Google nixes paying out rest of medical leave for laid-off employees
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
So, if Google had laid off a worker in Norway who was on leave, they wouldn't have much choice but to stand by their obligations.
Not the case here.
I could sign a mortgage Monday and be laid off Tuesday.
So then my income and insurance just stop.
Companies have no obligation to give you notice. Anything they do is literally out of the good of their PR people. Some states require payout of accrued vacation days (notice the government doesn't mandate any amount of vacation days, it's all up to negotiation).
Then you can go on unemployment, but for some reason it's capped in amount per month, so even if I make $200,000/year, which after taxes becomes $11,000/month. I live in a HCOL, my unemployment would be ~$450/week, so ~ $2,000/month. Which is less than my rent. And I pay A LOT of taxes.
We have a minimum notice period of three months in Norway, and many have a contract that give them more than that. This is a mutual obligation, so if you want to quit your job for a new one, you will have to stay in your current for the notice period.
How much unemployment support you get depends on your salary level, and it has an upper cap, but it should be sufficient enough to keep you floating while you seek for a new job. It is not a sleeping pillow, though. You do not get a full compensation.
You get the support until you get a new job or for 12 months. If you are still without a job after 12 months you can apply for another 12 months period. If you are not able to get a new job within this period you will have to rely on other types of public support if you are entitled to any of them.
You might think that this would lead to people not wanting to get a new job immediately. However, the unemployment rate is currently at 3,4 percent.
Laws are relative to the society they regulate, but I believe the important thing is to give employees at least a minimum of time to get a new job. I also like the mutual obligation connected to the notice requirements we have in Norway. Also companies needs time to replace people when someone quits.
It doesn’t really make sense for one to demand both severance and their leave.
From my understanding the Google severance effectively pays you more than maternity leave anyways unless you were at Google for less than 3 years. I wonder how many are in that situation.
One example in the article involved a person who had been at Google for 10 years. They would receive 36 weeks severance. More than the 24 weeks they would receive as maternity leave.
It seems that person is arguing they should receive 60 weeks severance.
We are talking about presumably a fraction of 1% of laid off workers receiving an average of 12 additional weeks of pay which for google is a rounding error. Most wont be receiving this benefit and of those that will the majority will have closer to 30 than 60 weeks of pay total.
Shareholders, take notice.
I don't really see this as "Google won't honor medical leave" any more than I see this as "Google won't honor employment agreement". That is, people on medical leave get paid while they're not working but still employed (and, mind you, this is not something that's a legal requirement, but something Google does with their largess - the vast majority of companies, in the US at least, without monopolistic businesses are way less generous), and I'm not sure why being on medical leave should automatically put you in the "you can't be laid off until your leave is over" bucket. After all, tons of people who were laid off who were not on leave had plenty of important reasons they shouldn't be laid off (e.g. I'm sure lots of people had spouses or dependents on Google's health plan who were wholly dependent on it). I just see some fundamental fairness issues that aren't even commented on by people insisting Google is evil.
More importantly, the root cause issue (in the US) is that so many critical benefits are linked to employment. I know that other countries have stricter laws around this (e.g. you can't be laid off on maternity leave), but that's kinda the point - with a broad legal framework of what's required, and especially with many benefits being ensured by the state (especially healthcare), it means that the individuals are not dependent on the generosity (and huge profit margins) of their particular company. I mean, the FAANGs especially like to talk about how generous they are with things like unusually long parental leave (again, relatively in the US), but that's only because they make so much money. There is a reason that restaurants, for example, could never begin to offer this level of leave, and it's not because restaurant owners are inherently more cruel.
If we believe the benefits are important for societal function and fairness, we should pay for them at the societal level, instead of depending on the whims of individual employers to guarantee them.
Many knowledge workers expect stronger guarantees for earned benefits, out of an intuitive sense of ethics and commitment, but those expectations are more in line with labor laws found in European countries. In the U.S., workers often have no recourse or leverage against even small companies, let alone Google. "Earned" benefits evaporate once the employment contract is void.
If you agree with the above, the challenge becomes figuring out whether a benefit is more like the legally earned or more like those provided as a courtesy and convenience.
It's good that we do have benefits that only apply to subclasses of people (i.e. parents), but how those benefits are structured shouldn't be at the whims of a company if we feel, as a society, that they're important for people generally.
I do agree with you that if society thinks a benefit is important, society can pay for it directly. Or pass a law to mandate employers (or certain employers) to provide it.
Your case does not generalize. In the U.S., there is no federal law requiring the payout of unused PTO.
USA needs some laws lol
Related (may break american minds): https://imgur.com/a/dAo1D6Q
In America, illness, including terminal illness, are a leading cause of bankruptcy.
America is a win-lose rat race scam where the rats are too docile.
1. Google is continuing to pay full health care for 6 months, for all laid off employees, as part of their severance.
2. In addition, in the US, workers at decent-sized companies have the option to get COBRA for up to 18 months. COBRA basically says you can stay on your employer's group health plan, but you have to pay the full premiums out of pocket (usually companies pay most or all of the premium). This can be particularly expensive for a family (e.g. $1500 a month or so).
3. After that, if you haven't gotten another job that offers insurance, you can get an individual plan through Obamacare. Again, the cost of these plans can be expensive depending on your circumstances and level of coverage.
Someone who just made another large purchase, like a house and had an unexpected medical injury?
These aren't hard scenarios to construct. Google employees making more money than the average person doesn't shield them from large unexpected/costly life events. But also, you're assuming a Software Engineering Salary, and not a different salary that's more likely to be lower (Sales, Marketing, etc.)
Here is a direct, reliable source of truth straight from the official government website in case my comment gets buried by downvotes: https://www.healthcare.gov/unemployed/cobra-coverage/
You can stay on the existing healthcare plan you had from your former employer, switch to your spouse's plan, or start a new individual plan. By default, Cobra is automatic and retroactive, so you could continue your hospital stay unchanged and then at the end of the following month pay the monthly premium to stay on the plan.
Technically of course anyone could "go into debt" for any purchase, so in a certain pedantic sense, sure you could go into debt for healthcare costs, but it's not like anyone is suddenly becoming uninsured. You have weeks to figure out which health insurance plan going forward is the best option for you. The severance payments should be enough to cover the gap until new employment begins, even for the most irresponsible people who had no savings despite drawing a Google salary.
The only possible way I’d think this is justified is if Google would have to file bankruptcy if they didn’t do this.
Optimistically, because it's the right thing to do.
Corporations like this don't deserve any loyalty. If I worked there and anybody offered to pay me even a few percent more, I'd leave in a heartbeat. I probably wouldn't even work hard, only the bare minimum to not get fired, because why should I? In conservative media this this is being spun as "nobody wants to work anymore because millennials and gen Z are lazy" but the real reason is very obvious for anybody under 30: as a corporate employee hard work doesn't pay off most of the time, instead you will be fired when shareholders are in danger of losing a few dollars.
The backlash comes from highest educated, best skilled people who received high salaries and who have great prospects of being hired again quickly. Why they suffer?
Should these companies not hire those employees in the first place? The employees would be jobless then, our would be hired by companies witch they previously rejected in favor of FAANG.
To me it all seems like reality check for people who for years were bit out of touch with, well, reality. This is what regular people deal with all the time.
Regarding your argument about falling birth rates - education, career, job stability etc. are all negatively correlated with birth rates. I'm pretty sure that FAANG employees have one of the lowest birth rates in society - I admit, I have no data to back this up.
What an utterly stupid analogy. You never hired the Plumber as an Employee in the first place.
They layed off female employees on maternity leave just as they gave birth to children. No payout for the remainder of their maternity leave. That also contradicts your assertion of whether FAANG employees were making children btw. Google was horrendously cruel here.
The analogy is flawed.
You pay him until he completes his job. Or he will be pissed.
Google is telling the plumber to leave before the agreed upon work is done.
And key here IMO is she is laid off without cause.
And here the person in the middle of childcare leave additionally has no time to research job alternatives in job market where thousands are being laid off, so in addition to stress during already stressful time (how much sleep did you get for months after you had a baby?) there is now a hole in the resume that is always a red flag for HR. They are left out in the cold like your nan in AU.
For an employee, it is an arms race to dystopia slowed down by mountains of government regulation. For your business, it will never benefit from any employee’s full potential.
Free market only works if people value good will, good faith, reputation. Embracing a lack of these values puts you on a road that one way or another leads to authoritarianism or oppression.
Layoffs are bad because they are deceptive and cruel to those laid off and further erode trust from those not yet laid off. They are deceptive because being hired as an employee traditionally carries with it implied permanence that being hired as a temp or contractor (like your plumber) does not. You have a job unless and until your performance provides cause to fire you. They are cruel because they take advantage of the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee. The employee may be here on a visa, or just moved their family across the country, or has debts and obligations where he requires employment. He is harmed if the company suddenly and unilaterally ends the relationship. The company on the other hand is not materially harmed if the employee unilaterally decides to leave.
You can argue that a company is legally allowed to act in bad faith, but “barely within the law” is not a high ethical bar.
I see nothing deceptive nor cruel in it, unless Google promised not to fired these people
Now, Visa workers and people who moved should be taken care of separately, I agree. Firing them is not ok, at least not without extra compensation. However, are they a big percentage of those laid-off? Centering discussion about minority like if they are majority isn't helpful.
As for power imbalance.. Those hired at FAANG are one of the smartest people in the population. They should have known all of this and factor in all of this. It's hard to treat seriously people who make $300k/year and say they were cruely harmed because they were fired and now they may need to apply to another job.
I wrote this elsewhere, but I do not support Google. I view them as amoral, they make whatever is necessary to maximize profit.
If there is no obligation for the employee to work forever, then there should not be an obligation for the employer to provide work forever too.
Companies that work on loyalty do not have anything of the above, as their loyal employees won't be persuaded by a bigger TC number. Their TC is not high and they are not public too. It would be bizarre for somebody who went to Google or other such company because of the TC (likely applying to multiple jobs out of school or resigning from the previous job) to expect loyalty from the employer.
Mis-hiring a ton of people to only let lots of people go shows a untrustworthy dishonest shallow character.
Maybe in some cases companies honestly fuck up, but most of the time it just looks like the idiotic cancer of growth at all costs attitude, a delusional nature. The infinite quintupling down that seems to be the one & only move business-types so often seem to have, a pattern of relentless self-promotion in all conditions.
The genuineness of a company that can tap a wider base, to make calibrated decisions upon, is rare. And instances like this just show how much disdain there is from the top to everyone below. Utter disrespect, no acknowledgement that the org was being false, no try to do right., just letting trust in the org fail.
At this scale it seems very hard to make good decisions. It looks like a lot of companies overestimated their long term needs. Also, they might have hired those employees to prevent competition from hiring them,and it might have been a good business decision. What people fail to understand is that corporations goal is not to maximize well-being of their employees.
I wonder if this is a result of liberal movement that allowed those companies to leech to various causes (LGBTQ rights,gender equality, etc) and allowed them to spread image of friendly, responsible, good, family-like image. I 100% support those movements myself, but I also have seen this coming for years. As soon as it no longer pays off to be friendly, corporations stop be such.
The best way to fight this is to educate people that corporations are not your friend, family, they don't care much about you.
Accepting merely a fait-accompli that there is misalignment & operating in negative prisoners-dilemna non-cooperative modes forever is just a shit play. Both sides need to show up & power-share to actually make anything work.
Yep, this is what the robber baron capitalists of the USA also used to believe - profit at the expense of human life. You are simply proving the point here that the only way to win is civil dis-obedience. Boycott, blockade, unionize and make these modern robber barons pay. Unless they feel the pinch they will not change.
Believing in profit at the expense of all other considerations only kick-starts a revolution.
It is interesting you haven't responded to the guy who believes in profit at all costs. If you truly believe that, then yes, its best not to hire people.
The guy with a throwaway account who supports Google's policy. You have responded to his objectors several times but not to him which indirectly states where you actually stand.
A civil disobedience movement becomes utterly necessary when employers cross the line of human dignity again and again. It is in everyone's interest to make sure that doesn't degrade to a civil war of-course. It will not just be the bourgeoisie class that is effected here. I will correct my post.
I just don't understand why very intelligent people are surprised by all of this, and why they expect to never be laid-off.
1. You're in the wrong line of work 2. Maybe you aren't treating employees right and realize it
What we as a society can do is educate people that companies are not your friends, that they are amoral, and they exist to maximize their profits. I think we shouldn't allow them to make political donations or support any charity or social movement because this makes them seem "friendly," - which is a net negative for society.
Can you elaborate on why civil disobedience is the only choice? I don't think it is. We haven't tried other solutions. I would love to see a global agreement to cap the wealth of any individual at $1 billion dollars and the total market value of any company at $100bn (those numbers are arbitrary).
> I would love to see a global agreement to cap the wealth of any individual at $1 billion dollars and the total market value of any company at $100bn (those numbers are arbitrary).
One day I hope to be a billionaire and at least try to change the system. I would gladly spend nost of my wealth to see this happen.
How many people in HN do you think have moved out of gmail/google ? The answer is obvious - very few have. So, we have two theories:
* Either, most people don't think what you said is true.
* Alternately, people think what you think is true but don't care enough. This is like workers in china etc. This is just moral high standing. Expecting great character but not making a change oneself.
So, yeah, nothing will change. 100% sure.
The impact won't show up in a quarter, or maybe even 4, but the hollowing out & disenfranchisement of your workforce has real impact, is what makes you a lumbering husk, that might not be in visible decline, but it does make you weak & fragile & with muted senses, makes you less attuned. The cost of being a shit adds up.
It's true Google management didn't foresee this issue but it's not like Google was an outlier. Everyone in the economy thought the same thing.
- Promising a person a particular thing (approving maternity leave, for example) goes above and beyond the ordinary employment contract, and cutting the duration of that promise short doesn't sit well.
- Google offers (offered?) a variety of specialized healthcare plans that you can choose _instead of_ a standard PPO or whatever, and those require you to move to doctors in a very small network. Cutting off those services and saying "LOL, have fun with finding new doctors on top of figuring out Cobra" with less than a day of warning is a bigger inconvenience than you'd expect from comparable layoffs elsewhere.
In most places in EU it would be illegal to layoff people in those situations, that’s not a US thing of course, but just asking the already-approved deal to be honored seems just obvious.
Not to mention no one Google lays off is going to have any trouble finding a job paying at least the median wage.
While feeding a newborn or dealing with serious illness?
That’s the point. You’re on a leave for a reason. You don’t expect the leave to be unilaterally canceled.
Not to mention that, if you’re an immigrant, you have visa problems as well.
/s (for me at least)
The issue here is simply whether Google should honor the commitments Google already made. If Google approved your leave, I’d say you’re entitled to it, no different than if you had accrued paid vacation time per Google’s vacation rules.
Especially with modern family planning, it is possible to be strategic about when to use such leave, and natural to include the expectation of continued employment upon return into the decision to use such leave.
I’m not claiming there’s a simple answer - I understand the point that it seems unfair that an employee on leave will “get more” than an employee who wasn’t, but at the same time, this is the commitment that Google made, and I can’t shake the feeling that a mother giving birth and then using the resulting benefit that she was promised should be entirely unrelated to any notions of severance.
If anything, it makes it look like Google is taking advantage of people on leave, not somehow leveling the playing field.
I think I would be upset if I was laid off but those on medical or baby leave were specifically given a pass. It kind of feels like a slap on the face for those whom are unable to have kids.
Layoffs should be focused on performance, cost of salary, team business utility, etc.
That said, if layoffs disproportionately hit those on that are on medical leave, that would be pretty cruel.
Moreover, I think those laid off during leave should be given additional severance due to the incredible imposition.
Everywhere I've worked has stipulated that leave, sabbaticals, etc. were still subject to layoffs.
Why not? If a business is facing headwinds, should it be forced to pay all its salaries and put everyone at the enterprise at risk? What about the investors, which also include employee shareholders and pension funds?
The economy is large and there are lots of jobs. Unemployment is low. Companies are literally waging a Darwinian battle for survival. Why should they be artificially shackled to past business decisions?
Companies aren't feel good communities. They try to be, but the reality is that it is blood sport that temporarily makes people income and wealth. Employment at lower ranks shields you from the realities of the competition and market dynamics.
Losing a job sucks, but as someone who's lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic, I appreciate a lot of elements of American work setup that few dare acknowledge. Way more opportunities to get jobs in "risky" startups or "risky" expansions of bigger companies than the European companies that are forced to be more conservative about expansion due to their inability to contract. And less likely that your workday involves dealing with deadweight coworkers who are drawing your same salary despite not contributing, or dealing with overly risk-averse management who have an excessive bias towards the status quo.
Keep in mind the laid off folks are getting severance, will get unemployment payments after that runs out if they haven't started a new job, can choose between staying on their existing healthcare plan or switching to a new individual plan or switching to a partner's plan (and can do so retroactively- you're covered for free automatically for the month following layoff, if you need healthcare during that time you can choose to stay on the former employer plan even weeks afterwards). It's not like anyone is going to be homeless and hungry because they got laid off, they have months or years of support to find a new opportunity.
If a company must select whom to layout it would seem logical to pick those who presently aren't contributing because they just had a kid and are on leave and yet we don't really want to live in a society where people are worried about having kids because they might be punished for it by being fired not least of which because we need a next generation and don't want the entirety of it to come from less intelligent people in lower performing households.
To take away the incentive and ensure at least the appearance of objectivity—different from emotional nonsensical fairness—its wise to decouple layoffs from maternity by dealing with any change in employment status after the end of maternity leave. If it still makes sense to lay them off or fire them after the end of their leave.
I think it would be incredibly difficult not to feel slighted and go through a whole range of emotions when laid off.
Furthermore, most people will naturally compare themselves against others. It's how we navigate society.
It's one thing to live and let go, but it's another to understand why things are happening and why certain treatments or gradients exist. It's logical to recognize and perfectly natural to have feelings about.
But with how the US medical system has pretty much transitioned from non-profits to profits, I doubt there can be any argument saying doing this is OK. Money now talks more than it did years ago.
They laid off senior GCP techs because they didn't want to promote them.
Basically, going back on your word. No honour.
Don't!
Be Evil