Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 293 posts

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#231

Post by delroth »

mike_hearn wrote: post #223
dekhn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agreed to that contract and open sourced many thousands of lines of code owned by Google, but still available to me and the rest of the world via github. I don't see the problem. If you could demonstrate your project didn't overlap google business then you could do your own project.

That's not really correct. I wrote a project at Google that had nothing to do with Google's business, in fact, they explicitly had chosen to not get involved with that whole area at all (Bitcoin). I applied for ability to open source it under the Google name and was denied, I asked for a copyright release back to me and was also denied. The open source programmes office had decided they wanted my project dead and pre…

Note that the OSPO policies have largely changed since you've left Google. What you describe was definitely the situation as of 3-4 years ago, but don't describe how open sourcing code or contributing to FOSS projects works these days.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#232

Post by eeZah7Ux »

walshemj wrote: post #134
ChuckMcM wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can't quote my copy as I'm under NDA from sharing it, however if you have a copy that you signed then carefully read the section about "equipment that you use to access your google work account".

You mean the companies equipment - that's fairly normal I have worked for companies that recognised unions in the UK and that clause never raised any issues. There where agreements about what sort of offence justified monitoring at work it had to be a serious offence for example.

It's "fairly normal" in UK perhaps and very illegal in many other countries.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#233

Post by lagadu »

throwaway987988 wrote: post #126
defen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the right to surveillance on personal property Wait, what? I don't think I've seen that before, what does this mean exactly?

Yeah, this is real. On a throwaway for obvious reasons, but this is from an employment contract I've seen in the past: "I acknowledge that I have no reasonable expectation of privacy in any computer, technology system, email, handheld device, telephone, or documents that are used to conduct the business of the Company. As such, the Company has the right to audit and search all such items and systems, without further…

I fail to see the issue. Hell my company went further: only their registered devices can even login to access company emails (including via web!) and other services.

Not only it protects them, it enforces the work/personal hardware separation for me, which is good. My work hardware (which is pretty much a laptop and a phone) has no traces of my personal stuff and my personal has no traces of my work stuff and can't even it I wanted it to.

I genuinely don't understand the mixing of personal and work environments. Why would anyone possibly be interested in carrying their work phones with them after their done with work?

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#234

Post by eeZah7Ux »

dragonwriter wrote: post #216
m0zg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> On what basis On the basis that the contract says "40 hours a week". I don't owe the employer jack beyond that.

> On the basis that the contract says "40 hours a week". It's extremely rare for salaried worker contracts to say that.

It's the norm almost everywhere in the world.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#235

Post by glenrivard »

Great to see Google leading the way on this. But now can we get Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and the others to follow?

"Dozens of groups, including the ACLU, NAACP, and the Economic Policy Institute, wrote letters to some of America’s largest tech companies on Friday, demanding that they free their employees from forced arbitration. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Uber were among the companies whose CEOs received the letters."

https://gizmodo.com/aclu-naacp-and-dozens-of-other-groups-ca...

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#236

Post by namarie »

oh_sigh wrote: post #206
kelnos wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was the point. The original parent was making a tongue-in-cheek reference to how tech workers seem to resist the idea of forming a union, but occasionally band together to do union-like things informally, in an ad-hoc, not-particularly-reliable fashion.

Perhaps they can get the best of unions without getting the worst of unions with this behavior.

The worst of unions being?

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#237

Post by brianwawok »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #166
wil421 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glassdoor says the average was only $12 but in October they raised it to $15 minimum. Walmart’s low end is about $13 but the average is $17 an hour. Walmart has 1.5 million workers in the US, over 2 million worldwide. The goods news is Amazon’s pay raise has made Walmart and Target increase their minimum wages as well.

Reminder that the Amazon pay raise occurred because Bernie Sanders shamed them into it. Disney as well.

And they lowered stock benefits a few weeks later

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#238

Post by NowThenGoodBad »

knopyPusher wrote: post #132
defen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the right to surveillance on personal property Wait, what? I don't think I've seen that before, what does this mean exactly?

I work in Google as well, and I simply don't check my personal Gmail from work machines. They can monitor my work laptop as much as they want. This is coming from a firefox-using privacy paranoid Googler. I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

It’s not just the programming companies that have clauses or practices about stuff like that, many companies in different industries do too.

It just blows me away how lazy or thoughtless most people are. It’s the company’s network or machine or both. The business done on there should be for work for them and nothing more. You breach ethical lines when you start doing personal stuff unless stated otherwise in your contract/agreement with them.

If I gave you my laptop to borrow for a day, you bet I’ll be making sure you didn’t do something funky to it. I’ll also be making sure you didn’t do something to get me on a government watch list. If there’s a reason to try to get statistical data from your usage, I might check that out too.

To me, it’s common sense, it’s not yours so respect it for the reason it was given to you to use. Period.

For your personal stuff: don’t trust it on their network or with their software. You exist to make them money regardless of whether you get paid directly for it. Assume 0 privacy on the clock and that your device might be compromised if used on their network, so just don’t do it.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#239

Post by C1sc0cat »

ionised wrote: post #227
knopyPusher wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Google as well, and I simply don't check my personal Gmail from work machines. They can monitor my work laptop as much as they want. This is coming from a firefox-using privacy paranoid Googler. I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

You're privacy paranoid but work at Google?

Hopefully they are working on the security team :-)

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#240

Post by namarie »

Symmetry wrote: post #143
xiphias2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean arbitration is a good thing. Yes it is. Forced arbitration is taking away the option of going to court.

No, I do mean forced arbitration. If the arbiter would be fair then the ability to threaten to fall back on the court system could be used as a coercive threat. Provided both sides have input into how the contract is drafted the compulsory nature of the arbitration is good for both, in expectation, though obviously when a dispute is adjudicated against either suddenly they'd have an interest in overturning it. But as…

> If the arbiter would be fair then the ability to threaten to fall back on the court system could be used as a coercive threat.

If the courts are also fair then there's no threat involved. Plus, what to do if the arbiter isn't fair?

Post reply on HN