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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
“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.
> 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.
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Which entities are you referring to , with which google has a relationship that is not arms length?
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?
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.
There is no market equilibrium when parties like Google engage in illegal behavior.
> 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.
Hence unions. Now please check the title of TFA.
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.
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.
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.
/source. Been there done that. Never worked for cognizant but many other setups.
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.
Also, don't give a sock to Dobby.
(Just to save others a search)
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).
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.