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

Irony

[sycodon]

Google constantly talks about Social Justice when it appears they need a bit of Social Justice applied to them.

Re:Irony

[Mashiki]

It's basically ivory tower, champagne socialists, limousine liberals and so forth in action. Don't know why this is a surprise for so many people.

Re:As a Google shareholder let me say

[bobbied]

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 disagree... They are doing what they should be doing. If you don't like your compensation package, ASK for better. If you don't get what you want and still think it's unfair, THEN move on.

A wise man once told me, "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate." I say let them ask.

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.