Google has more TVCs (temps, vendors, and contractors) than FTEs. By a good margin. Most of these people work 40 hours a week at Google. They do everything from kitchen work to program management to software engineering. They are often embedded in teams of FTEs and sit side by side with them. Yet Google leadership says that they’re not employees and they shouldn’t be. They don’t do work that’s part of Google’s “core competencies” or is “critical to Google’s mission”.
What a load of horseshit. It’s an excuse to underpay and ignore 55% of your workforce. And it means that Google’s famous culture (what’s left of it) applies to only a minority of people who functionally work at Google every day.
I’m generally not a big Google hater (especially among the HN crowd) but on this issue I can’t stay quiet. Google executives should be ashamed.
Can confirm. I was one such member of this underclass working as a developer on Gmail in 2007. The pay was quite low by bay area developer job standards at $25/hr with no benefits. I loved the work, the product, the people, my boss, the atmosphere of the Google campus in Mountain View, the free meals, etc, but I only stayed for a month. Once I got a better offer that paid twice as much, I was gone.
To this day it's such a weird story to tell people.
"You worked at Google?"
"Yeah."
"For how long?"
"A month."
"Whoa, really? Why? What happened?"
"The pay was really low so I left for a higher paying job."
"Google's pay... was too low...?" They say with disbelief.
You didn't work at Google. You CONTRACTED for Google. There is a BIG difference. Whenever someone claims they worked a company, the implicit assumption is that they were a FTE. I bet if you would've told people that you contracted at Google, their reaction would certainly be different.
Because everyone knows about that situation with contract positions. He did work at Google, and if he added that it was through a contractor when explaining that the salary was too low, people would not be confused.
Meh, I think that varies quite a lot. If the only functional difference between your duties and that of the the rest of your team is your paperwork, then you worked there.
The only time I specify whether something on my resume was a particular type of arrangement like contracting is if it would be weirdly short.
> Google has more TVCs (temps, vendors, and contractors) than FTEs. By a good margin. Most of these people work 40 hours a week at Google. They do everything from kitchen work to program management to software engineering. They are often embedded in teams of FTEs and sit side by side with them. Yet Google leadership says that they’re not employees and they shouldn’t be. They don’t do work that’s part of Google’s “core competencies” or is “critical to Google’s mission”.
"Contractor" is not a caste. These people are not born into it, they can apply for permanent position whenever they want. Like everybody else.
> What a load of horseshit. It’s an excuse to underpay and ignore 55% of your workforce
If they can't find better paying job, then that is exactly how much they worth on the job market. It is not like google has a monopoly on "program management to software engineering" jobs in California, right?
What makes "if you don't like it, then leave" a false dichotomy? Every free association between or among people is predicated upon a cost-benefit analysis of whether to stay or go.
because there's a third option - stay but change the situation somehow. But by ignoring that third option, and presenting only two, that's the dichotomy, but one that isn't real, because there's a third way.
Every individual looks out for his or her self-interest. While you're technically correct, ultimatums are usually uttered when there is no chance either side is willing to change its outlook and where any attempt to compel change will result in being ignored or dismissed. Unless one has leverage, the third option, for all intents and purposes is a bridge to a bottomless pit.
Thank the FSM it isn't. But then again, a god is not what determines the price of any given type of work. That would be not a god but… salary negotiations (at the individual level) and more generally the job market (in the larger statistical view)
> Life is not some kind of economic art project.
Neither are salaries. Nothing artsy about them. Instead, they are simply determined by the level at which two sides find together in agreement to the exchange of work against money for a price they mutually agree upon. "Job Market" is just the word for the statistical view across all individual such transactions.
Then: Ugly as that Google thing was, its intent and effect was to prevent competition ("poaching") by a handful of big competitors. Ugly, sure, but that only represented a small fraction of the tech industry. Equating these "Google et al" of that context with the job market of the tech industry is just absurd. That being said, de-facto-cartel behavior like that on the employer side or like unions on the employee side do make the job market somewhat less of a free market.
> What people are worth and what they can get paid are not synonymous.
Aside from the fact that - again - there was no mention of "worth" in my comment, that sounds like you being triggered at the colloquial shortened use of "someone's worth" for what a person can get paid on the job market, because you conflate that by equivocation with some philosophical, emotional or moral notion of personal "worth" (all of which are subjective btw) and feel indignation at the projected idea that those two totally different things would be equal for some people. Well guess what: they aren't. The job market is not at all about what people are "worth" in those senses but only about what "market worth" not they as persons but their work time has, i.e. for what value they can expect to find someone else who will be consenting to give their money in exchange for that work time.
I avoid the term "worth" for precisely that reason: that it tends to trigger by equivocation and thus sidetrack from the rational economic background of the link between individual salaries and the job market, when in reality nobody is arguing that the "market worth" of the work someone is selling would be equal to the (philosophical, societal, or whatever other, let alone financial) "worth" of that person themself. While the former is sometimes colloquially shortened to "someone's market worth", the job market is not about the "worth" of people but about the level at which, statistically, they sell their work time i.e. at which they find someone who consents to pay that much for it.
I know that quote is not yours, but it is the claim we are discussing and that you are defending.
> I avoid the term "worth" for precisely that reason: that it tends to trigger by equivocation and thus sidetrack
You're the only one engaged in side tracking.
> that sounds like you being triggered at the colloquial use of "worth" for what a person can get paid on the job market, because you conflate that by equivocation with some philosophical, emotional or moral notion of personal "worth"
Nope.
> The job market is not at all about what people are "worth" in those senses but only about what "market worth" not they as persons but their work time has, i.e. for what value they can expect to find someone else who will be consenting to give their money in exchange for that work time.
Yep.
Except, markets are never perfect. It is not unusual that individuals who can produce a lot of value for companies can struggle to find employment that provides commensurate pay. The reasons for this are diverse. One example is the explicite collusion that Google engaged in. Other examples are Cargo cult disfunctional hiring practices, ageism, racism, sexism, elitism, nepotism, ...etc the list goes on and on.
My whole point is that "What people are worth and what they can get paid are not synonymous".
Edit: In this specific case, a major factor is the bargaining issues that arise with "joint employment". The associated ruling allows workers to bargain more directly with the entity for whom they are producing value.
You project some personal conception of "worth" of x as if it was some normative and objective value inherent by essence to each category x would belong to. It's not.
For whatever x, your estimation of the "worth" of x may differ from mine or that of any third person. The estimation of what x (be it a product, a service, or work time for a job) is worth to someone is inherently totally subjective to the eye of the beholder (be they seller or buyer, e.g. employee or employer… or external observer) and situation: The price that you'd be willing to pay out of your pocket for someone else's development work is likely much lower to the price you would ask for you doing the same work.
You're free to set your personal subjective estimation of what your work time is worth at, say, a gazillion dollars p.a. For whatever reasons, justified or not to others. Doesn't change the fact that it may or may not not be subjectively "worth" that much to people who are in principle interested in buying that work (though not necessarily at that price). For whatever reasons of their own.
There is no such thing as an inherent objective "worth", only subjective "worth" in the eye of each subjective beholder. All of that is totally subjective.
Objectivity of "worth" only exists in the purely observative statistical sense: In particular, "market worth" is simply the term for the value at which statistically two sides (each with their own subjective "worth" estimation) mutually consenting to the transaction find together.
> In particular, "market worth" is simply the term for the value at which statistically two sides (each with their own subjective "worth" estimation) mutually consenting to the transaction find together.
This is an idealistic and simplistic understanding of how markets work. Information asymmetry, power asymmetry and other structural issues (not to mention deliberate malfeasance) can lead to two employees who could produce equivalent value to a company, receiving very different offers or salaries.
Contracting companies often serve a role in creating a structure that limits the negotiating power of employees. You argue for "mutually consenting" agreements on estimating value while ignoring that fact in this particular case a middleman has been put between the two parties to limit any potential mutual negotiation.
If Google doesn't like the union's terms they can refuse to renew those contracts. If they can't find cheaper, less needy workers then that is exactly how much they're valued on the job market. It's not like those contractors have a monopoly on providing labor to Google.
Sorry, I don't agree. I've been a contractor for 2 decades (including on a Google project a very long time ago). It's a choice you make, and I'm quite happy with mine. There are of course upsides and downsides.
If you want to join Google full-time, then you could apply for a full-time position there. If you don't like being a contractor at Google, then don't be one.
If there are downsides, do you ever try to change them?
Your argument seems to be you should be a good little employee and never complain and never do anything to improve your work life, because your sole choice is to let your bosses dictate things, or leave.
And it would seem you believe this so strongly that you want others to voluntarily reject legal opportunities they have to try and improve their work life.
It seems your approach would only work for people like you who are quite happy with their job, while making a lot more people miserable.
Crab mentality is quite widespread in USA for some reason. "If you don't like it quit". Why not "If we don't like it then lets band together and unionize and get better terms on our deal" ?
From an individual perspective, switching jobs is the simplest and most effective way to improve your situation, and will likely get you more money than a union could negotiate for.
From a group perspective, a culture where quitting is normalized generates similar benefits to unions. Employers will make concessions and raise salaries if they have too much trouble retaining good people.
The wildcat strike by teachers in West Virginia is a good example where simply quitting wasn't effective.
Your comment "get you more money" makes it seem like you think more money is the primary reason people join a union.
People also join a union to have better defense against capricious management decisions ("Give the superintendent's kid an A or I'll give you bad teaching assignments".)
People are also willing to take a lower salary for better job security.
Grievances can be mediated through a union rep, like the shop steward, who is more likely to be aligned with the employee than the company's HR rep or management.
In some companies, unions have right to have a member be present at board meetings.
> where quitting is normalized generates similar benefits to unions
That's somewhat tautological. The power of unions is based on people quitting. The point is the quitting together is more effective than quitting piecemeal, such that even the risk of having mass coordinated quitting can be an effective tool for the union.
I think it might also be the privilege of software engineers speaking. You can literally get another job, a permanent position with benefits, if you're unhappy with your current position. You probably just have to change your linkedin status, write a few former colleagues or tell it the world via twitter.
This is not possible if you're working in the kitchen or cleaning. Sucks for you, right? You must be in this situation because you've chosen it, you can just switch jobs otherwise.
In a world where you're only surrounded by tech workers your whole world might become tech with an occasional ring from the food delivery man the only contact with the outside world. I've never been in silicon valley but that's how I imagine it to be.
I'd also bet most degree holding SWE's or engineers in the US in general have probably never worked a day in any form of service or physical labor, and likely have few close friends working non-degree jobs. I've run into dozens whose privilege is visible from a mile away with 0 sympathy or understanding of the material conditions of the rest of the US.
>>> It’s an excuse to underpay and ignore 55% of your workforce.
google isnt walmart or big business killing small store.. this comment like these people have no other job to work if google killed every other company and holding these workers hostage.
Title makes it seem like all of Google's 120K+ contractors made the decision. In reality it was 41 people from one division. And their union agreement is with their own company (Cognizant), not Google.
Which is being appealed, and even otherwise is a meaningless ruling. Google doesn't pay these contractors. They are under no obligation to renew their contracts once they expire. What will they even negotiate?
It's not meaningless, it's a significant next step for AWU. As a deliberate strategy, AWU's focused on unionizing Alphabet TVCs at several small shops for years now. I think this is partly because small TVC groups are easier to organize than entire PAs, and partly because TVCs are so badly treated compared to full-timers that they're more likely to view unions favorably anyway. (It's hard as hell to organize FTEs for various reasons.)
However, as I understand it, one key problem was that Google doesn't need to deal with AWU directly since they could say that the vendor (ie. Cognizant) is the employer.
That's apparently changed. If the NLRB rules that Google and the contractor are co-employers, then that could require Google to bargain directly with this unit. That said, the status quo was still a win for workers because AWU could bargain with vendors, but it's not as impactful as it would be if Google were required to bargain with AWU directly.
As for what is bargained, AWU's been successful at winning RTO extensions for Google Maps workers, gotten managers to agree to hiring transparency initiatives, won back pay owed by stubborn vendors, and have even gotten some unjust punishments against individual employees reversed. You can see these here: https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/wins/ Typically, companies are required to bargain "in good faith" with unions about issues that affect workers' material working conditions like hours, wages, policies, vacations, layoffs, etc, and the NLRB can impose fines and other consequences upon companies that don't make a good faith effort to do so.
Wages are not the only thing unions can negotiate about. Work flows can be negotiated, as can be work hours and many other things related on how and when the work is done. For example, and note the example is entirely made up by me, if google writes 9-5 in the contract, then negotiating about a flexible time program with Cognizant will be fruitless. It is unlikely the contracted company will even attempt to negotiate such details with the contracting company on behalf of their workers, even if the later would just shrug and change it upon request. Now, what the bargaining unit actually wants to negotiate, i do not know, the media coverage is rather thin about that. Point is: The ruling is not meaningless: if a contracting company reserves substantial control, then it is only reasonable to negotiate directly with the company that is in control.
Lots of tech companies are supported by low-pay contractors. I've heard grumblings about their miserable working conditions since the late 90s; it's good to see them taking a stand. The more successes we see in this area, others will be emboldened to stand up as well. Pretty interesting to see that revoked WFH policies was the trigger for this particular set of workers.
>Held via mail-in ballot, the election creates a bargaining unit with the Alphabet Workers Union — an organization affiliated with the Communications Workers of America that, until now, has represented only one office of unionized Google workers, a contracted Fiber retail shop in Missouri. Those workers opted to drop Google from their petition.
>A spokesperson for Google said the company has no objection to Wednesday’s union vote but reiterated its stance that Cognizant is the sole employer. A Cognizant spokesperson said the company is “committed to continuing our mission as a team and delivering for our client” in the wake of the election.
>“My coworkers and I have spoken, time and time again — we want, and have won, a protected voice on the job to bring both Alphabet and Cognizant to the negotiating table so that we can win the fair working conditions we deserve,” Maxwell Longfield, a YouTube Music contractor through Cognizant, said in an AWU statement.
>Google and Cognizant have until May 3 to file an objection to the election.
>As the unionization process moves forward in Texas, the NLRB is investigating an unfair labor practice complaint by AWU, which contends that Cognizant and Google illegally interfered with the union’s formation — a practice known as union busting. After workers filed a petition for unionization, Cognizant changed its return-to-office policy and moved work to other offices, the complaint says.
>Cognizant allegedly told workers that failure to move to and work from the Austin office would be treated as “job abandonment” and a “voluntary termination.” The return-to-office change prompted 40 workers to protest with an “unfair labor practice strike” — such strikes prevent employers from laying off workers. AWU said in a statement that the costs of in-person work, from sudden relocation to child care, aren’t affordable for YouTube Music workers, who make as little as $19 an hour.
Median individual income in San Francisco was $63,934 in 2021[1].
USA incomes are usually given for the household and are usually given as the average, which makes it hard to compare against an hourly amount. median individual income was $37,522 for the USA[2].
It’s hard to really grok what the means for this type of comparison. For census data, information is self-reported and often under reported income doesn’t include many common sources of money.
Additionally, median income driven down by the number of people living on social security, and many of those get benefits like housing subsidy that aren’t income.
I think the point was that you could read "historic" in the title as it applying to lots of contractors. In reality, it more like two Starbucks stores.
And given how hard fought the few successful Starbucks union efforts have been, I think “historic” is pretty apt. Every single unionization effort is an incredible uphill battle. Every one that wins against those odds is historic.
Miserable is, of course, a sliding scale. You can definitely find more miserable.
But for example...
I ducked into the office midsummer to knock out a bit more work on a project that was falling behind. It was sweltering in the building because the property manager didn't enable the air conditioning on the weekend to save money. I found a pod of our recently-hired contractors working in the middle of the floor. Asked them what was up; found out they pull 7-day coverage (not all; they work staggered shifts so they're individually pulling 5 of 7 days, but we had 7 days of coverage for their job because they were answering customer queries). Asked if the AC was broken; was told that's how it always was.
Nobody had thought to turn on the Goddamn AC because nobody had realized we were now requiring human beings to be in the building 7 days a week. And yeah, 85 degrees isn't exactly a 19th-century textile mill, but it's outside OSHA regs and none of these folk were empowered to do anything about it. They didn't even have a channel to complain to anyone.
I told facilities management that I'd be working Saturdays and Sundays and if something wasn't done about the HVAC I'd probably have to file a formal complaint. Problem got fixed right quick. When you're an actual Googler with the right color badge a mistake like that gets solved within a day.
I worked closely with Google contractors for years and that's tip-of-the-iceberg shit. The company wasn't (usually) actively trying to screw them over, but it was real, real easy for the regular process to stop remembering to treat them like fellow employees (because Google's real keen on them not being "fellow" employees).
> The company wasn't (usually) actively trying to screw them over
Why don’t they speak up to their employer who can then raise it with Google? Since you yourself say Google is T actively creating a terrible working environment, it stands to reason they would respond positively.
> Why don’t they speak up to their employer who can then raise it with Google?
That's not how incentives are aligned. The employer is incentivized to provide Google a service at maximum value with minimum cost and inconvenience. When an employee at a contracting agency complains, the easiest solution to the problem is to take them off the contract.
When I said tip of the iceberg... Now consider how those incentives work when the issue is harassment.
You are assuming they didn't. If they didn't, they probably had good reasons to believe that speaking up wouldn't help.
The NLRB's ruling is that since Google has so much control over the work conditions, Google has to be directly involved in negotiations with the workers' union and thus has to listen to things like "Please turn the AC on where we work on the weekends."
But working in the 21st century is paradise, and no one who doesn’t *want* to be taken advantage of or mistreated or forgotten about ever is because the market is totally free, and there is no such thing as power imbalance when negotiating with a company. Unions just aren’t necessary. Corporations are wonderful, and they don’t withhold information that could be bad for business, but good for the public. Their product is made with complete openness, and everything is regularly reviewed and audited by independent, unbiased watchdogs. If they don’t like their conditions, they can leave at any time, as long as they leave individually.
Such as people who moderate / classify / filter content for minimum wage, who are frequently traumatized by the shit they see and cannot afford therapy.
It’s very well documented. To the point I’m honestly surprised you haven’t heard of it before. But that’s fine:
Facebook paid $85,000,000 to some content moderators. YouTube paid a single moderator like $4,500,000. There’s also a 2022 case against TikTok that appears to be ongoing (I didn’t look into it).
Having spoken to people in a union, enjoying union benefits, but also thinking they’d still have them without their union, this is not a surprising statistic.
I have also spoken to people not in a union, who didn’t want a union, who were shocked to find out their bonus was (no joke) Applebees gift cards and who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. If only there was a way.
>who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor. If only there was a way.
I feel like there's a missing /s there. If only we did have a way of compensating someone for their labor. Maybe we could call it a salary? If you're counting on a bonus to compensate for a lack in salary, then you should be having your union do its job and negotiate higher base salary. There's a reason a bonus is not called salary.
FYI, this is in no way a show a support for unionizing on my behalf. Just pointing out the fallacy of the argument as presented
I believe the section of the comment you are referencing was on people who weren't in a union. So they can't have a union do it's job and negotiate a higher base salary because they aren't in a union.
That's not a guarantee. There are times when part of the negotiations to get a larger number of employees to a higher salary, other employees might have to take a cut. That's why it's a negotiation and not a strong arming of the employer. When a union is first voted in to a shop, that negotiation for the first ever contracts could go any where.
This argument plays on the sense of individual exceptionalism common among techie types, and particularly among people who frequent HN, to imply that because obviously you're (generic "you") better than average, a union would mean you would probably lose money!
It's got just enough truth to it that one can't straight-out call it a lie (because it's referring vaguely to the possibility, not saying it happens everywhere or in specific, falsifiable, cases), but it's basically propaganda.
In reality, by definition, most people (and in fact nearly everyone), including most people on here, are not getting pay above the rates that a union would be able to negotiate, even if you assume that a given union coming into your workplace would negotiate for something approximating flat rates or scheduled rates. The data all show that going from non-union to union increases compensation by significant amounts—I've seen numbers from ~11% to ~20%, so it probably varies across time.
I hope that one day you, too, can come under union representation, even if it's against your own desires, so that you can see how much more money you'll get, how much better you can be treated, and how much more your voice will matter.
You say this as if I have never been a part of a union vote. That's just such an ignorant assumption on your part. You also know nothing about me or my current working conditions. This comment especially is offensive: "even if it's against your own desires, so that you can see how much more money you'll get, how much better you can be treated, and how much more your voice will matter." like seriously, WTF? Actively hoping something happens to someone against their desires is utter bullshit. Also, your assumption my voice does not matter is also just so far off the mark, that it's like you asked GPT how to respond. You sound authoritative while being very wrong.
> I have also spoken to people not in a union, who didn’t want a union, who were shocked to find out their bonus was Applebees gift cards and who indicated they should be compensated more for their hard labor.
> Humans are tricky.
This made me chuckle! Reminds me of the frog in boiling water adage:
If you put a frog in cold water and gradually raise the temperature, it will be imperceptible to the frog. They’d gladly boil to death. However, if you turn up the heat quickly - they’ll jump out.
A long winded way of saying - with time, we become comfortable in the status quo and expect things to stay a certain way. Any gradual shift is imperceptible to us, until many changes accumulate and reach a tipping point. And that is when we become disillusioned.
There's been a steady anti-union drum beat both from corporate media and the work place. Unions are almost always portrayed as expensive, worthless, and corrupt. Yet our current labor rights are almost entirely from unions setting strong standards and employers/politicians falling in line.
Propaganda works, if it didn't, Walmart and amazon wouldn't be spending so much money on anti-union propaganda. Nothing terrifies them more than the thought of multiple stores, warehouses, or development centers unionizing.
Right, union workers were shot at and bombed fighting for the rights that we take for granted today.
Another way to look at this is that there hasn't been much progress in the labor market over the last ~50 years. Wages have been stagnant for that long, states introduced legislation that neutered unions and organization is at a comparative low. Given the trend of replacing employees with contractors who have less rights and benefits, you can even say that we're taking steps backward compared to where we were not too long ago.
This may be true in the USA where union membership is in an all time low, however in the rest of the world unions are still landing deals which guarantees more labor rights, this includes longer parental leaves, more sick time, longer vacations, more benefits for part time workers, more enforcement against violations, more education and guarantees for at-risk groups (such as foreign workers), equal pay certificates, 36 hour work weeks, 32 hour work weeks, anti-harassment guarantees, etc. etc.
It also misses (well, leaves out; not sure the intent of the comment) the fact that unions have been gutted heavily in the US compared to where they were a century ago. When the US was an industrial, workers were treated poorly, unions began to form, fought for worker protections. As the US has transitioned into a knowledge/service economy, creating industries that didn't historically have unions, and industrials have been on the decline, unions have also declined. And where the US was once at the forefront of worker protections, we are sadly more like a third world country than a first world at this point.
> unions have been gutted heavily in the US compared to where they were a century ago.
The red line isn't normalized by workforce size, but it suggests the big gains (five-day work week, 8-hour workday) were before unions really became powerful. Unionization was only a 15-year trend, then it stalled-out.
This is a really unfair interpretation of this graph. Unions had a big impact on these rights, but unions back then were nothing like the Unions today.
In the 19th century, Labor unions functioned more like activist group then unions in the modern sense. There were quite a few of them, they often included members across businesses and even industries (of these IWW still exists and still functions like this). There were no protections for collective bargaining so there was no need for unions to mass enroll whole businesses, what was important was organizing for every event, and build a solidarity across workers, rather then unionizing whole workplaces. The union’s job was to organize direct action and build up solidarity around them. A successful strike had union members and non-members alike striking in solidarity. A very successful strike crossed many and diverse workplaces. As you can imagine these often turned violent when scabs refused to participate (as they were allowed to), or when unions with conflicting ideologies were competing for members and propaganda.
This changed in the new deal era, particular when the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act; NLRA) was enacted in 1935. And you can see the uptake in union memberships on your graph. This act legalized collective action and protected workers in labor unions. This formed the basis unions as we know them today. From then on it became more important to organize each workplace, rather than each direct action, and the protections would only apply for members, not participants. So memberships suddenly became more important than participation.
Comparing memberships between these two eras is effectively comparing apples to oranges. While today membership count is an indicator of effectiveness, this was far from truth prior to the New Deal.
Which is a pretty great testimonial for unions. They’ve been so effective that their lasting impact has sustained a century of adversarial counter efforts and half a century of decline in active membership. In contrast, the actual concentrations of wealth and power can’t seem to go more than a few years without flailing into crisis so severe everything stops to apply a temporary salve so it can all happen over and over again.
> I'm not allowed to plug in an electrical strip at a trade show.
Perhaps because some sockets are one the same circuit and they don't want to overload that? (At best, risking a power outage because of a circuit breaker going off and at worse a fire if you happened to plug your electrical strip into another electrical strip)
> I'm not allowed to pick up an item sitting twenty feet away on the loading dock.
Perhaps because there may be active work or equipment moving around and you aren't wearing high viz and aren't communicating with someone operating heavy equipment?
These 2 things, though, aren't union related. 1 of them (the electrical strip) may not even be regulation related but rather simply that the organizer has had problems with this in the past. The why for these rules aren't exactly hard to imagine or understand.
> They make public transit too expensive
Public transit is expensive because we refuse to accept the notion of operating it at a loss. We are perfectly capable of partially or fully subsidizing public transit through taxes. In fact, we'd probably save money by running it completely off of taxes because we'd eliminate all the measures we take to ensure someone isn't riding for free. Someone hopping a ticket stand wouldn't jeopardize our ability to keep the trains running. We could further save the tax payers money by adding enough public transit to eliminate or severely reduce the need to purchase cars. Directly saving money on car mileage/purchases/insurance and indirectly saving money by the reduced climate impact and cleaner air (less lung cancer).
Some public services are worth taxes. We (usually) think that way about police, fireman, libraries, and public schools. Heck, we already think that way in terms of transport (most roads aren't built through usage fees).
Not sure why you are getting down voted. Anyone who has tried to setup a tradeshow booth in Vegas, NYC, etc has run into this.
A little less restriction at tradeshows from union rules would be welcomed and convention centers would be smart to bargain with the union for it.
As for Silicon Valley the hatchet job at Twitter wouldn't have been so easy if the company had been unionized.
I really wish the TVC at Austin Google well in their efforts to unionize. When Pichai gets almost a 1/4 billion a year in compensation surely there is room to pay folks at the bottom better. It shouldn't take several years contracting at Google to get a 50 cent raise to $14. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-subcontractors-face-lo...
That article doesn't assert that unions are to blame for prices increasing. In fact, the only reference to price increases are from an interview from someone getting off the train who agreed that the trains should staff a conductor, and implied that fares were increasing despite the staff cuts.
If anything that article supports the idea that unions protect people, and without them companies will push even more irresponsible decisions that put people at risk for the sake of profits.
Yup, and the Inspector General for BART quit in disgust over rampant corruption and when she tried to investigate the union (among others) stonewalled like crazy.
I've done about a dozen trade shows and have done both of those things, from personal experience. (This anecdote comes up frequently in these discussions and I always wonder where from, because it's not anything like I've seen...)
I worked in a government office where only unionized IT workers were allowed to move computer equipment. My boss gave me his old monitor after upgrading and I had to wait until after hours to move it. This was around 2018.
So the electrical strip thing seems plausible to me.
Where does it come from? I saw it myself at the 1981 NCC in Chicago. The Xerox trade show staff person with a roll of $100 bills for paying off the unions.
Yeah, I guess things might have been different then. I was 3 at that time, and in doing occasional trade shows for the last 7 or 8 years (so, from mid 2010s on), I've just never experienced it; not in Seattle, San Diego, Baltimore, nor a handful of smaller cities in NY and DE.
Maybe the world has changed in the last 42 years, and it'd be helpful to qualify stories like these (where the original poster says he is not allowed, present tense) with where and when they've happened.
Number of blockbuster film studios that gross hundreds of millions/billions of dollars and pay unionized A-list movie stars millions of dollars: All of them.
Number of top performing athletes, with million dollar contracts and unions, that entertain hundreds of millions of people: All of them.
Number of tech companies with offices in the EU that also hire unionized employees and haven't cannibalized themselves: All of them.
> In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but an intact frog attempted to escape the water when it reached 25 °C.
Now we need a religious version of the "In Mice" meme [1] that just ends "IN FROGS."
John 3:6: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit... IN FROGS.
This is a case of "lie with statistics". Any pollster will tell you that when you give a 1-5 scale as that question was asked, you're guaranteed to get a fairly broad distribution. A total of 85% of members voted 3-5, which is a huge number.
The Social Media War (from Latin bellum sociale mediorum, properly 'war of the allies of the middle'), also called the Labor War or the Temporary War, was fought from 2023 AD to 2027 AD between the Alphabet Company and several of its autonomous allies (contractors) in America. The contractors wanted Google citizenship, not only for the status and influence that came with it, but also for the right to participate in Google promotions and forming policies. They believed that they should be treated equally to the Googlers, given that they had formed cultural and linguistic connections with the Google corporation, and had been their loyal allies for over two decades. The Googlers strongly opposed their demands, and refused to grant them citizenship, thus leaving the contractors with fewer rights and privileges.
The situation escalated in 2024 AD, leading to the outbreak of a devastating conflict, in which many of the contractors staged a two-year revolt against Google. In order to end the conflict, and to avoid future conflict of the same kind, Google decreed several laws by which the contractors who remained loyal or surrendered to the company would be awarded full employee status. By 2027 AD, Google's victory was complete, and full employee status had been extended to all of its contractors.
The Social Media War led to a complete integration of the contractors into Google. The contractors quickly integrated themselves into the company after gaining full employee status. Their own professional identities became merged with that of Google, and the term "Google employee" came to refer to all contractors.
In the wake of the Social Media War and the subsequent unionization of Google's contractors, a wave of unrest and upheaval began to sweep through the tech industry. Inspired by their counterparts at Google, contractors across tech started to push for greater rights and representation within their respective organizations.
As these movements gained momentum, Balaji Srinivasan united all contractors from all four FANG companies and established a cross-company union, seeking to consolidate their power and leverage their collective strength. This unprecedented move sent shockwaves throughout the industry, as the new mega-union began to wield significant influence not only within the individual FANG companies but also across the entire tech sector.
The union's goal was to revolutionize the tech industry by breaking down traditional corporate boundaries and fostering a more collaborative and equitable ecosystem. Dedicated to these ideals, and bulstered by contractors from thousands of companies, they collectively leaked all code to open source, dubbed United-Tech.
The formation of United Tech sparked a wave of innovation, as the combined talents and expertise were unleashed on a range of new projects and initiatives.
The cypherpunks at United Tech began collaborating with independent researchers and scientists worldwide, pooling their collective expertise to tackle the age-old question. Through their combined efforts, they started to decipher the intricate interplay of subatomic particles, energy fields, and the fabric of spacetime.
As the global scientific community became increasingly involved, a new understanding of physical reality began to emerge. This revolutionary perspective transcended traditional boundaries and unified competing theories, providing a comprehensive framework that could explain the behavior of the universe at both the quantum and cosmological scales.
Google hires contractors for the very reason it’s easy to stop using them if needed - they dont actually work for Google itself, but either through a temp agency or as an independent contractor.
So who is the union negotiating with? Their agency? Or as a B2B relationship with Google?
And yeah, it’s in the article “Those workers opted to drop Google from their petition.”
So they wont bargain with Google, so what stops Google from ditching the contractor agency and getting another? Nothing i assume.
Some other reasons are to hire labor for a legitimately temporarily project, or perhaps more commonly, because they failed to hire the people they needed in permanent roles. That’s the inefficiency that the more highly paid contractors are exploiting. That’s how I get a lot of my income. I’ve worked on contracts for FAANG, and they paid some of the best hourly rates I’ve had during my career.
If they have "substantial direct and immediate control"
one example: workers in this bargaining unit working on Youtube Music at Cognizant as contractors for Google have to request vacation first from Google, and only once they agree, can request their vacation from Cognizant.
A complete formal definition of joint employers is in "Decision and Direction of Election" from https://www.nlrb.gov/case/16-RC-305751 on page 8. The document also has more summaries of evidence and examples from the hearings, which were non-public.
That's the news here: Alphabet is arguing that they have nothing to do with the workers and Cognizant is their sole employer, but the judge basically called bullshit on that.
It is disappointing how all the "union victories" these days seem to involve under 100 employees, and are often motivated by "fake" grievances such as the end to temporary pandemic policies.
The article says that Cognizant shifted to forced RTO after the union movement started, in what the union says was an intentional move to basically force people to quit.
How are they forced to quit? Your job involves following reasonable requests. Requesting people work on the worksite seems reasonable. Unless they were hired in areas far away.
I'm someone who actually enjoys going into the office, and I think for a lot of jobs a lot of things do suffer when everyone is remote 100% of the time, but for these types of jobs and these types of workers, RTO was pure retaliation, and everyone, including the employer, knows it.
The types of jobs these contractors do are pretty rote, and productivity is actually pretty easily measured (which is not the case with product engineering work). It's literally that workers are given a queue of tasks they need to complete, and they are expected to finish a certain number each shift. There is literally no reasonable reason to force these folks to RTO.
What if Cognizant workers shifted their lifestyles to take advantage of their ability to work from home? Going back to commuting and being pinned down to an office could now require significant, problematic adjustments for them. Also, how many of these workers are relatively recent hires, who have only experience WFH? Maybe that was a nonnegotiable reason why they took that job in the first place.
If Cognizant was still doing WFH in 2023, it must mean that it's worked for them as a company. I can easily see how forcing their workers to come back to the office could steam from shady, union-busting motives.
If you were hired while working remotely, and were doing your job, how is mandatory RTO reasonable? Mandatory RTO is uncompensated time for the employer in the form of commute hours. It's paying for gas. It's mandatory child care payments for people with children.
I have yet to hear of a single mandatory RTO policy that compensated people or that provided any compensation at all for any of the incurred time or financial costs that mandatory RTO forces onto employees. If you were doing your job effectively without having to be in the office, mandatory RTO is unreasonable. If you were originally hired under remote work conditions, it's also a clear change to the employment conditions you agreed to.
Mandatory RTO costs me between 12 and 15 hours of time and around $70 in gas, and that's only 3 days a week. So these aren't irrelevant sums of time or money, especially given that these are contractors at the low end of the pay scale.
> If you were hired while working remotely, and were doing your job, how is mandatory RTO reasonable?
It really depends what your employment contract said, but the smart assumption (and these workers are in Texas, mind you), is that covid WFH was a temporary situation. RTO wasn't a given, but no one should be surprised if an employer asks for it.
If you're actually remote and hired during covid by a previously non-remote company, you went into it knowing the company might change its mind, and you could be easily laid off.
> Mandatory RTO costs me between 12 and 15 hours of time and around $70 in gas, and that's only 3 days a week.
You signed up knowing there was a possibility of a 2-hour commute. You balanced how much your time is worth, the likelihood of mandatory RTO, and where you want to live.
Suppose you want to live on a ranch a few hours from the office in a city. Asking the company to pay for your commute and commute time is the company subsidizing your ranch lifestyle. That's a choice you made, but it makes others pay for it.
> You signed up knowing there was a possibility of a 2-hour commute. You balanced how much your time is worth, the likelihood of mandatory RTO, and where you want to live.
low and minimum wage workers don't get to choose short commutes.
But you also came into this with the claim that RTO was "reasonable", and if you've had multiple years demonstrating there is no need to be in an office, and multiple years for the details of your life to change, and I would argue that mandatory RTO given that is not "reasonable".
It is clear that you are of the opinion that it is reasonable to force employees into a less productive, less safe, and more generally unpleasant environment for no reason other than "because you can". History is littered with things that were legal at the time, that we look back at and say "wow, that's f'd up".
> Suppose you want to live on a ranch a few hours from the office in a city.
Talking about ranch lifestyle feels disingenuous when the workers on strike argue they can't afford living close to the office due to how expensive that area is. (same source)
I think you have a lot to learn about the average commute. Why would people, whose employer made record profits during COVID/WFH, want to spend often hours of their day doing unpaid commuting to an office where the work is exactly the same as it is at their home?
I'm not talking about what they want or what is most convenient. I'm responding to the claim that the workers were "forced to quit". Unless they lived in another city, they aren't being forced to quit, they are being forced to work in the office. They might _want_ to quit, but that's their choice.
When people talk about being "forced to quit", no one means they've got a gun to their heads. No one means they're having their hands moved to type a resignation letter.
They mean that conditions are being deliberately degraded in order to make it harder to feel OK working there.
You may enjoy the taste of boot, but not all of us do, and some of us recognize that valuing workers as human beings is more important than just blindly obeying every single dictate that comes down from On High. "Human needs" are more than just the things we absolutely have to have for survival; even the somewhat-creaky Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs has over half the height of the pyramid being non-basic needs.
Give me a break. They started union activity, and suddenly the work rules change.
Unions generally don’t take a strong position on WFH… it weakens the negotiation position, as if you can work at your apartment across town, you can also work from the Philippines or India.
> Cognizant changed its return-to-office policy and moved work to other offices, the complaint says.
> Cognizant allegedly told workers that failure to move to and work from the Austin office would be treated as “job abandonment” and a “voluntary termination.”
When a company moves your office and revokes your ability to work from home in response to a unionizing effort, that pretty clearly counts as trying to force you to quit.
It looks like union busting, when the workers filing to unionize get an RTO for what was, in practice, a remote job, and a threat that failure to show up would be seen as "job abandonment" and "voluntary termination". The cherry on top: According to the filing with NLRB [1] the employer allegedly offered a "work from home option" to the workers should they decide not to unionize.
Data is scarce, but from media coverage [2] it seems many were hired during covid and some have been clocking in from Florida and Chicago, for a position that is, only on paper, in Austin, Texas.
It’s a double edged sword. It’s difficult to organize without using the employers resources.
Some companies aggressively police lots of behavior. Walmart considers outside contact with other employees as potential off clock work and will terminate if discovered.
The hyper-insanity over unions is really stupid. It’s really all about power and accountability. The inconvenience of having employees who can tell the emperor that he’s naked is drives the attitude. This is especially true at retail - lots of regional supermarkets are unionized and successfully compete with Walmart, despite Walmart’s advantage in purchase power and their carousel of the cheapest employees available.
>"fake" grievances such as the end to temporary pandemic policies
This is why American workers need unions so badly. Disease that overwhelming killed low wage workers relative to other cohorts and is still killing over 1000 people per week, disabling countless more. Workers organize to protect their own health and people describe this as a “fake grievance.” Incredible…
What a load of horseshit. It’s an excuse to underpay and ignore 55% of your workforce. And it means that Google’s famous culture (what’s left of it) applies to only a minority of people who functionally work at Google every day.
I’m generally not a big Google hater (especially among the HN crowd) but on this issue I can’t stay quiet. Google executives should be ashamed.