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Apple, Google, Bringing Low-Pay Support Employees In-House
jfruh writes One of the knocks against Silicon Valley giants as "job creators" is that the companies themselves often only hire high-end employees; support staff like security guards and janitors are contracted out to staffing agencies and receive lower pay and fewer benefits, even if they work on-site full time. That now seems to be changing, with Apple and Google putting security guards on their own payroll.
Staffing agencies are scum. Pretty much modern day slave-traders.
I applaud any move to cut out the corrupt middleman from things like this. Staffing agencies are just that - corrupt labour pimps.
Doing this would go well in-hand with right-to-work legislation. I wonder if we'll see a push for that in California now.
I'm sure there's nothing wrong with screwing your security staff to save a dollar.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If you want to eliminate local outsourcing then tax services the same as physical items - with a sales tax.
In socialist china, foxconn uses fully digital employees with patented algorithms and systemd.
i like apple as much as the next fanboy but this is not charity or benevolence of these companies, it is free market adjusting to a better cost/value of local workforce compared against consistently rising labor costs in china and india.
we're pretty much at or past the point when a little bit of cost benefit is simply not worth the loss of quality of support.
so.. yes, good development, thank you free market system.
It's a great way to change your diversity numbers without actually changing your core business.
I think this is smart. These workers will give much more of a shit if they're directly employed. I worked at our regional power company (National Greed) and our "security people" were low-rent contractors. As a joke (this was back in 2008 after the Giants' super bowl win), a coworker of mine taped a picture of Plaxico Burress over my picture on my ID. The guards didn't even bat an eyelash. According to policy, I should have been barred entry.
eventually loaded into robotic security drones. that's all it is.
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true it is you know
I see this argument all the time about charitable contributions. "Yeah, sure he gave a million bucks, but it's just a tax write off..."
In what world are tax deductions 1 to 1 with tax liability? That's certainly not how the math ever works out on my taxes. $5k in deductions saves me less than $1k in taxes.
I'm not saying that the parent was right and that taxing services is enough incentive to hire your own people, but the idea that if you can write something off on your taxes means it's "free" is simply silly...
Apple has been talking about this for a long time.
You really don't want your security people to be contract workers; they have access, at least at the supervisory level, to all sorts of sensitive areas of your building, including Jony Ive's office in the design wing, where they could happily use their phones to photograph prototypes.
Google began talking about doing this about three years ago, when they switched to the same contract security firm Apple used, and the Apple/Google relationship started to become more and more adversarial on top of that (I knew the supervisory staff, and many of the individual contractors at Apple, and recognized them when they came to work for Google.
I think this is being done more to prevent industrial espionage, than anything else.
At both Apple and Google, we moved our trash outside explicitly sensitive secure areas at night, so that the janitorial staff avoided entry. For a lot of it, it was honor system (if you count being on camera but not having a lurking linebacker ready to take you out if you make a wrong move, as "honor system"), where the secure offices without physical electronic security locks has a red sticky dot placed above the room doorknob to prevent people trying to go in.
This also has dick-all to do with any kind of "gentrification" issues that the article claims, since most of the people I know who worked security lived East Bay, and many of them owned their own houses.
including Jony Ive's office in the design wing, where they could happily use their phones to photograph prototypes.
Right. And at Apple, that's the core intellectual property right there.
Edward Snowden started at the NSA as a security guard. There he met people, learned what he needed to know as an analyst, then got hired as one.
Headhunted by a contractor, he had a verra sweet gig in Hawaii - Especially for a guy who started as a security guard.
AC
This is one of many reasons web based journalism is still a joke. No matter how small the story editors can't be bothered to proofread.
Friends of ours have a business cleaning corporate offices. Twice they have been offered money to plug a netbook into a network port in an unoccupied cubicle, leave it for a few days, and then bring it back. They didn't of course, but it must have been tempting.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
For a moment there I thought Google had actually gone and hired a support staff. Oh, *those* kind of support people.
As you were, then.
I work in an unnamed hospital in Canada, and there was a period of time when management had contracted out services for cleaning and security. Nosocomial infections were high, and complaints about the lack of security also grew. If a service is important enough, it may better to pay your own people a bit more than to save a buck in the race to the bottom while sacrificing quality control. Hospitals need to maintain a cleaner environment and have qualified security on staff; titans of industry need to control industrial espionage.
A photo of an aesthetic design allows people to copy it. A photo of a modern chip schematic is a) impossible and b) worthless.
It always amazed me that tech companies would contract this work out in the first place. Security has virtually unrestricted access to every area of the building (if they don't actually have it, they control the equipment that grants it). Janitorial has similar access, in fact probably more since people might find it odd that a Security badge was accessing an area at night but Janitorial is practically expected to be in there every night to empty the trash. With as easy as it is to gather up loose papers, plug keyloggers or hacking devices into computers (If you epoxy closed all the USB ports, where are you going to plug the keyboard and mouse in? And if the ports for the keyboard and mouse are usable what's to stop someone from plugging a dongle with a built-in hub in and plugging the keyboard/mouse into that?) and photograph whiteboards, why would any company that values intellectual property allow contract employees (who they can't control and can't screen) access? I'd have all that stuff in-house first thing, and pay the people well enough that if approached about espionage their first reaction will be to smile and nod and make all the right noises and then immediately report the details to the company because the offer isn't worth losing their paycheck and benefits over.
It seems like it's a preventative measure against legislation that would affect staffing agencies.
If they bring in those individuals, they can effectively immunize against the others that aren't brought in from the cold.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I've only had good experience with staffing agencies.
That's a rarer bird than a good full-time job. Realistically, the only enitity that has any good experience is the agency itself.
Because it's easy for them to let you go, that means they're also more willing to take risks in hiring you. I was able to get a job really fast right out of college with one, which helped establish my new skill set. Few people want to permanently hire somebody with a degree and no experience because it's too easy to find somebody who is a dud, even if they have a 4.0 GPA like I did.
This is a bigger reason why staffing agencies should be subject to the same laws as labor unions - even if it means that joining a staffing agency isn't a condition for accepting work at a given organization. If it really is about "flexibility" and not benefit-dodging "disposability", then they would welcome the challenge of competing with better forms of work.
The IT/tech world doesn't take well to third party representation, whether it is a staffing agency or a labor union - for the same reasons.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
.. are in the possession of cleaners and security guards. Bringing them into the fold is a smart anti industrial espionage move. It's all too easy for those people to steal or copy stuff like new product ideas. They can photograph whiteboard or screen content, rummage through wastepaper baskets for contracts, or just use their memories. Shitty agency conditions make them targets for a good bribe.
Unfortunately low pay generally means low skills and education. You cannot just demand or expect better pay because you think your worth it. Or that your income
is so bad it cannot keep up with costs. Nobody ever said life would be fair or pay reasonable for everyone. Over history you have always had a unequal pay system.
In many Countries a $8 an hour job would be welcomed as a good wage. Whereas here in the US a Country filled with demands and expectations of keeping up with the Jones's even the low income seem to justify the wage disparity. I totally agree that $10 an hour here in the US is not a livable wage but we now compete in many ways with Countries who pay far less for similar work. This is why American's (all of us) had no trouble embracing China as a major partner in producing goods for us. This left the US in a void of jobs for lower income less skilled, less educated. Plenty of people that fit this category but many less jobs. This made any wage leverage almost impossible as employer's can always find people to work for the wage they offer. The flip side of this is that the other jobs available are for much more skilled and educated people who compete for fewer but higher paying jobs. Then you have even fewer skilled people to run companies and make stock holders money and pay those CEO's a high income not to leave. Support staff have always been replaceable with little effect on productivity or profit. Security guard, janitors, and other low skill staff won't see wage growth until America get's more of these jobs and get's the unemployment issues better under control.
"All they do is create high-pay jobs and price out the local apartments!"
"Oh, nice, creating low-price jobs for the uneducated, exploiting them!"
"Oh, hey, a coffee shoppe!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Apple has been talking about this for a long time.
You really don't want your security people to be contract workers; they have access, at least at the supervisory level, to all sorts of sensitive areas of your building, including Jony Ive's office in the design wing, where they could happily use their phones to photograph prototypes.
This is because Apple is making lots of money right now.
I've seen lots of companies do stupid stuff in the name of cost-cutting. I've seen fortune-500 companies not wanting to pay for lighting in parking garages used by outside contractors (I imagine their insurers didn't hear about that). I've seen companies where patents are the biggest income sources give contracted cleaning services access to all the offices where the R&D gets done. Consuela is hispanic and carries a mop, so there is no way she could possibly have a PhD and understand exactly which whiteboards to photograph before cleaning them, even though the information on the board might be worth millions to a start-up.
I thought the reason to outsource security is because the contractor takes the hit for liability. Let's say your security guard open fires and hits some bystanders. If it's your employee you are liable. The lawsuit will look into your hiring, training, etc. Since you have deep pockets you are on the hook for damages.
Now if you hire it out you can claim you are an IT company and don't know anything about security guards which is why you hired experts to do the job.
By the way most government facilities hire security contractors like Delaware North.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
And so it begins. Google and Apple are building their own private armies. First it starts with these security people that are just for show. Then after some kind of incident they get weapons. Yada yada yada, Google and Apple have nuclear arsenals.
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of course the lurking linebacker works for a different security temp company... offer him a cookie to look the other way.
Staffing agencies and other forms of contingent employment operate in a manner not unlike labor unions. Unfortunately, it is still possible for a job to require you to sign with one instead of going direct, which RTW prevents with labor unions. With that in mind, applying labor laws to contingent employment, especially RTW, would replace the benefit-dodging incentive with a benefit-providing one.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.