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.

Comments

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good.

[dgatwood]

I thought Apple had already done this. Their cafeteria workers have been employees since the late 90s, give or take, and the folks who sit at the front desk are also employees. I had always assumed the security guards were as well, but apparently not.

Re:Good.

[ArmoredDragon]

I've only had good experience with staffing agencies. 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.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for Apple as a low-fat contractor. Yeah, the cafe people are Apple but everyone eating in the cafeteria aren't. Team Leads, "Trainers", and a few other people are Apple, and out numbered 35:1 if not more by contractors, and it runs like shit. Miserable job. My specific department Trainer didn't know anything and we couldn't talk to each other. You sat there with and ESD strapping you to a table. You repair Apple products for next to nothing. It's crap.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked with a staffing company before, but not with a security guard position.

The put me to work in a factor making $9 an hour doing work that should have started at a minimum of $15 an hour at the least. I was one of the only people there short of the managers who spoke english as the main language, half of the employees didn't even speak english at all and they had betting pools on how long before the new guys quit.

And have to love the schedule, 6 days on, 1 day off, 6 days on, 2 days off, 6 days on, 4 days off, repeat. And if you were unlucky, you landed on the rotating crew with a similar schedule you were just working all 3 shifts through out it.

The luxury of Megaforce.....

I honestly would like to see temp and staffing agencies banned for some of the abuses they allow in both labor and pay.

Re:Good.

[phantomfive]

That isn't why. Apple, Facebook, and Google have all been pushed recently by politicians to improve the demographic mix of their employees. In-sourcing the cleaning staff is an easy way to do it.

Re:Good.

[cusco]

I can pretty much guarantee that the reason for this is the difficulty hiring competent guard staff in the SFO area. Silicon Valley salaries have have inflated the local pay scale enough that security companies are having trouble finding people willing to work for crap wages and still have an IQ above room temperature. The way contracts for the really large companies are generally done is the security vendor will offer to cover staffing for all their sites throughout the country for a certain price. Too many management types will automatically go for the lowest bidder, and competition for the major contracts is fierce. Of course the salescritters will always low-ball the price, so the local security managers are stuck trying to pinch pennies while providing the staffing levels contracted for. Apple and Google are going to skim off the cream of the available guard staff, leaving the dregs for the security contractors to dispatch to their other customers.

Re: Good.

[MorphOSX]

Yes they are. They are also one of the biggest drivers pushing companies away from long term employment investments and towards the quick, cheap, expendable talent. It's one step up from the H1B visa worker, but not by much.

Re:Good.

[phantomfive]

You can check the mix here.

What for?

[penguinoid]

I'm sure there's nothing wrong with screwing your security staff to save a dollar.

Re:What for?

[Bing Tsher E]

Bringing your security staff in-house makes them a more 'bought in' part of the organization. Apple and Google take security very seriously, because they think they are the most innovative organizations on earth and that they have many secrets to protect.

It just makes sense to not have outsiders guarding the gates.

Re:What for?

[phantomfive]

This is why.

"Google, which has been under rising pressure along with other tech companies to release diversity data"

And here:

"Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,"

Now, by in-sourcing their "low-pay employees," they are instantly closer to where they want to be.

Simple Solution

[knightghost]

If you want to eliminate local outsourcing then tax services the same as physical items - with a sales tax.

Re:Simple Solution

[msobkow]

That's done in Canada. It's called the GST (Goods and Services Tax.)

It's done nothing to reduce contracting and outsourcing, because the taxes are write-off expenses for the companies involved.

Re:Simple Solution

[ArmoredDragon]

Ideas like this would hurt smaller businesses and overall be quite damaging to the economy.

In many cases outsourcing puts things in your grasp that aren't possible to do otherwise simply because your business isn't large enough or doesn't have enough capital to handle the task. For example, if you're a mom and pop bakery who wants to sell to other local stores, you probably don't have enough capital to afford large scale logistics or a distribution network. The solution is to outsource your logistics and shipping to a distributor.

Re:Simple Solution

[MightyMartian]

I'm going to to be terribly pedantic here, but GST, like all VATs, does not work like that. It is not an expense (as in it does not effect profit and loss). Like all VATs, GST collected on sales is subtracted from GST spent on purchases, and if the remainder is positive, then you pay that to the government, and if it is negative the government sends you the difference. The point is to make a fairer sales tax, where goods and services are not taxed at multiple points. All these financial operations happen on the balance sheet as changes to assets and liabilities, and have nothing to do with expenses at all.

Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a great way to change your diversity numbers without actually changing your core business.

Re:lets not be fooled

[DavenH]

How is the cost of Eastern labour relevant to on-site security in Silicon Valley?

time and motion studies results

[turkeydance]

eventually loaded into robotic security drones. that's all it is.

Re:lets not be fooled

[zr]

custodial staff no, but there are plenty of jobs in this space that get outsourced you wouldn't thin are outsourceable. anything from reviewing security footage to internal support helpdesk, sorting through mail (its scanned and then read overseas) etc etc. its pretty crazy how many jobs have been creatively "digitized" this way and outsources.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"taxes are write-off expenses"

[iceperson]

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.

[tlambert]

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.

Gaurds? Proofreaders?

[rbanzai]

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.

Re:Apple has been talking about this for a long ti

[cusco]

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.

Amazing that this was ever contracted out

[Todd Knarr]

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.

Re:Amazing that this was ever contracted out

[drinkypoo]

It always amazed me that tech companies would contract this work out in the first place.

Contracting it isn't the biggest problem. Paying bottom dollar is. That means that you don't get the best people. Paying people more means they're less motivated to engage in profitable hijinks when someone asks them to plug something into your network, or photograph your documents. That's because happiness stops increasing dramatically with money after you reach middle class. Once your needs are met, bribery is less effective. Obviously not ineffective, of course. That's where loyalty used to come in. Problem is, corporations don't treat you with any, but they still need it from you. Solution? Treat employees like humans and pay them enough to live on.