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.

[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.

[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.

What for?

[penguinoid]

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

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.

Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.