This is the n'th tech company today that's made an announcement similar to this.<p>Even Disney is going to transport workers to abortion-legal states as needed as "health benefit".<p>It's certainly a perk and good on Google for this one, but we're headed to a dark place if your best shot at human rights is to retain employment by a big tech company.
When TX first passed its law that allowed anyone to sue individuals that had or aided an abortion, Apple offered to pay for transport and the procedure for anyone at its new Austin campus.<p><a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/09/17/apple-is-monitoring-legal-challenges-to-texas-abortion-law" rel="nofollow">https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/09/17/apple-is-monitori...</a>
Ignoring abortion, I suspect that states without contraception, IVF or gay rights will be of less interest to a significant portion of the tech workforce. Companies would have to provide alternatives unless they want to limit their hiring to red state natives. Good argument for wfh to get talent that just won’t go there.<p>Note that most contraceptives prevent implantation and IVF creates more embryos than needed. Both are no-no’s under the new regime. And miscarriages and stillbirths are going to be a legal minefield there.
I wonder if this is a business decision that has shown it could be profitable. I can imagine people without kids work more hours. Then again, they have a lot less to lose.<p>Interesting business decision.<p>The question I have, some states are going to call abortion murder and charge it as such. Is Google aiding and abetting a homicide?
The migration pattern in the nation seems to be:<p>1. Going to your super cool tech job in California when you get out of college.<p>2. After that, you get older and want to buy a house and settle down, and not pay state income tax, and so you move out to a red state to work remote and turn it blue with all the love of diversity picked up in California.<p>Strict abortion laws might serve as somewhat of a barrier to this sort of cultural re-diffusion.
This is a good PR move to get out ahead of the investigative journalists who will absolutely start digging into public campaign contribution data and pointing out how much they’ve donated to the politicians who drove this decision.
But will Google - or any of the others - pledge not to support record keeping or data mining aimed at the prosecution of those who seek abortions? Any changes to their privacy rules or app store policies? While it's nice that they offer travel/relocation benefits, the cost to them is down in the noise relative to their total budgets. Turning away or alienating government (and shadow-government) customers by refusing to aid them in their march toward Gilead would show more real commitment.
What if, after reviewing their internal HR data they found woman employees who have had children have longer retention and higher productivity and work longer hours.<p>Abortion rights might be good for business.
This is exactly how things should work. If you don't like the politics of one state, you should move to another state. States should retain authority over their laws not enumerated in the constitution. The diversity of states, some with weed, some with no income tax, some with abortion, some with an oil stipend, is a great thing. Hopefully most companies end up supporting this
Frankly, this is a good stance but doesn't go far enough. Google should have a policy encouraging every employee to relocate to the area they feel most appeals to their values, lifestyle and beliefs.<p>Abortion is an important issue but hardly the only one.