People of color coming out of a building who have no access to the same perks as other employees and where the intention is clearly to avoid publicity of their low cost labor.
- This guy was an employee of Transvideo, a company subcontracting for Google.
- He was filming other employees from another company, we'll call it ScanOps, also subcontracting for Google.
- Neither he, nor the ScanOps employees he filmed were employees of Google.
- As per the arrangement between Transvideo and Google, he had access to certain privileges that the ScanOps employees didn't.
- He never disclosed what he eventually learned from the ScanOps employees. His story had nothing on their working conditions, salaries, workload, benefits, health. Nothing. He entirely focused on what was happening to him. He only leaves to the reader to infer from his implications that there's some mistreatment and discrimination going on. For all we know, ScanOps employees might have a better package overall than Transvideo's.
- The steps leading to his termination were all handled by his own superiors at Transvideo. Google's involvement is only implied by third parties. He never directly spoke to someone at Google (other than the security guard). Even his letter was first given to his own managers for approval, before it is implied that it was forwarded to Google. For all we know, the big Kahunas at Transvideo may have decided of their own accord that he was trying to be a smart-ass, potentially causing more trouble than necessary for them, and decided to preemptively terminate him.
End of Facts.
Now for my biased opinions, I think this guy is a manipulator. He carefully chooses words to play in his favor:
- hired jointly by Transvideo Studios and Google: somehow I doubt it. I think he was hired by Transvideo to work on their Google account.
- I found this social arrangement interesting: the implication is that there's some social stratification going on, when in fact we're talking about employees from a different operation working on sensitive enough issues that their badge specifies a number to call if someone asks questions.
- I'll just mention in passing the many hot buttons he pushes to manipulate both the article's readers and the different administrative layers who read his letters. Using the race card, social inequalities and acting as if he's just a simple bystander interested in observing these issues. He'd be my employee and behaving like that towards one of my major clients and he'd be fired, even without my client requesting it.
Nobody doubts that there are sensitive issues, we are just debating what those issues are.
Presumably you are implying they are security issues relating to what they are scanning (Well because ... Google told us that). I read sensitive as an euphemism of "please don't let anyone know how much you make or the benefits you don't have".
Well, the author went and asked them, where are his answers? He carefully worded their isolation a social arrangement. On what grounds?
Everything he reported simply pointed to the fact that these ScanOps workers are carefully prevented to mingle, they start at 4am, finish at 2:15pm. If you ask them questions they call a supervisor. They have yellow badges that restrict their access.
Yes, maybe the official position is that the work is classified because there is sensitive material. At least it is an official position. You don't refute it with speculations, you need to bring some data.
I doubt the compensation for those scanning books is generous, but again, should it be? Do people think that the mail sorters at the USPS are underpaid because they don't make six figures? The implication of this entire piece appears to be that paying less to those who do less valuable work is an affront. I'm a leftist, but I'm not _that_ far left that I think it's appalling that those who do manual labor or data entry get paid less than engineers (or doctors or lawyers or whatnot).
I guess I'm not seeing what the issue was. This Normon guy is clearly a cock. I don't personally think his dickishness is worthy of firing, but it sounds like he had a lot more interest in his idiotic "personal project" (which really is the height of middle class white privilege, yet he lacks the sense of irony to notice!) than in his work. I can see why some small video editing company concerned about a major contract would want him out the fucking door.
The intention is to avoid someone making a big stink over a non-issue, because empirically people like yourself will latch onto Michael Moore style "exposes" and make a non-issue into a big problem.
A better way to do that is to ... not raise a big stink over it. That is exactly what Google didn't do. If they'd just let this guy talk to people and post his video or photos online, maybe a a couple hundred readers of his blog would have seen the story and it would have been a real "non-issue" as you say. By getting the guy (especially a guy they determined likes to film "exposes") fired they pretty much guaranteed this to become and "issue". This the basic Streisand effect in action : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Most of the indignant comments on this story are about the faux-racism/classism, not about his getting fired. Slacktivism on reddit and even HN loves stories about purported injustice. Those flames have plenty of fuel whether or not "the man" is involved in shutting down the messenger.
Sadly the majority of low wage contract workers are minorities, it's not Google's fault.