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Google Will Require Temp Workers Receive $15 Minimum Wage, Parental Leave (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google said today that it would require its extended, non-employee workforce in the United States receive comprehensive health care coverage, a $15 minimum wage, and 12 weeks of parental leave. The move follows protests from employees and other workers at Google who have pushed the company to offer more benefits. Google relies on a massive staff of temporary, vendor, and contract workers, many of whom are supplied by third parties and aren't offered the same benefits as full Google employees. The disparity has led to calls for better conditions for the workers. Today, The Guardian reported that more than 900 employees have signed a letter supporting temporary workers whose contracts for work on Google Assistant were shortened.
In a statement announcing the changes, Google said it would require companies that provide temporary and vendor staff to offer health care benefits, including mental health, pediatric, oral, and dental services, as well as a minimum of eight paid days of sick leave. Workforce providers will also be required to pay workers at least $15 per hour and offer $5,000 per year in tuition reimbursement. The wage requirements will go into effect at the end of the year, Google said, and the health care requirements will start before 2022. The Tech Workers Coalition, which has organized tech industry workers, criticized that timeline. "Changes announced today apply to no one working right now -- but workers can't wait years to pay rent, see doctors and care for their families," the organization said in a tweet.
In a statement announcing the changes, Google said it would require companies that provide temporary and vendor staff to offer health care benefits, including mental health, pediatric, oral, and dental services, as well as a minimum of eight paid days of sick leave. Workforce providers will also be required to pay workers at least $15 per hour and offer $5,000 per year in tuition reimbursement. The wage requirements will go into effect at the end of the year, Google said, and the health care requirements will start before 2022. The Tech Workers Coalition, which has organized tech industry workers, criticized that timeline. "Changes announced today apply to no one working right now -- but workers can't wait years to pay rent, see doctors and care for their families," the organization said in a tweet.
The entire tech industry in many cases employ more 'contingent workers' than they do direct-hire employees, and quite frankly as one getting the hell off the 'contigent worker' treadmill: it's a shitty way to live. While their calls for better minimum wages and actual benefits for contingent workers sounds good on the surface, they're still 'second class citizens' compared to the direct-hire workers, and in some cases that's literal not figurative.
move faster then quarterly, piss off the CEO, or go on strike.
Comprehensive (whatever that means) health care coverage? That's impressive.
Will there be any controls so there won't be any abuse? From now on Google will require outside contracting companies meet this requirements for bidding. I have a hunch the winner who happened to be the lowest bidder will fire workers if they get sick just to save on premiums. They'll come up with many bogus reasons to fire a sick employee other than they are sick.
we don't even get oral services where I work. Is that even legal?
I'm new to Linux and need some help. I want to download and install APK Hosts File Engine. Please, can anyone tell me where I can find the Linux version of this program? Thanks for your help!
Shit, there really is a glut of talent programmers in India.... /s
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Google has a lot of employees around the World (Philippines, China, India, etc) that would love to make $15/hr.
...moving very slowly and winning footraces with smug satisfaction.
Why not 50? You are saying they are not as valuable as your employees making at least 50.
Just saying.
You're right, slightly increasing the lowest wages Google indirectly pays causing a rise in costs for Google of 0.0001% is going to reduce the total amount of work Google needs done and will reduce their need for temporary employees to do this work.
Moron.
The lawsuits will cost a whole lot more. Nothing like corporate 'altruism'. :/
Alternatively, they will decide maybe that third shift cleaning is unnecessary, and only two shifts will suffice.
Moron.
I can't imagine any Google workers short of maybe some facilities workers being paid that little anyways. Even interns get more than that at most Fortune 500 companies.
Globally jobs do not really give big healthcare plans as the GOV provides most of them.
They might, but only if they'd have made that decision anyway, you fucking idiot.
You really don't know how businesses work do you? You really think they employ people they don't need because they're cheap? You think Google's a charity?
maybe they should just hire the workers as full-time employees, pay them what they apparently believe they should be paid, and give them the benefits they apparently believe they should receive.
Keeping the workers as contractors that Google can use as much or as little as they please, but forcing their actual employers to give them above-market pay and benefits regardless of how much time they actually spend on Google contracts, gives Google all the benefit (PR, goodwill) and very little of the risk.
It's a charity to the cocks and wallets of the people with their shitty faces all over the website
Another AC here. Yes, companies employee people when they are cheap. Or rather, businesses don't necessarily reduce workers or positions, which can increase workload and stress and lower employee morale, without outside pressure. But businesses don't generally raise budgets for a task unless they have no choice.
There was a time when businesses were not so tight with budgets, and had greater concern about public image and representation. Well fed, well dressed, and well staffed was once how businesses demonstrated their success, before everything was stock value and Forbes lists.
You, uh, understand that temp workers are not counted in terms of positions; but in terms of budget available, right? After all, you know business!
Just wondering if they sleep under their desk and if Google provides showers and laundry services for these $15/hour workers. Certainly $15/hour workers can't afford housing in Silicon Valley unless it's in the local homeless shelter. I understand Google provides "free" food for some workers, but not sure about these folks under discussion.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Push the ads deep into the OS, the browser and then stop all attempts at ad blocking.
Every ads counts to pay for wage virtue signalling.
How about putting that money to making a new search engine that works without de ranking results?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They stipulate and supervise the job duties employee's do including assigning them to direct reports or providing ticket queues.
They discipline the employee's and decide when they are hired and fired.
They now set the pay rates and benefits.
Yet they are still non-employee's?
Explain to me how it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and yet is not a duck, because I'm pretty sure that ticks all the boxes as far as a court is concerned for being an employee and not a perma-temp.
For google, an increase in costs of 0.0001 percent is serious money. Companies optimize stuff like whether they can get a better return by packing one less olive in a jar of olives, and you think they will not optimize for this? Wrong. Employees will be out of work, based on some calculation of value and profit. How many is unclear, but some.
My wife was offered a full-time job that was subcontracted, with Google as the client. They offered her 7 USD per hour. I'll bet that the company in the middle was getting plenty of money out of the deal, but because it was contracted out, they can get away with paying a pittance for a highly skilled full-time position.
TVCs at Google (Temps, Vendors, Contractors) can be assigned to any job function, from engineering to physical security.
Though they may enjoy some of the perks (main one being access to cafeteria) they certainly not treated the same as FTEs.
I am a TVC in a software engineering position. I joined the team in early 2016 and have been contributing alongside FTEs and TVCs alike.
I wear a red badge. White badges (FTEs) have questioned my reasons for being in the building.
What do I wish they changed?
1. Hardware refresh cycle: I do not get the same hardware (I use a desktop computer from 2014). I need to fight to get a well needed upgrade.
2. Access to systems: I get assigned tasks that I cannot perform because I don't have access to a particular system/application. Despite there being a process to request such access my manager refuses to request it. I don't mind doing the job but please, give me the tools to do it. Documentation may sometimes be also hidden behind some ACL or posted to a FTE-only forum.
3. Respect. Some of the managers act as if they are making a favor for keeping you around. FTEs will use every opportunity to dump tasks they do not want on you and some may avoid socializing with you at all.
4. Access to training/education: there are posters all over the place advertising a course on the latest ML framework, a new technology stack, or introduction to a new role. "Sorry, no TVCs". Same goes for invitations to user studies.
5. Ownership of my work (and respect). When things go right, FTEs get the credit. When things go south, I get to say "mea culpa" and explain what went wrong.
6. A clear path to full time employment - or a solution to the above points plus some others. I do not care for free massages, a bonus in the form of stock. I care about doing the job in the best way I can. Improve my work. Aim for technical excellence. I would like to think that the fact that I've been around for nearly 3 years would give me some points for conversion. But the reality is TVCs will be treated as external candidates. That means a phone screen, maybe two. Then comes an on-site phone screen. And you still need to things to go right as this is not a deterministic process.
For I am KING, and you live only to serve.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Microsoft, apple, and other BIG people got busted for leveraging their contractor, conigent werkforce. Resulting in people , employers getting busted for various things like, bonus fraud, fraudulent work claims, people getting kick backs, non payment, and various breaches of implied contracts
They publicise these sops to socialism because they are afraid the poor might demand access to capital, and provide real competition to the rich, who get rich through access to capital. The poor aren't poor, they're just too stupid to realize that the government they elect takes away their right to raise capital, at the urging and bribing of the rich.
This is fine. Google is koaded and it won't increase the price of their products.
The stupid thing would be everyone feeling entitled to this kind of luxury.
That's because that way it's cheaper for everyone involved.
Except 'muricans, because they're special* and making smart decisions is communism.
*(as in retarded)
"US-based employees who work at least 33 hours a week for Google with:"
Jack fucking ology. None of their staff agencies will (and most likely don't ) allow that many hours from ANY TVC.
This isn't even a baby step.
(Posted AC for a reason)
What's your point? Paying temps more and providing more benefits will increase the cost of those employees.
Google should just hire the people instead of using temps.
First off? I think wages and benefits absolutely have to be appropriate for the location of the job. With the cost of living as high as it is out in California, I would think Google would have already been paying contract workers at least $15/hr. wages or so?
But overall, I really dislike this push to make the $15/hr. wage a LEGAL mandated minimum. If a business does it voluntarily? Well, great. That's how things are supposed to work. But here in Maryland, they just pushed the $15/hr. wage law through (although it doesn't take effect immediately, and there are a few exceptions for specific work situations). And already, the feedback I've heard from small business owners is really telling. Either they're starting to look at options to move out of the state and do business elsewhere, or they're trying to find ways to hire fewer people or cutting hours to make up the difference, because they can't stay profitable while paying everyone that as a starting wage.
The problem out here is, it's already very costly and difficult to run a business. If everything else was equal, maybe the $15/hr. wage would be possible to do. But the businesses around me are only here because they had to take out big loans to get up and running, and profitability is in the FAR distant future for them. Your rank and file workers just see the money coming in and think it's unfair they don't get a bigger cut of those proceeds. What they don't see is the fact that ALL of their pay is coming from a loan the owner is trying to pay back with interest. And things like city inspectors inconsistently enforcing the laws really adds to the difficulty. (EG. We have a couple guys here who took out a $150,000 loan to open a microbrewery in what was originally an old fire house. They quickly realized that most of their customers wanted to eat while sampling the beers there, but they couldn't afford the whole process involved to cook food in the building for people. So they started inviting food trucks to come out to their property regularly. That lasted about a month, and then the city got involved, saying the food trucks weren't allowed unless it was a special festival or event. Then, they tried to renovate the whole, unused, second floor of the fire house (which was once a dance hall). They wanted to rent it out for special events like weddings or have concerts there. Well -- again, the city said no, because the new building inspector decided it needs a $100,000 fire suppression system with sprinklers installed first for safety. (The original inspector they asked about it a year earlier said it would be no problem as long as occupancy was kept under 900 people and a fire alarm was installed. He installed the fire alarm already.)
I know this is getting a little off topic, but my point is just to illustrate the kind of challenges that get put in people's way, when they're just trying to run a successful business that employs others. That's before even talking about things like employment taxes. I really believe wages are set adequately without government intervention. Nobody will accept a job if the wage is too low, and sensible employers want to hire and train people who stick around a while. But there are valid reasons someone might be only offering $10-12/hr. vs $15 ... and there are plenty of people who are really only worth the $10-12 anyway. (Our kids just turning 17 who want a first job would be examples.)
While I want to start by saying universal health care is a good thing. It has one major problem , 'who defines health care'. The current system already has that problem , right now the company you buy insurance from defines it and you get to have some pick ( if you are self insured) over the company.
I will happily support universal health care plans that allow for 2 things.
1) do no pay for abortions , birth control, Viagra ( or other recreational drugs).
2) will not aid people who mistakenly want to be something they can never be in there fantasy by paying for acts of self mutilation. ( like sex change operations).
I would expect 30 - 60% of people reading this would not accept universal health care that doesn't pay for those things.
What we need is away of providing medical care everyone that can be defined by the groups who participate in it.
Something more like membership organizations , or Medical sharing groups that are organized by but not controlled by the government and instead allow those who are members to vote on what benefits they want and are willing to pay for. Then there needs to be some kind of stipend that follows people with lower income that is not dependent on existing medicade laws so the states can't block it.
Otherwise we are just setting ourselves up for years of political battles over social issues that won't see universal health care ... maybe ever.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Yeah I won't donate organs to be given to smokers or drinkers, so when they make it necessary to opt out, I'll opt out.
How can they dictate the wage of a contractor, without saying the're becoming a co-employer. I worked like this for a big tech company and this was strictly forbidden. Google doesn't manage contractors, the contracting agency does, including pay. If Google wants to pay them $15 an hour, then hire them and pay them $15 an hour. Otherwise, get ready, law suits are coming...
So mommy and daddy can let them out of their basements to go to work. Very nice.
I have a problem with that conclusion you came to at the end of all of that.
"It would be far smarter to just have better welfare systems."?
The more social welfare a government provides, the more it's going to be motivated to apply various taxes and fees to pay for it. And meanwhile, you've created a disincentive to provide as high a quality of medical care as possible. (As always happens when one is employed by the State, or contracted by the State -- there's much less fear of job loss for doing a lesser quality of work.) In the U.S. - healthcare has never *truly* been a free market proposition. There's too much regulation and even favoritism given to big pharma, for one thing. But at least the majority of doctor/patient interactions still happen within a system where a given facility is privately owned and operated, and doctors make it or don't make it based on their own merits and ability to make patients happy.
The conclusion I get from all of your statistics is that we need much less government involvement in our lives, all the way around.