Unionised contract workers who train Google’s AI win pay rise

Thousands of Google contract workers responsible for training and testing the tech giant’s search algorithms have secured their first-ever pay increase, via a union campaign.

Previously paid as little as $10 an hour, the workers at RaterLabs – an artificial intelligence (AI) training supplier whose only known client is Google – will now be paid $14 or $14.50 an hour, depending on their experience.

The workers involved, otherwise known as “raters”, were organised with the Alphabet Workers Union-Communications Workers of America (AWU-CWA), which represents workers throughout Google parent company Alphabet’s workforce, including its contracted and temporary staff.

Their day-to-day consists of testing and evaluating Google’s search results by rating how accurately the algorithm responds to various prompts, as well as the relevance and quality of the ads served. Known as “clickwork”, such labour underpins the development of AI and algorithms, but is often ignored or assumed to be work conducted by machines rather than people.

Despite the low pay for those training its search algorithms, Alphabet regularly reports that over 80% of its total revenue comes from search ads.

RaterLabs workers began their campaign for increased pay in May 2022, demanding that the company respect and enforce its own wage standards by extending them to all temporary and contracted workers – not just those directly employed.

Google previously set out a wage and benefits standard for its US workforce in April 2019, which committed it to paying any member of its extended Google workforce with systems access a minimum of $15 an hour.

It added that, in locations where the minimum wage is more, higher requirement should be complied with. Other benefits contained in the policy include providing workers with 12 weeks of paid leave, as well as eight days of paid sick leave, healthcare provision and a $5,000 annual tuition allowance.

Following their months-long union campaign, AWU-CWA members met with RaterLabs management in October 2022, where they raised issues around poor wages and a lack of benefits. Appen, RaterLabs’ parent company, and Google later announced new salary increases on 21 December, which came into effect on 1 January 2023.

Computer Weekly contacted both Google and Appen for comment on the story, but received no response by time of publication.

“The work we do as raters for Google is critical to their success,” said Michelle Curtis, an Alphabet contract worker with RaterLabs and union member. “Yet, since I started as a rater eight years ago, I have not received a single raise.

“Through organising with AWU-CWA I have found hundreds of fellow coworkers who were struggling to make ends meet, some being paid as little as $10 an hour. I am proud to see our organising win the first-ever raises for workers.

“While $14.50 is a step forward, it is still not the $15.00 minimum set by Google for its extended workforce, and does not include the multitude of other benefits currently denied to us,” she said. “We call on Google to ensure every worker receives their promised baseline benefits, and to hold Appen accountable for upholding their end of that responsibility.”