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Google's Security Guards Are Now Officially Google Employees
jfruh writes People concerned about the growing gap between the rich and poor point to a common practice in Silicon Valley: going through staffing agencies for non-core jobs like janitorial and security work, leaving those workers disconnected from the company and lacking in the job security and benefits their co-workers take for granted. Google has now decided to buck the trend, bringing their security guards in-house.
How long before the government starts contracting Google to provide armed security for VIPs like Blackwater?
The security guards at twitter have been proper employees since they moved to Market street. I believe they even hired a couple of the old guards of the last office from the security company they used to contract for. But twitter is a bit of an egalitarian exception, still just wanted to say.
Good for them. One less party getting a cut of a probably already small paycheck. It also gives Google more control over employee quality.
contract guards tend to cost twice as much as your own. lets say your making 8.50 as a guard will your company is getting probably getting payed 17$ maybe more per hr for that guard.
The why is obvious if you take a cynical approach: not long ago there were articles about the ethnic ratios of Google employees. Now if they hire all their own security of african-americans and hispanics, woo-hoo, just look at those workforce diversity numbers skyrocket!
I'm glad to see Google making this decision because contract security companies beat up their employees for crap pay, no sick time, and benefits that are laughable. I should know because I was an Allied Barton Employee when between IT contracts. Their medical benefits were so expensive as to leave very little left over and for coverage that was simply a sick joke. I wish more companies would make this move!
Data security is important to Google's business. Internal employees are more likely to be loyal and trusted. Trusted employees provide better security for Google and their customer data.
Bring services in means more control, the actor will a have a higher degree of agency, lead to less disenfranchisement, and they will develop a better repoire with the coworkers.
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And by the same token, it's not uncommon for guards to be outsourced, especially since it's the sort of job that you might only need one guy for, and he can't ever call in sick. If you outsource the position, he comes from a larger pool.
Further, guards come with liability issues. You might not be well suited for managing them, arming them, training them -- especially if you're going to have one or two of them, at most.
Security guards, cleaning companies, the people who water your plants... ...all make sense for outsourcing if you're not huge.
Google is probably big enough to bring them all inside -- if they're not too stingy with the benefits.
Now, all they've got to do is hire all of their bus drivers -- or at least pay their employers to end split shifts for them.
This move means that the Security staff is now Google employees. It would not be in a Google employee's interests to sell company secrets, inside information or other things that might make the company not be able to keep Google employees on the payroll. This increases shareholder value because employees have a vested interest in seeing the company succeed whereas contractors do not have that impetus. In addition, it actually makes it less likely that the Security staff will unionize, which in turn also benefits the company. Finally, the increased community goodwill is an intangible factor but it does make the bottom line in that Google will now be able to say the company demographics more closely match the community (see the stats in the article regarding ethnic makeup of Security staff).
Hire a cleaning company and I guarantee you they will bottom feed. You will have tweakers and ex-cons cleaning/stealing and cleaning crew managers demanding a cut of all theft as well as a share of pay. Honest cleaners _can't_ survive under that kind of deal.
You will lose more the theft then you can possibly save. Anybody with physical access should be an employee or contractor. So you have some control of who is in you space.
Replacing the cleaning company is no help as this is an industry that truly did spiral to the bottom.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
At a small scale, the fixed costs of running your own security are substantial relative to the total cost, meaning that it's cheaper to pay a contractor instead, despite the overhead that comes with having a middleman between you and the guards. At a large scale, such as Google's, the fixed costs are a relatively minor component, whereas the overhead associated with the contractor is rather substantial, so it ends up being cheaper to bring the guards in-house. You can even provide them with better pay/benefits thanks to the money you'll be saving by cutting out the contractor.
That's the most obvious answer, at least. Other possibilities are that the employees will feel more loyalty towards Google on account of the shared bond with the other employees (not to mention the better pay/benefits), which would make them more inclined to do their job well; they'll get to be a part of more of the corporate culture, which will help them to recognize things that are out of place better; Google won't be subject to the hiring whims of their contractor, meaning that they can work on hiring the cream of the crop; and that having them in the company is conducive to a healthier Google in the long-term, which is in line with preserving Google's value.
The obligation to the share holders isn't anything other than what the shareholders want out of the company. With Google's growth leveling off, at this point, keeping the ship afloat and profitable, not growth is what's important.
The whole "obligation to it's shareholders" notion is only true when you're selling the company. Google's probably not going to be sold to anyone anytime soon. so...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
If you are a shareholder, ask the company yourself. If you aren't, why do you care?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm not making any assumptions, I just read the article. It specifically states the outsourced security guards they already employ are mainly black and latino.
No, you misunderstood. The GP really meant this:
There (at some unknown location), the guards are owned by the nation's (its) 'not uncommon for a place to run', which I'm guessing is the name of a native tribesman. And the one hour (misspelled) local hospitals [they] have there, also own guards. And as a result of the ample availability of slaves, they used outside guards only when moving to a new building or when adjusting the scales underneath their existing building to adequately determine the weight of the people and items inside—presumably for theft detection purposes, but possibly to make sure the new building could handle the expected structural loading.
Did I read that right?
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Usually, the way you would handle that is through logging. Your badge readers automatically keep a log of everyone who entered the room. If stuff starts disappearing or systems get accessed inappropriately, it doesn't take long to figure out who did it.
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What kind of two-bit company are you working for? Here the cleaning staff is forced to strip naked and forced to undergo cavity searches when they're finished. Then, once per month, they're marched off to the incinerator to be disposed of. It's not like there isn't a queue of lowlifes desperate for any job.
If I were a Fortune 500 company with a lot of valuable IP to protect, I sure as shit wouldn't cut corners on my security. You don't want the guy who decides who can come in and out of secure areas in your building to be some outside contractor making $9/hr. What do you think some guy like that is going to say when someone approaches him and offers him $10,000 to look the other way when they come in?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.