Googleemployees have been organizing on several fronts, includingworkplace harassment, the treatment of contract workers and whatkind of work the company does for government and military groups.(Photo: Michael Short/Bloomberg)

After months of worker protests, Alphabet Inc.'s Google willstop making its employees sign away their right to bring claimsagainst it in court.

Google stopped so-called forced arbitration in cases of sexualharassment and assault last year after 20,000 workers walked out tooppose how the search giant handles internal complaints. Thatwasn't enough for some of the employees, whokept pressing the company to end the practice altogether. Googlewill do that on March 21, a spokeswoman said on Thursday. Thecompany will also cease enforcing agreements that waived workers'right to bring their claims as class actions.

Google's decision was reported earlier by Axios.

Related: Google walkout: A new kind of workeractivism

The shift is a victory for Google employees who've beenorganizing on several fronts, including workplace harassment, thetreatment of contract workers and what kind of work the companydoes for government and military groups. The Mountain View,California-based company won't require third-parties that employsub-contracted staff for Google to institute the same changes,though. About half of those in Google's total workforce aren'tofficial employees of the company.

Labor advocates hailed Google's move as a superior alternativeto the narrower restrictions on forced arbitration that the companyand some of its peers announced last year. “This is a major stepforward, even as compared to what Google was saying it was going todo” last November, said Charlotte Garden, a labor law professor atSeattle University School of Law.

Ending forced arbitration across the board means that anemployee won't have to worry that raising issues like racialdiscrimination or retaliation along with sexual harassment will gettheir case sent to arbitration, said Garden. “It is significantthat those claims can now all stay in court together.” Allowingcourtroom class actions also makes it feasible for workers toaddress wage and hour violations that otherwise might not befinancially feasible to pursue, she said.

“We are in a moment in which workers are embracing theircollective power,” Garden said, comparing the Google walkout'ssuccess in moving Alphabet to this week's victory by teachers inWest Virginia, where legislators voted to suspend consideration ofan education bill hours after educators began a strike to protestit. “The more wins workers rack up across a range of differentindustries, the more we'll see other workers following suit.”

Read more: 

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• How CEOs have adapted in the #MeTooera
• Shareholders, workers call on Google to fix'diversity crisis'

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