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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.
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.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Google constantly talks about Social Justice when it appears they need a bit of Social Justice applied to them.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Tough. Don't like it? Quit and get a job somewhere else. You are not employees and you should not be treated like employees.
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.")
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I'm tired of companies using contracting to skirt labor laws. The big one is unemployment insurance. They'll keep you for 18 months (don't know why that's the magic number, IRS maybe?) and then replace you. Sure, you might make a bit more money, but you lose it all to crazy expensive health insurance and being unemployed for weeks after the end of every "contract".
A lot of guys I know stuck in the contract mill are in their late 40s/early 50s and just have to take whatever they get. They never get any savings because they're 2-3 months out of work every 18 months. Being over 40 means they don't just get a job right away (hurry for age discrimination!)
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You don't understand. If they leave working for *Google* - one of the largest and most successful tech companies on the planet - who on earth would want to hire them? It's not like there are any other tech companies that would fall over themselves to hire someone who has worked for Google.
Since the article lists temporary workers and contractors, it may be possible that this includes foreign workers brought over to work specifically for google through the government "get your cheap labor here" programs.
Seriously, pichai has another fuck up by outsourcing heavily to India/china, and not paying decent $, and is being called on it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Good luck with that.
The primary reason any company even uses contractors in the first place is because they are cheaper than their own workforce. They may pay the contractor a higher wage, but they rarely see any of the benefits that a full time employee has. ( healthcare, 401k, the very rare pension, etc )
If hiring a contractor is going to cost them the same amount of money that using a full time employee does, there will be little need* for contractors.
So be careful what you wish for.
*Outside of very special use cases where a contractor has some skills the employees don't.
If "foreign" contractors make enough money, at some point it will actually make financial sense to hire "local" contractors instead.
As for treating contractors as employees, there are actually US laws pertaining to the treatment of contractors.
Our company uses contractors because we occasionally need a group additional devs to carry out one task. Going through every field in the system and making sure a newly implemented localization doesn't need UI tweaks, for instance. I've got a contractor churning out automated test scripts. Once they are done our current QA team can add new ones and maintain existing ones, but we have nowhere near the bandwidth to write all of them.
Listen buddy: substitute what you're saying to prostitutes working at whorehouses or on the streets for pimps, and it all still works, doesn't it?
"No."
CAPTCHA: allowed
Microsoft was involved in the seminal case on this issue, where they had "contractors" who were (arguably) "permanent temporary employees" entitled to certain benefits and tax payments Microsoft was trying to avoid by keeping a significant portion of its workforce as contractors.
Despite both Microsoft and the contractor agreement the contractors signed explicitly disclaiming Microsoft's responsibility, a court of appeals ruled against Microsoft, leading the case to settle.
Everything old is new again.
..or 'whorehouses', depending on what mood I'm in.
'Staffing companies' like Aerotek and Kelly and their ilk are basically parasites; they really don't add anything to the equation, they're just the pimps, pimping you out to whoever for whatever, collecting the money, and giving a pittance to the 'contractors' (or 'whores', depending on what mood I'm in).
Meanwhile the 'customer' (or 'Johns', depending on what mood I'm in) is relieved of any responsibility for all these people who are doing the actual work, making them their profits; all it takes is a phone call, and anyone, regardless of how important they are to the workflow, are gone. They don't have to pay them any benefits, retirement, and so on, and more often than not, the parasite 'staffing company' doesn't bother either.
Not happy with your rate of pay anymore? Been years since you even got a couple percent bump? Too bad; if you were working direct, there would be something you could do about that (agitate for that much-needed bump); but since you're working for the parasites/pimps, they play the 'pointing game': 'staffing company' tells you, "oh, well, it's not up to us what you get paid, it's written into the contract by the customer"; then the 'customer' (who you're not supposed to be talking to, by the way; against parasite-company policy) would tell you "oh, well, you're not our employee, it's not up to us what you get paid". So you're stuck, unless you want to quit and take your chances.
Then there's the complete, by-design lack of transparency; all the '(parasite) company policies' are designed specifically to be as opaque as possible, preventing you from direct communication with the '(Johns) customers', often even to the point where the day-to-day operations have to go through some 'staffing company' representative, so who you're actually working for never even speaks to you directly.
Then there's the fake-ass 'carrot' the 'customer' dangles at you (if you're stupid enough to fall for it): "Oh hey Anon you do a good job would you be interested in a longer-term deal than just six months?" Don't fall for it. Go from being a 'contigent worker' (i.e. street whore) to a 'contractor' (i.e. house whore). Same bullshit, just longer-term, no end-point. You might think that's better, right? It's not. Now you're locked into the same pay-rate forever. Oh, the parasites might throw some half-assed 'benefits' at you, but they're shitty; 'health insurance' from some company you never heard of, who pays for NOTHING, but is perfectly happy to suck money out of your measly paycheck every week anyway.
Then there's the completely false bullshit 'carrot' of you being hired direct. Never happens either, no matter how hard you work, not matter how intelligent and talented you are. Just another fake-ass carrot to dangle to get you to hang on and suck their dicks that much longer.
It's all bullshit. None of it benefits the workers, it all benefits the companies involved. It's another sign of capitalism out of control, and another sign of the The Rich sticking it to everyone below them and trying their damnedest to destroy the Middle Class and leave a vacuum in the wake of it's death, an uncrossable gulf forever preventing any of The Poor from crossing over into a life where they're not living paycheck to paycheck.
Inevitably some jackass who still believes in the lies he's been told will now comment on this, tell me I'm a crybaby, and then go on and on about how 'well' he's done as a contractor, how much money he has, blah blah blah; but you're still a whore working for parasites, and this illusion you've deluded yourself into believing is real can be ripped away from you with a single phonecall. All it takes is for them to be tired of sucking their cocks instantly on command, and you're gone, living on unemployment, and wondering what the fuck happened.
This shit has got to stop. You want to 'Make American Great Again'? Start by discouraging this practice of making >50% of a companies'
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.
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wtf? you negotiate your own contract
welcome to the "gig economy". I'm retiring soon. good luck.
You're making it sound like having a job is a bonus and not a requirement to survive you retarded cunt.
You're free to wander out into the wilderness and get eaten by a bear or die in the winter...
People gave up on slavery in the 1800s not because they were suddenly moral beings but because wage slaves were a better deal. You didn't have to sink a ton of capital into a slave. If a wage slave got tore up in your factories you didn't care, you just got another one.
Contract workers are going to be the kinds of workers google needs but that they can easily replace. Google, along with the other major companies, are the ones that set the rules. The sheer amount of mergers and acquisitions going on means we have de-facto monopolies. The complete lack of any anti-trust enforcement in regards to workers (there's a tiny bit coming out of Europe for _consumers_) and the murder of Unions (not a death, they were killed) means these workers are running out of options.
TL;DR; If a small group of companies has all the jobs and can easily crush competitors then you no longer have a choice. That's why Unions exist. This is the start (re-start?) of Unionizing. Google's going to do everything to crush it. Google is not your friend. No company is. There is _always_ an adversarial role between worker and boss. Remember that.
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Good ole' Bernie Sanders.
Before 2016, net worth of $300k. A "common folk" guy. I disagreed with his issues, but other than that I thought he was an ok guy.
Loses rigged primary to Clinton, and doesn't say anything about it (I think he quietly filed a lawsuit against DNC, not sure what happed with it).
Since then he buys a $600k beach house the month after he loses, with CASH! WTF? He didn't have that much cash 6 months earlier.
Today I see he spent $300k on private jet flights in ONE MONTH story according to FEC submissions.
Yea, little ole Bernie. He questionably loses a primary to Clinton, and SUDDENLY he is buying mansions and flying everywhere in private jets. Meanwhile he is doing nothing for you. He ran to cash out in the cess pool of corruption that is the DNC in DC. Oh, and his wife also appears as corrupt as hell as well.
Sanders is as corrupt as they come. You are a fool to listen to him, but I have explained to you how your support of politicians is what is causing you the issues you keep complaining about. Sanders ran in a plan to get bribed to shut up about the rigged primary, cashed out, and is living large. You are too dumb to realize how he profited from the rigged primary that it appears he was part of.
Does ANY DNC supporter have an issue with the rigged 2016 primary? It appears they all welcomed it and cheered it along, and fully support all of those involved.
Yes, it is a requirement for living. Working at company is not a requirement. A good paying job is not a requirement. A programming job is not a requirement. A job a Google is not a requirement. As we are not short on jobs, or even programming jobs, at this time, a job at Google for the contractor's is a bonus. If they want full time, go find a full time. If they feel Google isn't paying them what they're worth, they can hold out for more or threaten to take their services elsewhere.
I'm confused, since you mist not have read the article. You blew right past where one of the things they're asking for is to be notified of security incidents, like an active shooter, at the same time regular employees already are. But fuck'em, that's an unsolvable problem for someone like Google, and the ingrates shouldn't care.
It's not that Google has anything in particular against paying their contract workers better.
But Brin and Page have long bucket lists of important ways they'd like to change the world, and many of these simply can't be undertaken until Alphabet reaches a $2 trillion market cap.
Pros and cons, as with all things.
As they say, you can't raise an omelette to the stratosphere without breaking eggs.
I'm amazed at the self-entitled pricks who think they are somehow entitled to everything just because they exist. The only thing you have a right to is negotiating employment terms to the extent that the other side is a willing participant. After that it is up to you to quit or find another job elsewhere.
This self entitled mentality is what happens when you give little jimmy a trophy just for showing up. I *WOULD* encourage people to look for something better who feel they can obtain better results elsewhere.
I left New Jersey for New Hampshire because my state government sucked. They kept stealing more and more from me. Before I even started working they decreased my income by 7% because my labor apparently isn't equal to that of accountants, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. I had one of the few professional service jobs where the state actually started taxing the labor and I'm not just talking about income taxes which they did too- but added a "sales tax".
The moral of the story is stop bitching about how you have a right to this and that independent of a consensual agreement. "Voting" your way to wealth is stealing and it doesn't matter if you are making $7 / hr or are a multi billion dollar corporation pushing costly regulations to keep out smaller competitors. You don't have the right to johny's toys. you have the right to travel and the right negotiate terms up to the extant there is an opposing and willing participant.
Many of these contractors work nights and weekends for no extra pay to make the system stay up. They dont need to leave, they can simply clock in at 9 and leave at 530 and bill 8 hrs as per their contracts and Google would come to a screeching halt.
**Life is too short to be serious**
1. A coordinated walkout by employees around the globe protesting discrimination and sexual harassment at Google led the company to end forced arbitration for claims.
2. Last month, several hundred employees signed onto a letter protesting the company's censored search efforts in China.
3. A Bloomberg report in July said Alphabet had more contractors than direct employees this year, for the first time ever.
I wonder if any google employees realise points 1 & 2 are linked to point 3.
yup, i was offered a job for google, but the catch was i would be employed through an agency. so i refused, fuck them. you want my talent you better give me a proper contract instead of this one sided factory temp worker style scammery. if they can directly hire regional marketing directors why the hell would they not hire developers? i think this is all a plot to avoid paying taxes in those countries to keep their official presence to a minimum.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Listen to Bernie. Watch his Youtube Channel. He's all about policy that helps working class Americans and levels the playing field.
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