Facebook's underclass: staffers enjoy perks, contractors barely get by
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I think it really sucks that the contractors sound underpaid and dont have access to the benefits. I also wonder why more people dont just leave Silicon Valley for basically anywhere else in the US (assuming they can find a job there) and live a more reasonable lifestyle. If you have three jobs, you dont get to see your family at all, and that is not living. Life is too short.
We should seriously have a discussion about government-subsidized moves.
I heard that engineers on contract at Facebook are in general paid very well and I suspect many could easily move to a full time position at a less-hot company, but choose not to.
Supporting 7 people + yourself on one persons labor is going to be tough no matter where you live
Now that they have that - and without offering any new value to Facebook - they want all the perks that high demand, highly skilled workers get. It's a never ending cycle.
Not that I don't feel for their disposition, but it shows how these types of requests come with no understanding of basic supply and demand.
i mean, don't city councils also find it highly revenue-enhancing to encourage the replacement of older housing stock and long time owners with new, high priced, units?
The point remains that both groups of workers are essential to have in close proximity.
It may not work for everyone, but where housing is in short supply, and the demand for labour is great, a working dorm/camp setup for those forced to be working homeless might be helpful.
You can make $150/hr, if your living expenses work out to $140/hr you're not making (or keeping) much.
Like co-working, maybe other setups like co-housing setups might need to come up. They obviously may not work for everyone including families.
If COL in an area is so high that essential personnel can't afford to live within 100 miles or reasonably commute there, it seems to me like the sort of circumstances that lead to a company moving to a more affordable area.
That leads to Eloi and Morlocks, an underclass schlepping 50+ miles, doubling their day, to do janitorial work for companies.
Are they (technically) skilled employees with valuable knowledge, to Facebook? No. Is the value they present to Facebook worth more? Arguably so.
Or they'll start deserting SF/SJ and who will valet park your car at Facebook after that?
I think it's a moral issue. We need to find a way to structure society in away that even people who don't have the hot jobs of the moment can survive.
Increasing wages does not help if the housing supply is the underlying problem, since everyone is still bidding for a fixed resource. It just means everyone pays more rent. Wage increases in the bay area are always at least partially wealth transfers directly to landowners. Facebook can't solve that by paying more, the housing policy in the bay needs to change to allow more density.
We have several ways to do this, but evidently none of them are acceptable to the people who have the power to implement them.
Also, I don't think I saw a quote where these workers asked for "all the perks". Just perhaps an opportunity to not be homeless.
Not everyone has the means for political action. Frequently, those who need it most are those least able to participate.
It's a losing situation all around. What's left that might be a winning option? Convert contract services into in-house services, (and downside services until the costs are considered acceptable)?
At companies like Facebook and Google, perks aren't divvied up by how skilled you are. A junior HR worker or accountant gets the same free food as the top engineers. One could hardly argue that they are equally important to the company. The division is between white collar and blue collar workers - the former get all the perks, and the latter get nothing. When you offer the perks to lawyers (an oversupplied profession) without a second thought but withhold them from the technician who fixes stuff at your datacenters in the middle of the night (someone who actually works on your product), it smells more like classism than anything else.
Similarly as a contractor for an external services company you aren't going to get all the perks as the employees of the company. And they have to be separate for tax reasons.
And of course this is shitty. I think there needs to be something done about the housing market and general CoL in the area though, as well as asking one employer to pay a bit more. Having Facebook subsidize the area might look great while they have money but isn't sustainable; they should be putting pressure on Facebook to back/lobby for affordable housing initiatives on behalf of it's employees.
The differential value software engineers create over janitors is not because of their intrinsic worth but because of their position in the economy. There is no reason to think engineers should be more entitled to the surplus value they produce than the support workers who are equally essential to the process.
Saying "this is just how supply and demand works" is a refusal to think.
Everyone wants everything they can bargain for. Welcome to real life. Nobody goes and reads God's Supply Meter to decide what job they're gonna do or where they're gonna live. People don't make personal career choices to optimize the GDP; they make them to maximize their own standard of living.
Now workers behave exactly as the system says they should -- and you complain?
Shouldn't any worldly, aware capitalist understand this?
The massage therapist is a contractor, but she runs her own business.
the article could just as accurately call it "California's underclass"
In fact it seems that Facebook is actually doing more than most companies.
From the article it seems that these service workers at Facebook actually get a minimum wage of $15 an hour which is not bad except for the horrible housing situation in SV.
https://shift.newco.co/letter-of-resignation-from-the-palo-a...
Palo Alto is just one example. People need to raise the issue with elected officials, that they want more zoning for higher density residential.
It's somewhat like FB being responsible for the A/C repairman being paid a fair wage by the HVAC company that Facebook uses to maintain the equipment in their campus.
Your HVAC worker who may spend 4 hours a month on the Facebook campus is different from someone whose daily job is to clean Facebook's headquarters.
I just don't see how the building that you work in defines who your employer is. There's lots of counterexamples for that.
If I own a business, and don't want to have expertise, training, etc, in food service, laundry, security guards, landscaping, etc...I should be able to get a company to do that for me. That company has expertise in hiring, training, regulatory compliance, etc. They are delivering that service to many companies, not just me. Their employees might even be transferred from one client to another. They charge me whatever the going rate for that sort of thing is. They then pay their employees however they do. If they are underpaying their employees, that's an issue, but not one that's my issue to solve. That is, barring some odd thing where my company, specifically, is using some unusual kind of leverage to NOT pay market rates for this service. I see no difference in whether that service happens on my campus or somewhere else.
It is more likely specifying things like how many people they have to feed, standards around variety of food, selection, etc.
Perhaps my own morals are jacked up, but something seems really wrong there.
> That isn't a reasonable expectation. Morally speaking, companies should be expected to pay market rate for the job and anything above that is charity.
You're seriously equating the unlivable "market rate" with the moral choice? You've got to be trolling.
The word "contract" was around the idea that Facebook contracted with some entity like "ABC Cafeteria services".
So low wages is a problem, yes. But why Facebook's particularly? Is that significantly different from the low wage employees at the Burger King around the corner from Facebook?
I should really bring this up the next time the Emperor goes on a tour of the realm.
Attention Farmers put out Click Bait to attract Data Cows which they then milk for Data that they can resell.
The problem is that this is all part-time work, and it is effectively impossible to get full-time work. These companies also tend to be in far-off places that, if you are earning $9/hr part-time, means you are taking a 2 hour bus ride each way.
In theory, outsourcing to contracting is a good deal, as the contracting companies have no real HR issues with hiring and firing. They are also supposed to supply some sort of health insurance, as required by ACA, but this is circumvented by shifting everyone to part-time, putting them on 6 month contracts that roll between canceled and renewed, and so on.
It's a difficult situation for all companies involved. It bothers me that tech is getting the smear for this, when basically every low-wage job has been affected in similar ways.
There are multiple causes in play in the Bay Area specifically, of which Prop 13 is merely one.
So, yeah, just about anywhere, you "should" be able to tell the difference between contractors and employees.
Also, staffers always see temps/contractors as outsiders. It does not matter how long they have worked together. It's a strange dynamic. I try to avoid contract/temp work if it's going to be a long term position. It's never pleasant.
Facebook is not the first and it won't be the last. Contractors/temps are a benefit to companies since the company can have a flexible workforce they can increase or reduce with little friction.
Can you expand on that if you don't mind?
I can take it when I know I'll be working somewhere else in a few months but I could not take it for years.
That's not irony. That's economics 101.
The problem is that, in order for all the tech companies to grow; they need affordable housing for all levels of the staff. This is just as much a government problem as a corporate responsibility problem.
I'd be curious to know why the major tech employers aren't flexing a bit more muscle on the state level. Cynically, are the higher ups beneficiaries of the currently absurd housing situation, and thus disincentivized in terms of personal wealth to advocate for any change?
Giving the proles a place to live would shadow their sunlight and ruin their countryside views... in Atherton.
I mean, we're literally talking about a group of people with lower-to-middle class US jobs, who, on a daily basis, go to an auction together with a large amount of billionaires and millionaires, and bid against them for real estate, food and all kinds of amenities. To me, that's a joke.
And then an article gets written about a staffer vs contractor dichotomy.
Come on. Just because you were born in a place of 50 square miles of land, in a country of 3.5 million square miles of land, does not mean you're entitled to the laws of supply and demand being suspended by a massive subsidy program so that you can keep on living there when you're not needed and there's tons of people waiting in line for your spot who're willing to do it for less, while you are needed in other cities where your family can live much more affordably.
And this is coming from a leftist who left his own home town because it got overrun by rich kids with daddy's money and expats. I didn't like it either. But I also saw that I was not entitled to hand outs in order for me to live in the most prime location in the country, because everyone wants that and that just does not work, as much as we want it.
And the last thing I'm going to do is try to outbid the 1% as a middle class earner and have a shitty quality of life. Working fulltime without kids for 6 months and being homeless all that time because the average rent equals your pay just means you need to move. You've got skills, you're employable, you've got income...
Why should money entitle people to live in certain places, rather than history? You can argue both sides.
Do you have a better alternative to allocate land (or any other asset)? Please share so that we can discuss.
But my point was not necessarily that no one should own land. Another interpretation of my question — "Why don't these people own the land they live on?" — would be, why isn't there land around that they can afford to buy and give themselves security? And that has various types of answers, some related the kinds of opportunity in the economy that would give them more income, some about how we can change the supply of housing.
Here are some more developed thoughts on the subject from someone more expert than I am: [2]
[1] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/case-for-pub...
[2] https://danielkayhertz.com/2017/05/11/what-is-a-left-approac...
The article about Vienna shows that the forces of supply and demand work very well, given an adequate supply. That seems very instructive.
See: entitlements people feel about going back to "homelands" in the Middle East, or to Europe after the war. These are not people that owned land, and yet we still feel morally responsible to help them return to their original homelands.
Ultimately, land ownership (or its euphemisms like "homes" or "property rights") can only be backed by monopoly on violence, otherwise known as Governments, in that area.
People have roots, but they often get pulled out.
See John Prebble - the Highland Clearances 1963 - ISBN-13: 978-0140028379 "‘Mr Prebble tells a terrible story excellently. There is little need to search further to explain so much of the sadness and emptiness of the northern Highlands today’ The Times.
Coercion is coercion.
Now you can live there, if you can afford it. Affordability is a large spectrum. For example, for years I spent about 50% of my rent there, and I had a great quality of life, I liked it. But at some point, especially if you want to buy a house, get kids, reduce risk of total financial collapse the moment your income dips, etc, that's no longer affordable. The solution for me was to move to a cheaper area.
In tech, wages vary quite wildly, but most people with ordinary jobs roughly earn the same. Facebook employs 17 thousand people. I don't really care much about them, relatively speaking. Walmart employs 2.3 million. I care about that number, relatively, loads more, as it concerns lots of people. Walmart salaries are pretty much the same across the country with little variance. So it just makes sense, from a quality of life perspective, for you and your family, to move to an at least somewhat affordable location. That doesn't mean sorting for price and picking the lost spot, there's lots inbetween. Lots of semi-expensive cities that can still be affordable. But SF? Come on. If you make $25k a year and have a family, that's just irresponsible. And if people need help moving, we should facilitate that.
What else is the solution at scale? Giving birthrights? Giving million dollar subsidies to poor people so they can buy a 1 bedroom apartment in SF?
There's ACTUAL huge issues that demands our government's resources. Look, if you live in an affordable city and can't make it on your own, need partial or full help, you should get all the help you need. But all these poor, but otherwise employable people with a decent brain and a decent body, who work hard but choose to live in a place among the richest on the planet... that makes no sense. In the same way I don't buy a BMW, or go to the four seasons, or pick the most expensive restaurant. At the end of the day, we need to pick our spending patterns based on our earnings for everything in life, living area included, and living in SF like some people do today is for many (not all) a (bad) choice.
And I'm all for shifting the wealth, progressive tax rates, helping parents with daycare, in every city, I've always voted for those programmes. But we're talking about people trying to live in a city where a tiny home costs $1m, with a minimum wage income. You'd need programs that take 10x the resources that our government affords to helping people in other cities.
I mean just extend the argument to the extreme... if all of the 200 million working Americans suddenly wanted to live in say Portland for some significant emotional bond... what would happen. Well there'd be homes for 10 million. The homes would skyrocket in price. There'd be jobs for say 20 million. So you'd have 200 million people offering their manhours for a tiny amount of jobs, and the wages would approach zero. You'd have affordability in the city crash, because rent and wages move in completely opposite directions at the speed of light. The solution then isn't for companies nor governments to pay/subsidise ever more than the market rate to a few million, while the rest are completely fucked. Nor is the solution to give a few people a birthright lottery ticket. The solution is for people to not choose to all live in Portland. SF is a bit like that, much less extreme. Affordability is dying, and the long-term solution probably is that some people improve their quality of life moving to places with 25% less wages and 50% lower expenses, and for the remainder to see their wages increase due to a drop in labour supply.
The reality for a lot of these people is that they can't really afford to stay where they are, but they equally can not afford to leave.
No one is going to pay to relocate a Janitor from SF to Idaho. That Janitor can barely make there rent, let alone find the deposit for some place they can actually afford, and that's before you take into account moving costs, living while you find new work, etc.
The truth is, moving is expensive, very expensive, and if you live somewhere with a high cost of living, it's hard to drum up that kind of money.
The truth is, moving can be cheap, very cheap, and if you live somewhere with a low price of labor, it's profitable to drum up that kind of support.
You're telling me she can't drive, or take a bus?
Because what, she has to move all her belongings from the parking lot she currently lives in?
Come on. Look, my parents were on welfare since I was 3, never had any financial support, I've hustled plenty of times moving places, never having owned a single car. Not a single piece of furniture in my home is new, everything is second hand and half of it I found on the street.
Look I'm not saying it's as easy as opening an email account. Life is hard. But we're talking about a person who is homeless. She's way more capable than you may think, and I'm telling you, the solution to her problem is NOT staying in SF. You know that and I know that.
But even if people can't move without help from third parties, the solution to this problem still isn't letting people who make little money to stay in the most expensive place on earth that they can't afford, it's just not going to work out. It's governments facilitating them to move. I'd completely support that.
As soon as some people leave, who's quality of life will improve, companies will be forced to pay a living wage for those who stay, who's quality of life will improve, too. Would you stay?
That "need" is supplied by Facebook, et al, who have this race to provided the most "perks" to their employees.
And at a certain point, you're going to find there are less and less people willing to "do it for less" due to simple economies of scale, cost and time.
And (hopefully) the bubble will burst.
Unfortunately, that point is well below minimum wage. You will always have a line of people willing to "do it for less" until you make it illegal to pay less.
You're not a leftist. You're as bourgeois as they freaking come, dude.
But hey, surely with the shiny new open borders y'all left-neoliberals will put in, middle-class Americans can move to Mexico, where there will be tons of manual labor jobs with no safety standards, just like everyone remembers!
And on and on and on. Saying "Just Leave" is like saying "Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps!". If you're already working 60 hours a week and barely scraping by, how in the hell are you going to find the time and the money to uproot everything and move?
Having a bad attitude is the worst advice.
"I have had many businesses in my life, I fail and I try again, I fail and I try again".
He lost his home in the war and is literally starting at zero. It is really about a positive attitude vs a shit attitude.
Tough it out? Lobby?