About Half of Google's Workers Are Contractors Who Don't Receive the Same Benefits as Direct Employees (bloomberg.com)

Every day, tens of thousands of people stream into Google offices wearing red name badges. They eat in Google's cafeterias, ride its commuter shuttles and work alongside its celebrated geeks. But they can't access all of the company's celebrated perks. They aren't entitled to stock and can't enter certain offices. Many don't have health insurance. Bloomberg: Before each weekly Google all-hands meeting, trays of hors d'oeuvres and, sometimes, kegs of beer are carted into an auditorium and satellite offices around the globe for employees, who wear white badges. Those without white badges are asked to return to their desks. Google's Alphabet employs hordes of these red-badged contract workers in addition to its full-fledged staff. They serve meals and clean offices. They write code, handle sales calls, recruit staff, screen YouTube videos, test self-driving cars and even manage entire teams -- a sea of skilled laborers that fuel the $795 billion company but reap few of the benefits and opportunities available to direct employees.

Earlier this year, those contractors outnumbered direct employees for the first time in the company's twenty-year history, according to a person who viewed the numbers on an internal company database. It's unclear if that is still the case. Alphabet reported 89,058 direct employees at the end of the second quarter. The company declined to comment on the number of contract workers.

Comments

So what??

[SuperKendall]

I have been a contractor myself for many years, sometimes in huge groups of other contractors working for companies with employees.

I have also been on the other side, working for companies as an employee in teams that worked alongside large teams of contractors...

I think it should say a lot as to which situation is better that I have ended up working as a contractor for years instead of working as an FTE. If for no other reason than, overtime work really loses the sting when you are paid hourly...

Yes I lack some "benefits" a company might offer but I get more freedom in how to make up those "benefits". Because I work on contract I can take more vacation time than almost any company would allow. Because I work contract I can choose health care options that make sense to me and stick with them rather than being shifted around in changing company plans. And It's also lots easier to untangle myself from a bad contract than a bad employer... not to mention being more free to speak my mind since as a contractor I am generally free of politics (though on larger team of contractors that still can be a factor, but not as much as it is for employees).

Re:So what??

[110010001000]

But you wear a different colored badge.

Re:So what??

[Gilgaron]

Some places use contract hiring for entry level positions to essentially avoid paying benefits to otherwise full time staff. At a laboratory with lots of 'early career' scientists I worked at, the contracts weren't even uniform; if you knew somebody that needed a job you wanted to refer them to the 'good' contracting agency, as if you referred them directly to management they'd bring them in through the 'bad' contracting agency that had crappier terms, no PTO, etc. It is different than in software where the contractors are short term and set contracts favorable to them.

Re:So what??

[Jane Q. Public]

The thing is, there is a fine line between being a genuine contractor, and being an off-the-books "employee".

And Google could get in a lot of trouble if they turn out to be the latter.

The problem is that though the line is, fine, it is not fixed. It is generally determined on a case-by-case basis. In order to be a contractor:

* You are expected to know how to do your job. If it's something you have to be taught to do (more than a bit of reasonable orientation), you're probably an employee.

* You are expected to set your own hours. If you have to be there 9 to 5, or punch a time clock, or fill out a time card, you're probably an employee, not a contractor.

* You negotiate your own rates.

There are a few others. These rules are enforced by the IRS and a few other Federal agencies, but mainly the IRS.

IBM and rather famously Microsoft were both busted for having "off-the-books employees" which they called contractors. It cost them big.

Don't get stuck being an off-the-books employee. If you are, the company probably owes you back benefits.

And setting your own hours is not enough. You must have control over them. Even simply reporting the hours you worked to a client, in some circumstances, can be considered prima facie evidence of your status as an employee.

Re:So what??

[r1348]

To be honest, I'm one of those red badges, about to transition to FTE in a different .
I work in a relatively small office (around 300 people) so I can't really say about behemoths like Mountain View or Dublin, but in the day-to-day operations red badges are not much different than white ones. You still get invited to events and initiatives, you have lunch with whoever pleases you independently of badge color, and while it's true that you don't get full FTE benefits, that's simply because you're hired by a different company (I work for an actual company selling a service to Google, not a mere intermediary like Adecco). Health insurance is a very American concern, I live in a country with universal health care so the impact on the whole benefit package is much smaller.
It still allows you to enter in a big corporate environment and puts you in the radar for other big companies (that's exactly what happened to me, I didn't apply for my new position, I was proposed it).

Industry Wide

[darkain]

This isn't a "Google" problem, this is an industry-wide problem. What larger tech company ISNT doing this?

What company isn't doing this?

[rsilvergun]

this is Uber & Lyft's entire business model (albeit taken to the extreme). Companies have broken the social contract. There's no longer any stability for workers. That plus the death of Unions and the end of collective bargaining is why wages are declining even though productivity is way, way up.

Time for a New New Deal.

diversity contractors

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I missed it in TFA, but I don't think that Google applies the same diversity requirements when hiring its contract employees as it does its permanent ones. I wonder what its employee demographics would show if they included contract workers into the total labor force.

It gets worse

[Waffle Iron]

The article forgot to mention the worst part of these contractors' jobs:

The team members with red badges who beam down to uncharted planets rarely make it back alive.