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Comment by Manuel_D | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty unclear to me what "refusing to bargain" means in this context. It sounds like these are employees of a different company, trying to bargain with Google instead of their employer:

> "As we've said before, we have no objection to these Cognizant employees electing to form a union," Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini told The Register. "We simply believe it's only appropriate for Cognizant, as their employer, to engage in collective bargaining."

It details a similar situation with Accenture. Google's position makes sense here: Accenture and Cognizant set their employees pay, benefits, etc. So they should be the ones negotiating with the union. If I'm a forward deployed engineer and I want better pay, I don't negotiate with the customer I'm working with I negotiate with my boss.

Regardless, I don't think the union has much in the way of leverage here besides drumming up negative PR for Google. The Alphabet Workers Union apparently has ~1,400 members: https://www.alphabetworkersunion.org/#:~:text=Our%20union%20....

Google has over 170,000 employees and ~120,000 contractors. Even if it were exclusive to employees, the Alphabet Workers Union accounts for less than 1% of Google's workforce.

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The vendor arrangement is in large part a pretext by Google to avoid their legal responsibilities. Also, the workers have the right to negotiate about more then pay and benefits, they can bargain over working conditions which Google controls.

I literally had to take a training that said even if a “TVC” was a core contributor to a launch and the team got t-shirts, it was not allowed to give a shirt to the TVC. You can’t give a TVC a pencil without it being counted as “compensation”.

The way Googlers are fully accepting of what is clearly a tax dodge built on sacrificing the most pathetic acts of human dignity made me sick.

That lack of benefits is legally mandated, thanks to some high-profile court cases. It isn't that Google or other companies simply don't want to give those kinds of perks to contractors; no manager I've worked with has ever begrudged the cost of these kinds of perks and many were just as annoyed that they couldn't give them to contractors. And it isn't that they want to classify those perks as "compensation" and somehow bill the contractor for them. It's that if you give those kinds of benefits to a contractor, they can be involuntarily retroactively reclassified as an employee.

Before that legal precedent existed, many companies were a lot more free about sharing those kinds of fun perks (social events, apparel, stickers, fun things that don't have a substantial cost) with contractors. I would love to go back to a world in which companies could freely do that and thought nothing of it. And in that world, if some company arbitrarily denied those kinds of perks to contractors I'd agree that that was the company being unpleasant for no good reason.

If you want to complain about companies using contractors in places where you think they should be using employees, by all means do. There are certainly cases where companies use contractors where they should be using employees, and for that matter vice versa. There are also cases where contractors are a better choice (e.g. variable/uncertain needs over time, employees of third-party companies that don't want to be employees).

But if you accept that there are any valid reasons to have contractors and not just employees, the legal requirements that you can't give benefits to contractors are legal requirements imposed on the company, not arbitrary indignities invented by the company.

Back in the Olden Days, I worked at Boeing as a salaried engineer. We worked alongside a small army of contractors. The contractors didn't get any benefits, and could be let go with no notice, but had 50% higher pay than the directs. (It turns out that the value of the benefits package was about 50% of the pay.)

The directs were happy to be directs, and the contractors were happy to be contractors. I don't know why people have been so eager to upset this reasonable arrangement.

That sounds fine, and I'd hate to see those opportunities taken away.

Largely, the contractors at Google have worse pay, harder jobs, fewer benefits, and less security for what is _almost_ an ordinary full-time job. They're often angling to become full-time employees. It might be legal, and it _might_ even be ethical, but it looks at best (even to other Google employees in places like memegen) like Google is abusing a legal grey area.

I put the bulk of the blame for that on California.

Contractor still generally cost the same or more, but California law has made it nearly impossible for contractors to Work Direct so they have job shops that skim 50% off the top.

To be clear, I hope that anyone who is a contractor and wants to be an employee has the opportunity to be an employee, either for that company or some other company. And, employee or contractor, I'd like to see everyone treated well, and I wish there weren't legal restrictions that prevented companies from doing that.

What I don't want to see is contractors who are happy being contractors being forced to become employees, as a side effect of trying to help contractors who do want to be employees. Let's not throw out the entire concept of contracting, please.

The concept of Contracting is dead in California and has been for 20 years.

State law and unfortunate court rulings mean that the only realistic way to “contract“ is as a w-2 employee of a business to business Job Shops that skim 50% off the top.

I always wanted to be a contractor, but it made me sick to watch my Job Shop make $100 per hour off work for being a legal middle-man

You mean in tech? I have a contractor coming over to install something in my house next week. Totally normal and legal.

Mostly in tech, That person likely isnt a contractor, but either small businesses or an employee of one, selling a service.

If they were an independent contractor working for you, you would be giving them a 1099.

I know musicians who now have to deal with 100+ W-2s each year for each performance and gig they played because it is illegal for them to be hired as a contractor. If a community symphony wants to hire a violinist for 2 hours, they have to document them as an employee, file employee taxes, track sick pay, ect.

It is brutal on both ends.

You may want to explore the world of permatemps where MSFT, et al, absolutely, and viciously exploited contractors on revolving short term contracts (When I was at MSFT, I knew of multiple people - who would have loved to been FTEs for a variety of reasons - who had been there for over a decade on revolving six month contracts).

Those high profile cases came about because it was a way for those companies to absolutely dodge ancillary TC costs of employees.

To me, a lot of the black and white, "Okay, fine, zero other benefits" was a punitive response to the permatemp lawsuits.

> You may want to explore the world of permatemps where MSFT, et al, absolutely, and viciously exploited contractors on revolving short term contracts (When I was at MSFT, I knew of multiple people - who would have loved to been FTEs for a variety of reasons - who had been there for over a decade on revolving six month contracts).

I realize some companies do this. It sounds like Google may be one of them. On the other hand, some companies did and still do regularly convert contractors into regular employees, and conversely many do use short-term contracts for needs that are actually short-term.

> To me, a lot of the black and white, "Okay, fine, zero other benefits" was a punitive response to the permatemp lawsuits.

I think calling it "punitive" is imputing a malign motive that doesn't exist. There's legal precedent that giving contractors any of the same benefits as employees can lead to them being reclassified as employees, so companies stopped giving contractors benefits.

Can someone knowledgeable explain this “tax dodge”? I was under the impression that the issue GP underlines (giving a contractor shirt/pencil) is more about avoiding misclassification and stems from a lawsuit by Microsoft contractors claiming to be common law employees based on how they were treated and then demanding additional employee-only benefits.

I don't work at Google so I don't know if this is exactly what is happening, but I've worked on both ends of something similar before and this is (usually) what happens.

Company A wants to hire employees to perform Task A. Task A has a lot of legal overhead or paying taxes for employees and Company A would rather not deal with that. So Company A hires Company B as a contractor, meaning Company B is primarily responsible for the legal overhead and tax liability of Task A and Company B's employees. As a contractor relationship, Company A is not able to demand Company B do certain things (such as Company A dictating what Company B pays employees, or setting PTO policies, etc). Usually, they are only able to set standards that Company B must meet to maintain that contract for Task A.

It's possible Company A here (Google) may have overstepped and began instituting requirements or policies on the employees of Company B, which leads to the misclassification of employment.

Google may say "They're not our employees" but if they're overstepping their bounds then they might actually be considered Google employees. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I can say it's a pigeon all day long but everyone knows it's a duck.

Another factor is how transparent it is to an outsider (say a judge) whether or not the contractor is a real entity with multiple customers who all have similar kinds of deals. And whether the entity goes out of business while leaving a bunch of stuff unpaid when the work is done. And whether or not the entity happens to be managed by people who happen to have a cozy relationship with the mothership. Pretending it is at arms length when it is actually the same thing is a really annoying thing that big companies do in order to jack up their bottom line. I wonder if there are any tech giants that are not in one way or another committing crimes. I somewhat doubt it.

We are talking about cognizant here. Not a fly by night operation.

Which entities are you referring to , with which google has a relationship that is not arms length?

https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/inside-goo...

This isn't a minor problem, it's a massive problem. The scale of which may have escaped you but it certainly didn't escape Google's accountants who are laughing all the way to the bank. The fact that it is Cognizant here makes it a larger problem, not a smaller one and even if they appear not to be an overt fly-by-night operation they certainly perform a useful function for Google in isolating them from their workforce. Or did you think they keep all of these employees at arms length out of the goodness of their hearts?

> Or did you think they keep all of these employees at arms length out of the goodness of their hearts?

That is hardly fair; this is business. Nobody is there out of the goodness of their hearts. It isn't like Google is made up of people who have a deep personal belief that the best thing they can be doing on weekdays is working out how to funnel more people into the big advertising network.

The law gives contractors a big financial advantage over FTEs. Google hires contractors over FTEs. They're obviously toeing the line as closely as they can because they'd rather have FTEs at the price of a contractor, and they've overstepped it here, but they're just working under the regulations they're given.

This mania for trying to push situations away from the market equilibrium really needs to settle down. My guess is if pushed much further, it'll get outsourced to a different company in a different country. It is nigh impossible to convince a market to pay substantially more than the market value of something.

Nobody forces you to maximize your unethical behavior to the extent that the law permits. Because a big company, especially one the size of Google, has a huge advantage over the employees that it negotiates with. More so if the company engages in unfair practices, such as non-competition agreements with other similarly large companies. And when you're caught doing the one what better way to communicate that you've learned your lesson than to jump on to the next possible loophole?

There is no market equilibrium when parties like Google engage in illegal behavior.

Employing a contractor on terms they agree to is not unethical. Skating close to the edge of the law is unethical, and I'm sure everyone agrees that Google will add more restrictions to the contractors to make sure they are separate from the employees.

> Because a big company, especially one the size of Google, has a huge advantage over the employees that it negotiates with.

I've never had a job with the sort of benefits an equivalent role at Google would have. That argument is bunk; if negotiating power were so important the equivalent role would be paid less. Google doesn't have that sort of negotiating power; it has to take the market price same as everyone else does.

In fact, the consistent calculus across a career as a salary earner is how much negotiating power you want vs how much you are willing to trade away in terms of flexibility. Large, boring inflexible companies tend to offer consistently better deals. That is why they are bigger than the average company. People take the deal they offer when the option is there.

It takes an extremely rare set of skills to turn negotiating power into a better bargain. As I'm sure you are well aware.

> It takes an extremely rare set of skills to turn negotiating power into a better bargain.

Hence unions. Now please check the title of TFA.

I dunno; it'd be a bit weird if unions result in these people getting better off. Pretty high risk of the story ending with "Designed in California. Assembled in China". Not that that is a terrible outcome, the Asians have basically built a civilisation's worth of wealth over the last 50 years. I'm not convinced that chasing the value-add out of the west helped workers though, they all seem kinda upset last time I looked at the polling.

I'm just saying; there is a really high correlation with thriving wealthy industries - like software - and no union presence. We don't even have guilds. And when we do get wealthy guild-gatekept industries like medicine or law, the working conditions tend to be famously poor.

My money is where my mouth is on this one. I don't think unions will make me better off. My strategy for getting wealthy involves standing as far away from them as I can get. Those things are toxic; the only tool they really have is "we all lose". And that isn't a tool that will get better results than a competitive labour market. It pushes wealth away. I want wealth to head towards me. Others should too. It can always get worse.

You are welcome to your own opinion of course. But historically, and today as well unions have had a measurable effect on the improvement of the standard of life for the workers as well as an immense effect on workplace safety.

If you want to ignore those advantages that's entirely your privilege, but note that that privilege was probably earned by a union in your (collective, not personal) past.

> I'm just saying; there is a really high correlation with thriving wealthy industries - like software - and no union presence

Correlation does not mean causation. Software is high paying because of scalability. It's not like past production or service work where the amount you can produce/serve has physical limitations.

Let's not fool ourselves. It would get worse if employers could figure out how to turn software into a more repeatable process and not have to rely on the craft of the individual. When that day comes the amount paid to software will go down and there won't be anything you as an individual can do to stop it.

But if your argument is high pay is caused by scalability, then surely you'd agree that a union would be unhelpful? A union doesn't help make someone's production more scaleable.

Each service company can be a fly by night operation. Each megacorp can be a fly by night operation. Just like the famous saying "you join because of the company but you leave because of a manager", each company has some overall DNA, but at a lower level you never know. However much the big man at the top wants to have a consistent image consistent delivery consistent behavior, at the ground level things can be radically different. And it is possible one manager can operate relatively cleanly and another manager can operate like a mercenary, like a fly by night operator.

/source. Been there done that. Never worked for cognizant but many other setups.

> I wonder if there are any tech giants that are not in one way or another committing crimes. I somewhat doubt it.

Said like that, isn't it just the corporate equivalent of "three felonies a day"? I think you're getting at something important, but "crime or not" no longer captures it.

No, not really. Because these large corps are fully aware that they are breaking the law they just try to do it in such a way that 'creative reinterpretation of the rules' says they're in the clear. And history is on their side, corporate execs getting away with this stuff abound, the ones in jail are next to non-existent and the ones that got away with this kind of stuff have been handed very nice severance packages when they were found to be breaking the law whilst in charge. 'Oh, bad boy, here is $10M, now go do it again somewhere else and let us claim we terminated you'.

I'm not comfortable being too specific publicly but I guess I'm just wondering about the legal implications if Company A was more like:

"screw it, let's have them be de facto members of the team: do the same work on the same days, and move on once we hit the 'too long to lie' mark" and steadily moved to that arrangement for a significant amount of work for a large portion of job functions.

> screw it, let's have them be de facto members of the team: do the same work on the same days, and move on once we hit the 'too long to lie' mark" and steadily moved to that arrangement for a significant amount of work for a large portion of job functions

Correct, that would be abusing contract work. But while there have been people insisting that this happens, I have yet to see someone substantiate these allegations.

…this is more or less what the NLRB ruled Google did, so I don’t know what else would have to be substantiated at this point.

No, the NRLB is trying to argue that RTO policies and number of sick days means Google is now in the role of the employer. There is nothing at all in the ruling that says these contractor were performing the same work as employees.

In the NLRB filings, the workers charged that Google controlled all aspects of their work, not simply set RTO policies or sick days, which made them a joint employer. Both sides presented their evidence. The NLRB ruled that what the workers were correct in this claim. It’s all in the filings. What you highlight was only part of what the union claimed as evidence of the misclassification, as a comment on the article, not the entirety of what was reviewed and adjudicated. I’m not sure why you’re trying to misrepresent and diminish the situation in this way.

Again, what exactly are you trying to argue? It sure sounded like in the previous two comments you were trying to argue that Google was using contractors in place of full time employees. That full time workers and contractors are doing the same work. If that's what you're trying to claim, then that's incorrect the NRLB finding did not at all claim this.

That Google controlled aspects of their work? Of course, they're contractors hired by Google. If I hire a janitorial contractor is it violating labor law to tell the to change the bags once per day? What if I have them use a specific brand of garbage bags that I think are more reliable? Contractor are hired to fulfill some need that the customer has. So of course rh customer is going to be controlling the work that contractor do. At what point am I directing contractors to such a degree that now I'm their joint employer?

The NRLB's examples of Google controlling the Cognizant employees does indeed revolve around RTO and time off, as well as things like not using your personal phone at work. None of them strike me as particularly out of place, and I'd be unsurprised if the appeal has a different outcome.

Again, you’re just making stuff up based on a comment in the article and don’t understand what misclassification of contractors constitutes. Here’s what the union claimed, directly from their filing:

“The bargaining unit employees in this matter, individuals with specialized skills who work on the Music Content Operations (“MCO”) team, run virtually all aspects of Google’s YouTube Music platform. They are part of Google’s “extended workforce.” While Cognizant hires the employees, Google applies constant, exacting control over every aspect of their day-to-day work, including work hours and location, manner and means of work, wages, and employee benefits.”

Which is textbook misclassification of FTEs under the guise of contractors. The union provided evidence this was true. Google was unable to refute. The NLRB ruled in the worker’s favor and told Google they have to bargain with the union. This is what I’m saying happened and what the NLRB said happened too.

Everything in your post is some kind of weird gish-gallop, fantasy of your own making.

Again, let's be clear the comment I first responded to claimed:

This is not at all what the NRLB filing alleged. Using contractors to fulfill the same work as full time employees is a separate issue entirely.

As far as what the NRLB did write about, it did claim that Google was controlling contractors to an extent that it's now a joint employer. But their justification for this claim is shaky. And yes, it did indeed include return to office and time off. You say I'm making stuff up, but your own except says largely the same things:

> work hours and location, manner and means of work, wages, and employee benefits.”

So if I tell contracted janitors they need to change the garbage bags in my office at 7pm, I'm now a joint employer because I'm controlling their work hours and location? Likewise, if the contractor wants to pay the janitorial staff $80 per hour and I decide that's overpaying I'm now a joint employer because I'm controlling wages?

The things the union is describing as exacting control are pretty bog standard things that a customer of a contractor would ask for. The company is hiring that he contractor to fulfill some need. This is inevitably going to involve controlling things like what work contractors are doing and policies around hours and time off.

It is exactly what the claim alleged. And it’s not a separate issue at all: saying someone is not a Google employee, but making them one, in practice, is misclassification because it’s relative to the entire scope of Google’s business. It doesn’t matter if they have FTEs on the team mixed in with contractors. It matters if they’re working contractors like FTEs, which the NLRB said, yes, Google did.

Your hypotheticals about janitors and whatever else are a tiresome, pointless, and a distraction. We know what happened, we know how the NLRB ruled, and we know you’re posting here saying, “well, I disagree on the basis of imaginary laws and scenarios that have no relationship to reality”. Which, I guess, fine? Have at it!

> It matters if they’re working contractors like FTEs, which the NLRB said, yes, Google did

You're being really slippery when you reword this to "working contractors like FTEs". What, exactly, did the NLRB filing alleged? That Google asked TVCs to return to the office, set their time off, etc. The NLRB focused most entirely on how Google was controlling the conditions of Cognizant employees' work. That's a very, very different claim than saying Cognizant employees were performing the same task as FTEs.

Nowhere does the NLRB report say "Cognizant employees were tasked with _______ just like FTEs".

"Google is using contractors to perform the same work as full time employees."

"Google is setting contractors' conditions like return to office, time off, wages, etc."

The NLRB is alleging the latter. It is not alleging the former (which is what the grandparent comment wrote, and what I insisted is incorrect). And if you can't comprehend the difference between these two claims, there's no real point in continuing here.

I don’t know how many times I have to go round and round on you with this, but I’m not being slippery. You fundamentally don’t understand what misclassifying contractors means and are in dialogue with your own, imaginary version of U.S. labor law.

> NLRB focused most entirely on how Google was controlling the conditions of Cognizant employees' work. That's a very, very different claim than saying Cognizant employees were performing the same task as FTEs.

Except its not, because both determine whether someone is a contractor or an employee. You’ve invented this fantasy distinction that separates the two, but this doesn’t exist in law or precedent. What is generally determinative is the importance of the work to the business, in addition to constraints place on how it’s done. Both are alleged in the claim by the union, as I quoted from the filing, and the NLRB said that is what Google is doing. Let me quote it again because you also seem to be arguing from an imagined version of it:

“The bargaining unit employees in this matter, individuals with specialized skills who work on the Music Content Operations (“MCO”) team, run virtually all aspects of Google’s YouTube Music platform. They are part of Google’s “extended workforce.” While Cognizant hires the employees, Google applies constant, exacting control over every aspect of their day-to-day work, including work hours and location, manner and means of work, wages, and employee benefits.”

And I agree there is no real point continuing here because you’ve unequivocally demonstrated you have zero clue what you are talking about.

> You’ve invented this fantasy distinction that separates the two, but this doesn’t exist in law or precedent

This does indeed exist, Microsoft got in trouble for this back in 1989: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-tr...

This has nothing to do with unions. Microsoft was using contractors to do full time work, misclassifying them. The grandparent comment claimed this is what Google was doing, which is not at all what the NLRB filing alleged.

> individuals with specialized skills who work on the Music Content Operations (“MCO”) team, run virtually all aspects of Google’s YouTube Music platform

And a contractor performs virtually all aspects of our janitorial functions. The fact that the venture Music Content Operation is staffed by contractors sure makes it sound like there's a pretty clear separation between contractors' work and FTEs. If the filing explained how both FTEs and contractors staffed the MCO and they were doing the same functions, that would be supporting your claims. But it doesn't.

I look forward to the day when your imaginary janitors are imbued with the authority to reshape US labor law in the image of their simulation.

Even if they violated the same law, "same task" and "too directly controlled" are different things. It matters when describing the situation. So even if you were 100% right legally, your comments are still wrong to conflate those two situations.

Those “two situations” are the same situation - how the contractors are being employed. I also didn’t conflate them. It’s how the employment terms were described by the union themselves, in their filing, as I’ve repeatedly quoted.

There are a lot of factors and we should distinguish the factors.

If the union claims X+Y factors, and the NLRB only claims Y factors, that matters. If NLRB only backs up half the evidence, the case is weaker. And that seems to be the case, based on your quotes.

What is important to the business is yet another factor, and you gave some evidence for that too, which is useful. But if they outsource an entire service like you quoted, that seems like it might be a weaker case than mixing employees.

No, they ruled that all the factors I cited made Google a co-employer. You can read the original decision by the regional officer here:

https://www.nlrb.gov/case/16-RC-305751

Start with the amended board decision, which clearly delineates why they were employees, and includes all the things I’ve mentioned throughout this thread. The most recent ruling from the NLRB, which is linked in the article, is a follow-up up to this decision because Google subsequently refused to bargain with the union, after they were deemed to be a co-employer. The NLRB asked Google to demonstrate why they don’t have to bargain with the union, Google said they’re not their employees, the NLRB said the regional officer already ruled on this and said you’re their co-employer, Google provided no new evidence to the contrary other than “we say they’re not”, the NLRB said, no, they Regional Director is correct and they are, bargain with the union. Imaginary janitor dude is just having a conversation with himself, independent of the facts of the case.

> they ruled that all the factors I cited made Google a co-employer.

They did do that! But the specific thing that started this conversation was not a factor NLRB cited. It was "de facto members of the team: do the same work on the same days".

You're focusing so much on the end result that you're ignoring which claim Manuel_D asked for evidence of. Even if he's super wrong on the legal analysis, he asked for evidence of something, and it's something quite relevant, and there has not been a good citation for it. Even if the factors NLRB cited are enough to declare Google a co-employer, it's still valid to want evidence of what was actually claimed upthread.

Again, no, this was also addressed in the initial ruling. The workers working alongside Google employees was counted against Google in identifying their status as co-employer:

>SMEs regularly interact with Google employees. They attend weekly video meetings for about 30 to 45 minutes, chat online daily, and may reach out to Google employees for help with any bugs they are unable to fix. It is expected in the course of SMEs’ work that they are in contact with and work with Google employees.

It’s not my fault the dude didn’t read the filings and decided to play Manuel_D Janitor Labor Law RPG with himself on Hacker News instead.

A) It would have helped focus the conversation if that was one of your earlier quotes.

B) That level of interacting is not particularly conclusive for saying they do the same job. For example, in another industry I could imagine artists and programmers interacting that way, while having wildly different jobs.

C) You are getting way too hung up on the janitor example. It's a perfectly good explanation of one end of the spectrum.

A) The person I was responding to was blatantly making things up, refused to engage with what I quoted, and proceeded to only describe fictional scenarios or misrepresentations based on a comment in the article. I doubt this would’ve made a difference.

B) Irrelevant. Companies have people in all different kinds of roles collaborating with each other. What matters is the nature of that collaboration in terms of classifying them as co-workers (i.e. employed by the same company) or contractor and customer. The NLRB looked at this and said the way Google and the “contractors” worked together made them jointly employed by Google, as I quoted directly from the filing.

C) I’m not hung up on it, I just find it obnoxious that someone chose to a. not read the filings b. pretend to know what they’re talking about while demonstrating a remarkable ignorance of the law and the specifics of the case c. justified doing so with appeals to fictional janitors multiple times. I’m harping on it because how it’s demonstrative of how stupid the whole “argument” was.

> What matters is the nature of that collaboration in terms of classifying them as co-workers (i.e. employed by the same company) or contractor and customer. The NLRB looked at this

You keep focusing on what matters for the case outcome.

Which is good and all, but it's not what started this conversation.

You're hijacking the actual question to answer a different question.

Even though the question you're answering is more important, the original question was also valid, and your NLRB quotes don't answer it.

It's not stupid just because it doesn't tell us who wins the case.

> The person I was responding to was blatantly making things up, refused to engage with what I quoted, and proceeded to only describe fictional scenarios or misrepresentations based on a comment in the article. I doubt this would’ve made a difference.

The comment that started this topic was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38874977

That comment describes a very specific scenario, and Manuel_D wanted to know if that specific scenario had evidence of happening.

To the extent that he didn't "engage with what you quoted", it's because your quotes didn't answer that specific question. They were about the case in general.

You decided the actions in the case were "more or less" the same, but mostly in the sense that they lead to the same legal judgement. Which is a fair attempt at an answer, but once you learned that wasn't what he was actually asking you should have stopped doubling down on trying to say your answer fit his question. Your answer did not fit his question. It doesn't matter how correct your answer is when that happens.

I don’t know why we have to keep revisiting this. The person made the claim that what was stated in the original post wasn’t happening. I said no, that the NLRB ruled that it did happen (which again, they did). The person said that it didn’t happen and made a false claim that the NLRB ruling was somehow more narrow, was mostly about RTO (which it wasn’t), without ever reading the filings. I again stated that was not what the NLRB ruled. They proceeded to make up fictional labor laws and scenarios. I said those don’t matter only the real labor laws and the ruling did. But despite, not once, bothering to look at the filings, which were linked in the article and I quoted from, I’m to blame because I didn’t quote the correct chapter and verse from them to make it as clear as possible, to a person who was repeatedly unmoved by any appeal to reality and started off with false and unfounded assertions. Okay, thanks. Very helpful.

> The person made the claim that what was stated in the original post wasn’t happening. I said no, that the NLRB ruled that it did happen (which again, they did).

If by original post you mean the comment I linked to: No they did not rule that.

You keep giving evidence for a forest, when he was asking about evidence of a specific species of tree.

NLRB claims a forest. They cite specific trees. None of them are that species.

Your evidence is useful but not what was asked for, and when you keep insisting it answers the question the disconnect is your fault.

Even if he's wrong about the legal situation, you have not given the evidence he was asking for.

I would like to see that evidence too. Even if it doesn't make a difference in the case, I want to know what google was doing in more detail.

Yes, they did rule that. You and Mr. Imaginary Janitors are just trying to stretch the NLRB’s ruling, beyond all recognition instead of admitting to having been wrong. Let’s go back to his qualification about what this “species of tree” constituted:

>There is nothing at all in the ruling that says these contractor were performing the same work as employees.

Except there was in their ruling - the Google employees and “contractors” both work together to resolve problems and to coordinate training, management, and work assigned to lower level staff.

Why you both refuse to admit this, I have no idea. Him, I guess because he likes imagining janitors, you, I would guess because you also didn’t read the filings, and only realized you were wrong when I cited the first ruling.

Working together doesn't always mean doing the same work.

Sometimes different teams with very different jobs still share some meetings and ask each other for help.

Honestly, if I had to guess I'd guess the same work same team thing is happening, but I don't think there's clear evidence in any part of the report I've seen.

> coordinate training, management, and work assigned to lower level staff

I don't see anywhere this was brought up until right now? But you'll have to be more specific on "coordinate". I don't think I'm unreasonably stretching when I say you can coordinate management, many types of training, and giving work to people with connected but entirely different jobs. Or have them resolve problems together. Like a plumber and an electrician on the same building under construction, to throw out another example.

I quoted to you from the filing where this was described. Read that again and the whole filing itself. Not that it will matter, because you’re just doing what Mr. Imaginary Janitors did now, trying to ignore and elide the facts of the case, as well as the NLRB’s ruling about them, to invent a scenario where you’re right. Be careful doing this though, unless you want to end up with a lot of imaginary friends in the building trades, providing you with fictitious legal advice.

Listen, Google can be in the wrong without having every single factor go against them.

It's okay for that single factor not to have much evidence. Don't stretch what is claimed.

It might be true, but it's not directly in the claim.

I'm not inventing any scenarios for Google, I'm just reading what the complaint literally says, no guesswork to read between the lines.

And in particular the ruling just says "Cognizant and Google have codetermined the essential terms and conditions of employment of employees". That's it, zero specifics.

The amended board decision, beginning on page 6 under the heading “II. BOARD LAW”, which I linked you to and you didn’t read, is two pages of the specifics of the ruling, analyzed point-by-point by the NLRB, which were preceded by the evidence presented in the case, that according to you, doesn’t exist.

I get that you’ll tirelessly do anything to have the last word, but since you’re now doing the same thing as Mr. Imaginary Janitors, saying things don’t exist that I’ve quoted and linked you to, and, in fact, do exist, I think we can call it a day.

I misunderstood what that link was the first time. I have gone through it now. My bad.

However, while that link lays out an excellent case for Google being in control, I don't see anywhere it mentions direct employees doing the same jobs during the same period.

The evidence is not there. You would have quoted it ten posts ago if it was. Your evidence is for SOMETHING ELSE THAN WHAT WAS ASKED.

Seeya.

Ah I just realized I'm replying to you in two separate subthreads: tl;dr oh yes. 100% yes. but it's unclear what your bar for confirmation is and its not a good idea to just start free associating from 'source?'. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38875022

That just links to a hacker news comments, which links to a hacker news comment, which links to yet another hacker news comment that just postulates that Google is abusing contract work to do the same work as full time employees but doesn't describe any incident of this occurring. In fact, the end of your linked list is the grandparent of this comment chain.

Is there more compelling evidence that Google has used contractors in place of FTEs than HN users insisting it's happening with no other evidence?

(not a labor or employment lawyer) From my experience, Company B's employees could possibly argue in court/to attorneys that Company A and Company B are joint employers. So both Company A and B take shared responsibility for the legal overhead and tax obligations of Company B's employees.

Company B is often based out of state, so B is often not obligated to do California legal things.

>You can’t give a TVC a pencil without it being counted as “compensation”.

Also, don't give a sock to Dobby.

TVC: Temporary Vendor Contractor

(Just to save others a search)

I don't see the problem. The relationship of a TVC with the company is very clear cut. The reason the compensation rules are so strict is because there's a line of people waiting to sue Google if they blur the lines. Or is your point that Google shouldn't hire any TVCs whatsoever? All work should be done by FTEs, without exception?

The problem is selling out basic human decency. If Google with all their billions and PhDs can't figure out a way to hire these "TVCs" without treating them abominably then yes, they shouldn't hire them at all. (I suspect, however, that they could find a way to reconcile both those things if they actually tried - perhaps a way that would involve spending slightly more money)

Aside from the not giving them free t-shirts or food, what other inhumane treatment is Google committing here?

It's not about the things themselves (which are indeed trivial), it's about the singling out of one person on a team for worse treatment. That's psychologically corrosive even when the material difference is small.

I still don't see a problem. If someone is not comfortable with being a second-tier worker, they shouldn't sign up for the TVC gig, because the rules of the job and the distinctions with FTE are explicitly stated. Know your own boundaries, and all that.

Anyone who thinks they have the chops to get through the interview process and wants to be FTE is free to give it a shot. Then they'll have all the perks (as well as have to go through annual Google perf reviews, OKRs, and all that baggage too).

> If someone is not comfortable with being a second-tier worker, they shouldn't sign up for the TVC gig, because the rules of the job and the distinctions with FTE are explicitly stated. Know your own boundaries, and all that.

Safety isn't and shouldn't be just on the worker. Harmful working practices are rightly illegal for the employer; you can't be employed to cut asbestos without protection even if you don't think it will affect you or are ok with the consequences.

Wow, I'm so glad we had, as far as I could tell, really no TVCs at the site I worked at (CA-WAT). I recall taking training, but don't recall encountering contractors outside of the kitchen staff, etc.

> The vendor arrangement is in large part a pretext by Google to avoid their legal responsibilities.

I’ve heard this argument repeated a lot, but it doesn’t really make sense. What legal responsibilities is Google avoiding that aren’t handled by the contracting company?

> Also, the workers have the right to negotiate about more then pay and benefits, they can bargain over working conditions which Google controls.

This also doesn’t make sense. Google negotiates the contracts with the contracting agency, but it’s ultimately the contracting agency that decides whether or not to accept the contract.

The contractors can walk out if they don’t like the terms of the contract, but to be clear they’re walking out on the contracting agency, not Google.

They can demand whatever they want, but all of these claims that we need to ignore the existence of the contracting agency don’t make sense. The contracting agency isn’t an invisible, blameless middleman.

>I’ve heard this argument repeated a lot, but it doesn’t really make sense. What legal responsibilities is Google avoiding that aren’t handled by the contracting company?

But that's precisely how it's supposed to work - there are things (legal issues, other things, whatever it may be) that Google doesn't want to deal with. The theory is that Google pays the contracting agency to deal with those issues so that Google doesn't have to be bothered with them.

> What legal responsibilities is Google avoiding that aren’t handled by the contracting company?

Inter alia, collective bargaining, to wit, the thing we are commenting on.

> The contracting agency isn’t an invisible, blameless middleman.

Are you sure? I'm not sure if I should believe you or some other guy I know who says that's sure how they work in practice. That man isn't me.

> The contracting agency isn’t an invisible, blameless middleman.

Fantastic, you agree with the NLRB!

> "Cognizant and Google have codetermined essential terms and conditions of employment and have been joint employers"

There is no pretext.

Google's legal responsibility is to maximize shareholder profits.

That means they have a responsibility to not overpay for value given. If contractor wages meet the value google needs, they will opt for contractors vs FTEs.

Its not fairto criticize google for doing something that every person does everyday When looking for mechanics, plumbers, and general contractors

So, if you've ever worked in these contractor roles for a large tech company you will soon realize (like the NRLB does and the courts have) that it is all smoke and mirrors. You are effectively an employee of said tech company.

The union will win this one and hopefully it goes to court b/c this whole contractor scam needs to be abolished.

I am currently a contractor for a large tech company. I am emphatically not an employee. I don't want to be an employee.

I don't have to do corporate training. I don't have to use a corporate laptop with corporate spyware; I use my own laptop. I work on side projects that are none of the company's business. I don't get told how I should work; I get evaluated based on results. Numerous employee policies simply don't apply to me. I work, and I submit invoices, and I get paid for the hours I work.

This may well not be the policy at every company. There are certainly cases where companies use contractors where they should be using employees, and for that matter vice versa. There are cases where companies treat their contractors badly, and for that matter treat their employees badly. There are also cases where contractors are a better choice (e.g. variable/uncertain needs over time, employees of third-party companies that don't want to be employees of the company in question, contractors who prefer being contractors).

Some people prefer to work as contractors. Some people prefer to work as employees. I very much wish that everyone has the option to work in the model they prefer.

Ah yes, the no true contractor fallacy.

What.

You are the one arguing there is no such thing as a true contractor, one that is not "effectively an employee".

The scottsman has just walked up and introduced himself to you.

Misusing contractors to perform the same work as full time employees is a separate allegation. If I recall, Microsoft got in trouble with that. But my understanding is that contractors at Google are pretty clearly separate from the employee base. For instance the contract workforce involved in scanning Google books where housed in separate offices had different badges and more.

Regardless, I'm still not seeing the rationale for why employees of a contracting corporation are supposed to be negotiating directly with customers. My sister worked at Accenture. If she wanted a raised why would she try and negotiate with who her customer she was working with at the time, given that her bosses at Accenture are the ones that set her salary?

> On March 3, 2023, the Regional Director issued a Decision and Direction of Election in which he found Respondent Cognizant and Respondent Google to be joint employers of the petitioned-for employees.

https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d4583c083ab

This is the controversial part of the ruling that is raising a lot of eyebrows. The NLRB (a quasi-governmental organization) is essentially saying that Google has the responsibility to negotiate with these people despite not actually being their employer. That's what's surprising here: the NLRB is explicitly acknowledging that Google doesn't set the Cognizant employees' pay, but is supposed to participate in negotiations to do... something.

This is distinct from what the previous comment was about: the practice of using contractors for the same functions as full time employees. That's a totally separate thing than unions. Companies can get in trouble for using contractors for the same jobs as employees even if there's no union involved.

The issue doesn't appear to be "pay" but conditions.

From the decision (linked 2 up)

At all material times, Respondents Cognizant and Google have codetermined the essential terms and conditions of employment of employees employed at the E. Parmer Lane facility and have been joint employers.

(2nd to last paragraph of "Findings of Fact > Jurisdiction")

The original article (the register) quotes a union member

Google and Cognizant have proceeded to make unilateral changes to our working conditions such as a forced return to office, removal of sick pay during a global pandemic, and the implementation of a 'Clean Room' policy that bars us from having our phones, paper, or pens in our office, without bargaining with our union.

The line of reasoning seems to be something like:

- There are decisions that Google is making that, if the workers were employees, would need to be negotiated with the union.

- Google is making those decisions with application to the contractors as well as their direct employees

- Consequently, for the purposes of union negotiation, Google is a joint employer (alongside Cognizant) of the contractors because it is making decisions that affect the workers and ought to be negotiated with a union.

If that is the argument, it seems fair to me.

If Google wants to make decisions about the employment conditions of contractors then it needs to accept that it is an "employer" of those workers. Alternatively it can decide not to make decisions about their conditions and leave all of that to Cognizant - but in that case it cannot enforce those policies on the workers until after Cognizant has negotiated with the union and reached an agreement about the the workers conditions. Google would have to make sure that every workplace policy that they wished to have applied to the contractors was handled as a contractual arrangement between Google and Cognizant, not an employment arrangement.

The NLRB is not "a quasi-governmental organization" any more than the SEC is.

Right, but: they're the same thing in the context we're commenting on. The NLRB is saying "you know that vendor thing that means they don't gotta bargain? big sham! They gotta bargain!"

Bargain how? They don't set these employees wages. Cognizant does. How is Google supposed to meaningfully negotiate when Cognizant is the one that's actually employing these people?

Previously, this only came into effect if companies were using contractors for the same functions as full time employees. And the outcomes in those cases was often to make the company hire on the contractors full time, not dragging a company's customers into it labor disputes. Plenty of people have been alleging this, but none have substantiated allegations that Google is using contractors for the same work as employees.

These works work at Google, for Google. They must respect Google's workplace policies and conditions in order to perform their job. Their union is allowed to bargain over working conditions, which Google sets.

You could argue that they need to bargain with Cognizant, and Cognizant in turns needs to bargain with Google, but the NLRB has (rightfully) determined that it's ultimately Google setting the working conditions, and therefore the union should be bargaining directly with Google.

Because employment is more than wages, and some of the constraints on these employees working arrangements are going to be bound up in the terms of the contract their employer has made with Google.

If their employer would like to offer them changes in working conditions or pay that, in order to be feasible or economical, they would need to change the terms of their Google contract, they can't do that without Google's involvement. It would seem far more efficient to have Google be in the room involved in the negotiations and bound by the arbitration, rather than have the contracting company have to go to Google and suggest something they might like to change, get tacit approval that that might be up for renegotiation, then go to their employees and make an offer based on that assumption, and if the employees accept it, hope that Google honors the tacit agreement they got rather than laughing and telling them how they now have them over a barrel and further tightening their contract.

A decision by individuals that are not a judge in a court of law, so they'll have their own agenda to push their position.

> housed in separate offices had different badges and more.

I don't think that particular kind of "separation" is conclusive, just suggestive. Imagine that Acme corporation direct-hires a few hundred workers and then splits them into two groups, with different badges and offices and branding and e-mails.

While clear differences would exist, they wouldn't be the right kind of difference that could alter their legal classification as Acme employees.

No, that’s wrong, TVC do the same work on the same teams as “real” employees.

I'd be interested in details on how Google is using TVCs for the same functions as full time employees.

I'm not sure what exactly you're expecting here, even if someone was like "yeah sure let me pick a public fight with the trillion dollar company". Vouch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38874378

Some of us have a higher epistemic threshold than, "people on HN say it happens".

This is the 5th or 6th time you've written a reply like this to me, after I pointed out I worked at Google

Because you're just saying this happens, without actually detailing an example of it happening. What teams are using contract work for the same functions as fill time work? What specific work items are being done by both full time and contractors?

Right now you're not giving any details or other way to confirm your claims besides "I work at Google, trust me bro." There are plenty of people who work at Google that say the opposite, that contractors aren't doing the same work as full time employees.

Yeah I asked for deets on what you needed to know 3 times yesterday, the only time you acknowledged it was to complain at length you were being linked to another comment.

> What teams are using contract work for the same functions as fill time work?

Are you asking for the organizations, teams, projects, managers to be named? Depending on what you need, that's a lot of exposure and I'm not sure that'll assuage your concerns its "trust me bro". I have seen it in the ******** and ****** organizations.

> What specific work items are being done by both full time and contractors?

Software engineering and design. They're embedded in the teams, there was never a single difference between my TVC/non-TVC ex-coworkers other than their security badge color. They were not brought on for temporary or time-bounded projects.

Before you follow up: I appreciate your skepticism, but it's unclear if it's earnest or a lure. I don't have any legal protection from a trillion dollar company so I can't write a gossip-y essay naming names and giving you case studies, but I'm happy to answer any questions short of that. Like I said yesterday, it's very unclear what specifically what change your mind here

-- especially now that you're claiming "plenty [of Googlers] say it isn't true". There isn't a single comment on this entire article, and it tremendously beggars belief that any Googler would tell you it wasn't true. If I worked at McDonald's, its like a stranger yelling at me that I'm lying because other McDonald's employees said no one has to wear a nametag.

Please consider the emotions you implicitly communicate, it's quite frightening interacting with you given how aggressively you're communicating.

Every example of contract work at Google I've been given has shown clear separation between contract work and FTEs. At google maps, contractors are driving around taking street photos or identifying roads on satellite imagery. FTEs are writing software for Google Maps that uses this data. Even media outlets that are negative towards Google's use of contractors highlight that these contractors are used for specific needs outside of what FTEs do [1]:

> Google does not directly employ the workers who collect or create the data required for much of its technology, be they the drivers who capture photos for Google Maps’ Street View, the content moderators training YouTube’s filters to catch prohibited material, or the scanners flipping pages to upload the contents of libraries into Google Books.

> Having these two tiers of workers – highly paid full-time Googlers and often low-wage and precarious workers contracted through staffing firms – is “corrosive”, “highly problematic”, and “permissive of exploitation”, the employees said.

While some may be disgusted with the segregation between the two "tiers" of FTEs doing software development and contractors doing manual labor, the fact that the workforce is starkly separated into two different tiers goes to show just how separate these two segments of the workforce really are. Most of the coverage of Google's contracting emphasizes these points: how separate and unequal the contract and full-time workers are.

Now there's an anonymous internet commenter claiming to work at Google insisting that this is not the case - but unwilling to actually specify what team or organization is actually using contract workers for the same functions at FTEs. Is it really "frightening" and "aggressive" that I don't find these anonymous, non-specific allegations more compelling than the writings by people with their real names attached to their claims?

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/28/a-white-c...

I'm not anonymous at all lol. And you're right that the news articles you read are about more tangential contractors that might just be doing low rent data collection. Me and a dozen other people have repeatedly told you it's not just those functions. I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. There is no limit and they are literally on every team doing what you and I can agree to call "real work" in shorthand. Code in Google products. Figma designs used to make Google products. There's no slight of hand, no trickery, no limit. I don't know what else to tell you.

> I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them.

Yet you can't list even one specific example. If you really are seeing this happen, go contact the NLRB or the media and get your observations out there and into the public discussion. If all you're willing to say is "trust me, it happens, but I can't even list any one example of this happening" is it really surprising that you're being met with skepticism?

I don't have an actionable NLRB complaint, I wasn't a TVC, and the media knows, hence TFA lol. Why am I picking a fight with a trillion dollar company and why are they publishing it?

I did name em btw. Count the asterix. Also its literally every single team. Every single team has TVCs. There's a smol iOS app (think Arts and Culture, but not) I almost took the lead role for that would have had all the contributors be TVCs and I did code review.

> Me and a dozen other people have repeatedly told you it's not just those functions. I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. There is no limit and they are literally on every team doing what you and I can agree to call "real work" in shorthand.

This isn't actually naming anything, you're just insisting it's happening everywhere without actually making a specific allegation.

An example of this would be, "full-time employees were being tasked with running performance regression tests for the Google Drive backend, and in 2019 this started to be done by both FTEs and contractors".

A pattern that really engenders skepticism is when people insist that something is incredibly pervasive and common, yet fail to list even one example of it happening. If contract workers are being used to do the same work as FTEs on all teams, you should have a wealth of examples of "X team used FTEs to do Y, and starting at such and such a time they started using contractors to do Y as well".

Manuel you're extremely oddly passionate about this, you speak extremely aggressively, nothing is ever good enough for you to take a step back and ask something more interesting than "Name names or it's lies!" and you lie about silly things like multiple Google employees telling you it's false and that I'm anonymous. I don't trust you enough to name names just to win a pissing match. Rationally, It's much more likely that you're a Google lawyer or Googler eager to report possible NDA violations than some guy who just needs names to believe. (Which doesn't make any sense anyway)

Let me get this straight: me asking you to give just one specific example of something you claim is happening on all teams at Google is "extremely aggressive"? Meanwhile you're claiming that I'm a Google lawyer astroturfing HN to hunt down NDA violations. If that were the case, Google should get some better lawyers. The ones they've been hiring have been wasting a lot of billable hours debating the feasibility of electrical grid storage on Hacker News.

The recap, NRLB filing linked in this article is not alleging that Cognizant employees are doing the same work as FTEs at google. It's alleging that by having contractors return to the office, and setting other policies like sick leave Google is now a joint employer. The idea that Google is using FTEs and contractors to fulfill the same functions is not supported by the NRLB finding. It's not even a topic that the NRLB is discussing in this document. The NRLB is trying to claim that setting RTO and PTO policies makes Google a joint employer, despite contractors doing separate work from FTEs.

If you're only willing to say "it happens but I can't give any further details or examples" then just say so and be willing to accept that this doesn't meet many people's epistemic thresholds.

Literally same tasks, same teams. One person has a Googley badge one has a red badge. One gets various Googley perks, one doesn’t. One is treated with the four respects; one isn’t.

Again, is there anything evidence for this happening besides "people on HN say so"? The New York Times wrote a piece on Google's contractors, and the closest it comes to making this claim is writing that they "sometimes work side by side" with full time employees. That's not even close to saying they're doing the same job, though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-wo...

You've listed quite a lot of actual differences. I don't think working on the same tasks makes a vendor into an employee.

If you have information, please get in touch with the workers' legal representatives or the NLRB.

Are the suppliers of windshield wipers effectively employees of car companies?

Yes, if they only make windshield wipers for 1 car company.

In many places in the world you're only an independent contractor if you don't work long term for 1 single client and only if they don't dictate all your working conditions.

Because that would be the description of an employee and the condition is called "hidden employment" and it's illegal in many jurisdictions.

Being an independent contractor even if you only have one client can have many benefits, I am astounded to hear that it can be illegal. It's a great way to better allocate how your pay gets spent (benefits, perks, parties, etc) if you disagree with how the company does it, and it also grants you many other freedoms like retaining IP rights, paystructures (hourly vs salary), etc unlike normal employees.

At the cost of complexity, you get freedom.

> I am astounded to hear that it can be illegal

Is it really news to you? There's also another reason - companies trying to duck various taxes tied to employment.

> At the cost of complexity

There are many more costs than that, including loss of a lot of negotiating leverage, job security, and opportunity for advancement.

What if you don't care about job security? There's many good reasons for being a contractor.

I used to be a contractor for the US government, and worked alongside civilian government employees. They tried to even hire me away from my employer (the contractor), and I refused: there just wasn't a good reason. The problem with being a government employee is that the pay is terrible, and also the retirement system is only good if you're a life-long government employee (there's no 401k). If you just want to stay in that job for the rest of your career, it's a great deal, though the pay isn't great, because the job security is fantastic and the retirement benefits are solid if you put in all those years (basically you get a good portion of your last salary until you die). But the cost is that your current pay is lousy: as a software dev, I made much more money than my coworkers, plus I got to save some in an employer-matched 401k account.

The government can't find that many people who want the safe, low-pay employment option they offer, particularly for software/IT jobs, so they turn to contractors to provide those people and offer them a type of employment (high-pay, not-so-safe) that the government simply can't do on its own.

It's the same with many big companies: hiring and firing is difficult and expensive for them, so they turn to 3rd-party contracting firms. It costs them: each contractor costs quite a bit more than a regular employee, but they don't have to deal with the other problems that come with regular employees. There's drawbacks, however; contractors aren't in it for the long term, so if you find a contractor you really like, you try to get them to join the company directly.

I understand the trade-offs. Nobody prevents you from being a contractor if that's what you like.

But there are also reasons to be an employee, and to prevent corporations from pretending employment is contracting.

In my experience, I honestly didn't see much difference between myself and the regular gov employees. We did the same work, on the same projects, in the same offices, etc. The only differences were that I had to additionally report to my own company on my progress, and I got paid differently (and more of course). It really was just an end-run around the government's own inability to offer this form of employment on their own, and also to use the contracting firm as a sort of recruiting agency.

I saw the exact same thing (but from the employee side) when I worked at a huge tech company. Using contractors was a way of getting people in quickly (much faster than normal recruiting), and also being able to get rid of them quickly if they're bad workers: just don't renew their contract after 6 months. Good ones were hired as regular employees because it was cheaper long-term.

Thanks for sharing your experience. If you read around, I think you'll find that many also have bad experiences with being contractors and that their employers (sorry, contractees) use the arrangement in abusive ways.

Many people work very hard, including unionizing, legal action, etc., to compel companies to treat them as employees.

> companies trying to duck various taxes tied to employment.

surely the contracting company gets to pay that tax, rather than the client.

Often a contractor isn't a company but an individual with few resources, including money, time and knowledge for processing and paying taxes.

Dealing with such things is exactly why a contractor is supposed to charge more per hour.

I expect a basic rule like "Hire an accountant if you don't want to figure out all this stuff." to be contracting 101.

> better allocate how your pay gets spent (benefits, perks, parties, etc) if you disagree with how the company does it, and it also grants you many other freedoms like retaining IP rights, paystructures (hourly vs salary), etc unlike normal employees.

You can do all those things as a normal employee (perhaps a company lied to you that they couldn't?). Companies offer contractors higher pay and/or better benefits because they want to shirk their legal obligations to employees, there's nothing that would actually prevent them from offering those better terms to employees.

At large companies that I've worked for, HR policies on hiring are quite strict and don't give managers much wiggle room to bargain without creating quite a hassle that's usually not worth the effort. If I were extremely valuable, perhaps a case and exception could be made but most at the company do not want to go that route. Hiring as a contractor creates a much more decoupled interface, and they don't have to refactor all their HR policies for one exception.

> Being an independent contractor even if you only have one client can have many benefits, I am astounded to hear that it can be illegal.

In places where it's implemented it's not JUST about having 1 customer. It's having 1 customer:

- for a long time (years and years)

- having basically the same restrictions as regular employees (same working hours, can't set your own; same work location, their office, can't set your own; usually the exact same IP restrictions as employees, etc)

At that point, you're basically an employee without any legal protections. In places where employees actually have legal protections.

It's certainly not illegal. But it can be identified by government agencies as an employer/employee relationship. The IRS is very likely to treat you as an employee and tax you, and your "employer" as such, for example.

these people all work for a company whose sole job is to exist as an off the books shell company that is allowed to give inferior benefits. They have none of those freedoms.

It has always surprised me how many employees and contractor Google has. Anyone has a rough estimate of tech/non-tech division in Google?

“Google has over 170,000 employees and ~120,000 contractors”

Vintage Silicon Valley move. Your paycheck says you work for a third-party, then you work for them—-they pay the payroll taxes, insurance, etc. Why would anyone question who is the ‘employer’?

Meanwhile, you’re hired by, you work for and are give directions by The Company (here, google).

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it’s a duck.

What’s changed in the past 30 years?

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