorded and broadcast meeting with the City Council of Austin, Texas that they'd just lost their jobs. 

«To be supported by the city of Austin, and also our allies in the labour community—[it] gives us the motivation to keep this fight going,» says Jack Benedict as he speaks to the council—though he trails off as he turns to his co-worker Katie Marie Marschner, approaching the podium. Composing herself, Marschner then says: «Not to interrupt but they just laid us all off.»

this is the exact moment our coworkers found out we had been laid off while speaking in front of city council pic.twitter.com/IcsCszGe3ZMarch 1, 2024

«As I was sat behind him, filming him, I got a text message from my co-worker letting them know that they had all just been laid off in our weekly team meeting,» says Marschner in a later video posted to the union's Twitter account.

The council was set to consider and pass a resolution that would call on Google to bargain with the group of contractors, a group that Google maintains should be bargaining with «their employer» Cognizant instead. Cognizant is partnered with Google as part of a dedicated «Google Cloud Business Group». 

Staggeringly, this is despite a ruling by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) back in January which stated that Google's refusal to bargain with the workers was, in fact, illegal. The contractors had formally voted to join the Alphabet Worker's Union April 2023, just shy of a year prior.

This group—formerly composed of around 49 employees—cited minimal benefits and low pay, as well as a return-to-office order as reasons for both unionisation and strikes in Feburary. «Many workers are forced to work multiple jobs to make ends meet,» reads a statement later made by the Union. 

The statement also explains that: «Workers began an Unfair Labour Practice strike on February 3, 2023 in response to a retaliatory return-to-work mandate … Workers joined