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Comment by notaustinpowers | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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