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No RIF'd Employees Need Apply For Microsoft External Staff Jobs For 6 Months
theodp (442580) writes So, what does Microsoft do for an encore after laying off 18,000 employees with a hilariously bad memo? Issue another bad memo — Changes to Microsoft Network and Building Access for External Staff — "to introduce a new policy [retroactive to July 1] that will better protect our Microsoft IP and confidential information." How so? "The policy change affects [only] US-based external staff (including Agency Temporaries, Vendors and Business Guests)," Microsoft adds, "and limits their access to Microsoft buildings and the Microsoft corporate network to a period of 18 months, with a required six-month break before access may be granted again." Suppose Microsoft feels that's where the NSA went wrong with Edward Snowden? And if any soon-to-be-terminated Microsoft employees hope to latch on to a job with a Microsoft external vendor to keep their income flowing, they best think again. "Any Microsoft employee who separated from Microsoft on or after July 1, 2014," the kick-em-while-they're-down memo explains, "will be required to take a minimum 6-month break from access between the day the employee separates from Microsoft and the date when the former employee may begin an assignment as an External Staff performing services for Microsoft."
Likely not just to prevent leaks, but also to prevent any contractors from being reclassified as employees.
This is a repeat of 2k9. They laid us off scheduled the 4th of July, but we were removed from our posts on 4th of May, and our access revoked. And while they hired the same number of people immediately the people who were laid off could not apply for 5 months.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
They're doing it to protect themselves from lawsuits. Not so much from disgruntled employees, but from the labor regulators.
I quit an employer about a year ago, and they needed some help. I was happy to help as a one-off contract. I got paid as much (or more!) on contract as I did when I was an employee, and that's after taking into account SS taxes. Some months later, the labor regulators in my state came down on me like a ton of bricks looking for some excuse to reclassify me as employee in order to try and fuck over my former employer. This was a case where I left on good terms and took the contract only because I didn't want to see my replacement suffer unnecessarily. They weren't fucking me over, I charged the fuckers a fair rate and helped some friends out, had a good time for a few weeks, and made a few bucks in the process.
That said, Microsoft has been a bad actor when it comes to having contractors work as employees, but in not having to pay employee benefits and (which is the part the labor regulators care about) unemployment insurance taxes.
And that said, I'm still fucking pissed that my state labor regulator basically told me I wasn't a contractor and had no right to negotiate a contract like that, and basically scared me into not being able to help them in the future. Fuck Microsoft sideways for its past history of misclassifying employees as 1099s, but fuck my state regulator even harder for making it impossible for me to help my friends as my old boss struggles to keep an old startup afloat.
The only reason any of this is problem is that we continue to stupidly tie benefits and retirement to employment. Nobody, especially higher ups, wants to have that conversation in this country.
If being a full time employee simply meant you work more hours than a part time employee and had nothing else associated with it, a good number of people would be better off having two or three part time jobs. Less burn out, more job mobility,and in particular less immediate consequences to getting fired or laid off from a particular job. THAT is the reason big employers are against a national or single payer insurance system and why they demonize the very notion of national retirement benefits even though those things would reduce their costs. They would reduce their power even more, and they just can't have that.