Lots of tech companies are supported by low-pay contractors. I've heard grumblings about their miserable working conditions since the late 90s; it's good to see them taking a stand. The more successes we see in this area, others will be emboldened to stand up as well. Pretty interesting to see that revoked WFH policies was the trigger for this particular set of workers.

>Held via mail-in ballot, the election creates a bargaining unit with the Alphabet Workers Union — an organization affiliated with the Communications Workers of America that, until now, has represented only one office of unionized Google workers, a contracted Fiber retail shop in Missouri. Those workers opted to drop Google from their petition.

>A spokesperson for Google said the company has no objection to Wednesday’s union vote but reiterated its stance that Cognizant is the sole employer. A Cognizant spokesperson said the company is “committed to continuing our mission as a team and delivering for our client” in the wake of the election.

>“My coworkers and I have spoken, time and time again — we want, and have won, a protected voice on the job to bring both Alphabet and Cognizant to the negotiating table so that we can win the fair working conditions we deserve,” Maxwell Longfield, a YouTube Music contractor through Cognizant, said in an AWU statement.

>Google and Cognizant have until May 3 to file an objection to the election.

>As the unionization process moves forward in Texas, the NLRB is investigating an unfair labor practice complaint by AWU, which contends that Cognizant and Google illegally interfered with the union’s formation — a practice known as union busting. After workers filed a petition for unionization, Cognizant changed its return-to-office policy and moved work to other offices, the complaint says.

>Cognizant allegedly told workers that failure to move to and work from the Austin office would be treated as “job abandonment” and a “voluntary termination.” The return-to-office change prompted 40 workers to protest with an “unfair labor practice strike” — such strikes prevent employers from laying off workers. AWU said in a statement that the costs of in-person work, from sudden relocation to child care, aren’t affordable for YouTube Music workers, who make as little as $19 an hour.

> as little as $19 an hour

That is about $40k per year.

Median individual income in San Francisco was $63,934 in 2021[1].

USA incomes are usually given for the household and are usually given as the average, which makes it hard to compare against an hourly amount. median individual income was $37,522 for the USA[2].

[1] https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/san-francisc...

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

It’s hard to really grok what the means for this type of comparison. For census data, information is self-reported and often under reported income doesn’t include many common sources of money.

Additionally, median income driven down by the number of people living on social security, and many of those get benefits like housing subsidy that aren’t income.

It’s a good metric to compare areas, not jobs.

$40k/year in Austin (approximately the median individual income, per Google) probably goes further than $64k in SF.

I think the point was that you could read "historic" in the title as it applying to lots of contractors. In reality, it more like two Starbucks stores.

And given how hard fought the few successful Starbucks union efforts have been, I think “historic” is pretty apt. Every single unionization effort is an incredible uphill battle. Every one that wins against those odds is historic.

> Lots of tech companies are supported by low-pay contractors. I've heard grumblings about their miserable working conditions

Such as?

Miserable is, of course, a sliding scale. You can definitely find more miserable.

But for example...

I ducked into the office midsummer to knock out a bit more work on a project that was falling behind. It was sweltering in the building because the property manager didn't enable the air conditioning on the weekend to save money. I found a pod of our recently-hired contractors working in the middle of the floor. Asked them what was up; found out they pull 7-day coverage (not all; they work staggered shifts so they're individually pulling 5 of 7 days, but we had 7 days of coverage for their job because they were answering customer queries). Asked if the AC was broken; was told that's how it always was.

Nobody had thought to turn on the Goddamn AC because nobody had realized we were now requiring human beings to be in the building 7 days a week. And yeah, 85 degrees isn't exactly a 19th-century textile mill, but it's outside OSHA regs and none of these folk were empowered to do anything about it. They didn't even have a channel to complain to anyone.

I told facilities management that I'd be working Saturdays and Sundays and if something wasn't done about the HVAC I'd probably have to file a formal complaint. Problem got fixed right quick. When you're an actual Googler with the right color badge a mistake like that gets solved within a day.

I worked closely with Google contractors for years and that's tip-of-the-iceberg shit. The company wasn't (usually) actively trying to screw them over, but it was real, real easy for the regular process to stop remembering to treat them like fellow employees (because Google's real keen on them not being "fellow" employees).

You write:

> The company wasn't (usually) actively trying to screw them over

Why don’t they speak up to their employer who can then raise it with Google? Since you yourself say Google is T actively creating a terrible working environment, it stands to reason they would respond positively.

> Why don’t they speak up to their employer who can then raise it with Google?

That's not how incentives are aligned. The employer is incentivized to provide Google a service at maximum value with minimum cost and inconvenience. When an employee at a contracting agency complains, the easiest solution to the problem is to take them off the contract.

When I said tip of the iceberg... Now consider how those incentives work when the issue is harassment.

You are assuming they didn't. If they didn't, they probably had good reasons to believe that speaking up wouldn't help.

The NLRB's ruling is that since Google has so much control over the work conditions, Google has to be directly involved in negotiations with the workers' union and thus has to listen to things like "Please turn the AC on where we work on the weekends."

But working in the 21st century is paradise, and no one who doesn’t *want* to be taken advantage of or mistreated or forgotten about ever is because the market is totally free, and there is no such thing as power imbalance when negotiating with a company. Unions just aren’t necessary. Corporations are wonderful, and they don’t withhold information that could be bad for business, but good for the public. Their product is made with complete openness, and everything is regularly reviewed and audited by independent, unbiased watchdogs. If they don’t like their conditions, they can leave at any time, as long as they leave individually.

Such as people who moderate / classify / filter content for minimum wage, who are frequently traumatized by the shit they see and cannot afford therapy.

Are you just guessing or do you have data such as how much $ and how pervasive this is at Google specifically?

It’s very well documented. To the point I’m honestly surprised you haven’t heard of it before. But that’s fine:

Facebook paid $85,000,000 to some content moderators. YouTube paid a single moderator like $4,500,000. There’s also a 2022 case against TikTok that appears to be ongoing (I didn’t look into it).

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/judge-oks-85-mln...

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/youtube-settles-...

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24/1088343332/tiktok-lawsuit-con...

There’s also a documentary on the topic. I think it was on Netflix.