"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.