Google's 'Shadow Workforce' of Contractors Demands Higher Wages, Equal Benefits in a Letter To CEO Sundar Pichai (cnbc.com) 104
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.
Irony (Score:5, Informative)
Google constantly talks about Social Justice when it appears they need a bit of Social Justice applied to them.
Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Like the ones telling me I should be killed for voting for Trump? Happened yesterday.
Or the ones saying if GOP doesn't support Obamacare they shouldn't be allowed to get any medical treatment ever?
I think you are probably one of those "I've-got-mine-go-fuck-yourselves" liberals, which we can find here on /. more easily.
By the way, what is the policy for death threats on /.? I've been getting quite a few lately from liberals.
Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
Champagne socialists are still a thousand times better than the I've-got-mine-go-fuck-yourselves conservatives littering this place.
So, the person so massively out of touch that they believe they have the right to your money, the right to restrict your speech, the right to dictate how you live. Are better then the people who want to be left the fuck alone.
That's brilliant.
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Do you have a cognitive dissonance because the people who allegedly want to be left alone not only have a political party, they also the rulers or is this kind of doublethink just fine?
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Do you have a cognitive dissonance because the people who allegedly want to be left alone not only have a political party, they also the rulers or is this kind of doublethink just fine?
So let's see if this is right. "They're the rulers" because they hold the government, which is obviously such a large counterbalance to the current stranglehold the left has on education at all levels, news media, media in general, and have held the social standard for the last 25 years.
Maybe the person that's running with the cognitive dissonance, is the person that can't understand why people are saying "enough with this politically correct, progressive, bullshit."
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For one thing, there is no left in the USA.
For other, yes, that is why they are the rulers. By the very definition of that word, no matter what strawmans you are trying to use.
Still, you never even tried to argue with my point - that people who actually want to be left alone never go into politics because this is the total opposite of being left alone - which clearly shows that you are a master of doublethink.
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Or the I've-been-duped-into-thinking-I'll-get-mine-someday-go-fuck-yourselves-while-actually-fucking-myself-too conservatives littering this place probably more than the former.
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That's like saying "Stalin was a thousand times better than Hitler" - it may technically be true, but it doesn't imply in any way that Stalin wasn't a gigantic, evil shithead himself.
It's perfectly reasonable to see both sides as selfish assholes.
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That's like saying "Stalin was a thousand times better than Hitler" - it may technically be true, but it doesn't imply in any way that Stalin wasn't a gigantic, evil shithead himself.
That one is debatable. Sure Hitler engaged in direct ethnic cleansing. But then again so did the Russians...repeatedly. And you have all those idiots that still think the underlying ideology is perfectly a-okay. It's always been amusing to me, that people screech NAZI bad! But in the same breath screech Communism NAO!
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Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, how dare they pay people for work at a price those people accept. Or did I miss the part where this was forced labor?
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How dare they ask for more!
Social Justice is the left wing equivalent to (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Sure. (Score:2)
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.
Google's 'Shadow Workforce' of Contractors Demands (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't see anyone with a gun making them work t
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No one's _making_ you live in the company town (Score:3)
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 compan
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Google is not your friend. No company is.
This, a million times over. Corporations are, and always have been, by definition, psychopaths who would destroy the entire world if they thought it would personally profit them.
We would do well to remember that.
Work to rule (Score:2)
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.
Good. (Score:2)
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 s
Re: Good. (Score:3)
Google outsourcing not working (Score:2)
BWAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:2)
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 sp
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Two kinds of jobs are given to contractors - Jobs you dont want to do and jobs you cant do. Contractors doing the second kind of work are paid much more than employees.
Be careful what you wish for (Score:2)
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.
'Staffing companies' are PARASITES (Score:1)
'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,
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Where I work , 80% of the FTEs started as contractors. So I dont agree with your saying that the carrot being dangled is a fake carrot. yes the contractors are exploited but if they prove they are critical they are hired as FTE.
let them eat regular meals (Score:2)
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.
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Surely Orange Man is not as bad as you purport him to be.
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It must suck to have the Orange main constantly Lipton bagging your mind. Do you see a psychiatrist for this?
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Oops, NBC didn't get the memo: https://www.nbcnews.com/better/business/job-hopping-rise-should-you-consider-switching-roles-make-more-ncna868641
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Re: Trump (Score:2)
Re:Trump (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Companies do not prosper by spending more than they need to. They can prosper by retaining talent and paying the market rate, but paying more, or keep more talent than useful, is not good for anyone. Reference General Motors.
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What in TFA has lead you to this conclusion, please?
My reading of it is not, that these people aren't paid well. It is that they want to be paid better — which is a normal and constant human condition...
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Are you sure you want to write on Slashdot? This is site is aimed for people with 3 digit IQs, I think you're missing a digit or two.
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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.
It has not happened yet and has not happened ever.
NEVER say never... It has happened, just not in most of our living memories. During WW2 manufacturing jobs where plentiful and compensation increasing, including the standardization of health insurance as a benefit.
Don't be fooled by the claims of "record low" unemployment. It's a lie. Those low numbers are achieved by simply not counting millions of people.
You are being a bit myopic. While I agree that the headline unemployment number is a bit misleading, it only counts folks collecting unemployment compensation, there are OTHER numbers in the news releases that show a marked increase in employment and a decrease in the "labor participation rate"
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Don't be fooled by the claims of "record low" unemployment. It's a lie. Those low numbers are achieved by simply not counting millions of people.
You are being a bit myopic. While I agree that the headline unemployment number is a bit misleading, it only counts folks collecting unemployment compensation, there are OTHER numbers in the news releases that show a marked increase in employment and a decrease in the "labor participation rate". More people are actually working as a percentage of available workers. Also, the "record low" unemployment statements are technically accurate. It may not mean what some think, but it's a good sign regardless of what you may say.
That may be true, but as far as low employment triggering significant wage increases due to supply/demand mismatches, the
'missing' labor force remains a factor. As demand increases, supply can also increase until that pool is tapped out. So wages don't increase as much as the unemployment figure might suggest they would.
I also wonder how much of recent wage increases are reflecting state-by-state increases in the minimum wage. Are there enough minimum wage jobs that significant wage increases for them wo
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Re:As a Google shareholder let me say (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Screw that. Lets vote for a government that regulates business so that they cannot treat employees like slaves. You have been warned.
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Screw that. Lets vote for a government that regulates business so that they cannot treat employees like slaves. You have been warned.
What? Have Unions become so ineffective that we now need government interference to do what they used to do? Heaven help us! (sarc off)
By the way... "slave" has a specific definition: "a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them." I'm more afraid of the government enslaving me than the company I work for. The government has the power to own me, the company I work for, not so much. One can take everything I own and earn while forcing me to stay, the other I can just quit a
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Why whatever do you mean?
I'm over 50 and switched jobs about 3 years ago now. I am regularly getting unsolicited job offers from head hunters and could easily move back to either of my last two employers if I wanted. Last time I looked, I found multiple interesting jobs that I would be perfectly qualified for with a 30 min commute of my home and I have friends who have expressed interest in having me work for their companies, who are looking for talent though not advertising. Moving may not be easy, but