Megacorps can get fucked. Pay your employees well or deal with the consequences.
Comment on Google Flat-Out Refuses to Bargain With Workers, Prompting YouTube Music Strike
fubo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A Google spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement at the time of the unionization that it had “no objection to these Cognizant workers electing to form a union,” but that it would not bargain with them. “We are not a joint employer as we simply do not control their employment terms or working conditions—this matter is between the workers and their employer, Cognizant,” the spokesperson said.
NLRB seems to disagree. This will be an interesting case, I suspect …
gibmiser@lemmy.world 1 year ago
nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 1 year ago
I want to, but I can’t shake off the feeling that Google does have a point here: it’s like requiring Amazon to bargain with DHL’s drivers. It’s kind of not their issue: they pay DHL for their services and DHL commissions their employees to do particular tasks.
Blooper@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes, I think that’s the reasonable argument Google’s lawyers and PR will use - but your example kind of demonstrates why that argument falls flat. The service DHL is providing to Amazon is logistics and shipping. This is an established, well-regulated industry all its own.
Meanwhile, at Google, this contractor’s services are listed in the article:
ensuring music content is available and approved for YouTube Music’s 80 million subscribers worldwide
That sounds an awful lot like running the service to me. These employees perform key YouTube-specific work on an ongoing basis. For all intents and purposes, they work for Google, in Google’s offices, on Google’s systems, but their paycheck comes from Cognizant. The services being rendered aren’t on the level of “you make the widget and we’ll transport it to stores around the country because we’re a shipping company”. This is more like “we employ people for you, but provide a flimsy air gap so you don’t have to treat them like actual employees. We sell legally plausible deniability as a service.”
nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 1 year ago
ensuring music content is available and approved for YouTube Music’s 80 million subscribers worldwide
this could really mean anything from running the entire service to merely scraping lyrics
Blooper@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Absolutely fair. But as one of those IT dudes who used to be a contractor but now work for the same megacorp I was contracting for - I wouldn’t bet on it being super menial stuff. I love my job and my employer, but it’s very well understood that the agencies are essentially a cover for some fairly serious labor law violations.
kool_newt@lemm.ee 1 year ago
True, but is this maybe WHY Google uses subcontractors – to avoid direct responsibility and need to negotiate?
SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Yeah, apparently working as a contractor apparently involves a middleman, a ‘pimp’, if you will, that brings nothing to the contractor, the person doing the labour, but instead just serves to make it easy for the company in need of services to skirt labor laws. Even unionized, what are you going to do, strike against the one with which you do the actual contracting by not attending the monthly check-ins with PimpCo and refusing to submit your timesheets?
I wonder, however, shouldn’t not doing the work cause a breach of contract between the company requesting the service and the middleman and thus cost the middleman some valuable business?
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Your last paragraph is the actual value of a unionized strike as a subcontractor.
If your employees strike, you can’t fulfill your business obligations, and so you get pressured by the people you have a contract with.The activity that skirts labor law is individual contractors, who are often indistinguishable from employees except for tax status and are much more often taken advantage of.
A contracting company is just a company agreeing to do business with another, and doing so via it’s employees. It’s basically identical to a auto parts manufacturer selling parts to a car company. A Ford parts supplier is largely just a middleman for managing the production of parts to keep Ford from having to manage that process itself. Ford can’t renegotiate those employees contracts, even though their work is directly to a spec dictated by Ford.
Nobody@lemmy.world 1 year ago
NLRB contact details If workers provide a service, they should be allowed to bargain collectively to be adequately paid for that service. Full stop.
Aux@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Google will simply find a different contractor company. Problem solved.
plz1@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So Google, like Amazon, is trying to play the “they work for a subcontractor that only supports us, so it’s their fault, not ours” card. I really want to see the NLRB smack this pattern down hard and set an example for all the other companies to try to avoid unionization by way of not directly hiring people.
CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
NLRB changed their criteria for what is considered co-employment last month, widely broadening the definitions used to determine this status. Essentially, if a company has significant control (not just exclusive control) over any of a worker’s employment status or conditions, then they are considered a co-employer now. It used to be that a company needed exclusive or overriding control over another company’s employees to be considered a co-employer.
I’m certain we are going to see more lawsuits and legal challenges from employees because of this. I’m pretty certain there already are lawsuits from some other Google contractors over this exact thing; they are providing a case that Google is their co-employer due to the control they have over every aspect of their work.
plz1@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s excellent news, especially for the employees of Amazon subcontractors handling warehouse and delivery operations.
The_Mixer_Dude@lemmus.org 1 year ago
Doesn’t appear so, seems Google is okay with them unionizing. According to a ruling from a while back Google is required to bargain with the union just as much as cognizant is but it appears cognizant is the one which is unwilling to bargain with the workers. Google’s track record with workers leads me to believe that they have no issue with workers unionizing.
CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What planet are you living on? Did you read the article? Or even the headline? Google is constantly union busting, and this article explicitly states that Google is refusing to bargain with the bargaining unit, despite court rulings that they are required to.
The only reason why they say they dont care about these people unionizing is because they fully intend on ignoring the union. They believe they can appeal the decision that they are required to bargain and win.
The_Mixer_Dude@lemmus.org 1 year ago
Yeah I read this article and other sources on the subject that give more details. Google has said they support them organizing but it’s not up to them. As far as I’m aware Google is the only tech giant that has an employee workers union