Google was involved in her employment. The Alphabet Worker's Union filed a complaint against both Google and Modis. There's no reason to assume that only one company was involved, who was responsible can be decided by the NLRB.
Re:A woman who took on Google and won
by joshuamorton on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @09:51PM
(#26734154)
You understand that most Google DCs are owned and operated by google, and serve only google, right?
So like even at best this is "Google contracted some dc operations to a company that violated labor relations law."
The more newsworthy part is that she was able to get recourse.
Re:A woman who took on Google and won
by GauntletWizard on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:29AM
(#26736052)
It wasn't long ago that Google directly employed most of their datacenter techs. I know a couple guys who worked their way up from server monkey to SRE. It's sad to hear that that pathway seems closed off.
If you get a guy to come replace your roof, it's not really your problem that his employer didn't give him a water bottle, now is it?
Re:A woman who took on Google and won
by ALittleLight on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:25AM
(#26735709)
Sure, but if I own a house construction company and hire a contractor to do the roofs because I want to keep roof costs down at all costs I am responsible for the low salaries and poor conditions of my roof contractors.
being a good client I would still offer them water/soft drink regardless.
Yeah, it kinda is, unless you're a total shitbag with no empathy.
She wasn't working for Google, she was working for a contractor. Go to a different datacenter and it will be staffed by a different (local) contractor. Same thing for most of the building's maintenance staff. What makes it news-worthy is that the owner of that particular server-rack was a high-profile company. Had the same thing happened at a datacenter owned by a bank, nobody would have reported on it.