Google's 'Shadow Workforce' of Contractors Demands Higher Wages, Equal Benefits in a Letter To CEO Sundar Pichai (cnbc.com)

Members of Google's "shadow workforce" of temporary workers and contractors is demanding higher wages and equal benefits to full employees in an open letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai. From a report, submitted by an anonymous reader: It's the latest in a series of public stands made by Google employees against aspects of the company culture. A coordinated walkout by employees around the globe protesting discrimination and sexual harassment at Google led the company to end forced arbitration for claims. Last month, several hundred employees signed onto a letter protesting the company's censored search efforts in China. A Bloomberg report in July said Alphabet had more contractors than direct employees this year, for the first time ever.

Google's mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible.' But the company fails to meet this standard within its own workplace. Google routinely denies [temporary, vendor, and contract workers] access to information that is relevant to our jobs and our lives," the letter published Wednesday says. The latest letter is signed only by "TVCs at Google" and does not indicate the number of employees backing the effort. Google did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.

Comments

Google's 'Shadow Workforce' of Contractors Demands

[grep -v '.*' *]

I'm confused. No one's making them work there; if they're unhappy they all should leave and warn others about hiring at the horrible place. If NO ONE signs up, then G's going to _have_ to improve pay or the work place or go out of business. If someone continues to work for them, then I guess it wasn't THAT big of a deal then, huh? Vote with your feet and wallet, words are cheap. OTOH I don't blame them for trying to change things, but what if G says NO?

I don't see anyone with a gun making them work there -- especially since it's Silicon Valley.

(Hey, that'd make a great name for a Pr0n star! "Hi, what's your name?" "Bond, James Bond. What's yours?" "Valley, Silicon Valley." "Of course it is.")

Re:Trump

[lgw]

If the economy was doing that well, companies would be falling over themselves trying to retain workers by increasing compensation packages. That has not happened yet.

You're looking at a trailing indicator. Labor now has "pricing power". Clearly these contractors feel they might succeed in their demands for a raise (and I have a lot of sympathy for them - Google invented this shitty classist system that goes far beyond how the other tech giants use contractors).

The usual business cycle from the bottom is:

1. Consumers stop being so scared, start fixing problems they've been living with.
2. Businesses stop being so scared, start hiring again, and strategic acquisitions.
3. Workers stop being so scared, start asking for the rasies they didn't get during the downturn.
4. Hiring going full bore, workers getting raises, consumers spend on credit like the good times will last forever, businesses overextend like the good times will last forever.
5. "Natural" inflation (unrelated to govt spending) becomes meaningful, cost of borrowing goes up.
6. Everyone is over-leveraged and over-extended when the downturn starts.
7. Kaboom! Everyone is scared, consumers stop spending, businesses stop spending.

We're at 3. Lots of run left in this business cycle. 2000-2013 were like the mid-60s through the 70s: a business cycle without a real upturn, but that's not usual.

Social Justice is the left wing equivalent to

[rsilvergun]

the Southern Strategy. It's how the economically right wing pundits in our midst distract us from economic issues. The people pushing for it were never left wing, but they needed something to get the working class off their back.

Take "equal pay for women" as an issue. Ok, we can debate if women are getting less pay or not. But even the most extreme estimates say 3%. Meanwhile workers in general make 20% less than they did 40 years ago. Folks are fighting over 3% while they've lost 20%. It's nuts.

OTOH the reverse (anti-SJW) is just as bad. There's a youtuber called "Cult of Dusty" that's got a series on how the alt-right has pivoted to 24/7 anti-SJW. Meanwhile the Evangelicals (who the alt-right, being skeptics, traditionally didn't get along with) are using the alt-right to win political offices all over.

The only consistently sane voice I know in all this has been Bernie Sanders, who's been trying to get the working class to stop fighting over scraps and go after the meat.