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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

If you’re paying people to provide a service and they’re paying their employees badly, the responsibility is still on you.

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Google is not paying people to provide a service. They are paying a company. I sympathize with the people who are underpaid, but their beef should be with their employers not with Google, even though as another commenter stated: Google is outsourcing non-compliance. On a related note, if people working below the minimum wage are flying to protest at Google headquarters, someone is paying their airfare. Doesn't look like a spontaneous act to me.

We go after Apple when Foxconn mistreats its employees. When you go after the intermediary, they'll go down and another will rise up to take its place -- and thanks to limited liability, it'll often be the same executives running a different company. When you go to the top, you have a chance at improving the situation.

> if people working below the minimum wage are flying to protest at Google headquarters, someone is paying their airfare. Doesn't look like a spontaneous act to me.

The raters who spoke and delivered the petition are members of Alphabet Workers Union.

Ah, yes, everything is suddenly fine when you put a screen like a company in front of it. It's not tax evasion, sir, it's a business relationship with a company in the British Virgin Island.

Also, how dare they organise for better pay? It must be a conspiracy. The riff raff really should know their place.

Let them eat cake.

Companies are not responsible to pay people well. People are free not to work at companies that do not pay well.

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