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Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

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Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#441

Post by lucian1900 »

twblalock wrote: post #385
lucian1900 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective employment agreements mandate minimums, not maximums.

> Collective employment agreements mandate minimums, not maximums. Collective employment agreements can mandate whatever is negotiated between the union and management, within the bounds of contract law and labor law. Of course they can include maximums. What is likely to happen is that a salary range would be defined for each engineering level. The top of that range is likely to be lower than what many engineers at…

Workers don’t have an incentive to negotiate a maximum. In practice, it’s minimums that get negotiated.

It’s also not like wages come from a fixed budget. They can be increased by lowering profits. This is after all all about class struggle.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#442

Post by the-rc »

giantg2 wrote: post #220
black_puppydog wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other way (and it seems the NLRB sees it this way too) is that she didn't materially hurt google by doing so, and on the flipside used this system to make sure that laws are known and can be followed. This is (a bit) like google buying property around polling stations and then preventing anyone from passing through to vote. They're not hurting google by passing through, but they keep shouting "get off my land!" W…

Did she make the change on company time? If so, her wages would be material damage. Even if made off the clock, it could still be considered material because Google needs to pay someone to fix it. Your voting/property analogy is completely off-base. It completely ignores right of ways and public property. And if you have people actually trespassing on private property on the way to a polling place then they are in vi…

I think the far more substantial damage is from Google customers wondering what else the employee or some malicious insider could have done. You can bet that this came up in internal audits and customers' security assessments.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#443

Post by VikingCoder »

jimbob45 wrote: post #274
VikingCoder wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was an internal tool. How will a regression in that be "highly embarrassing ... to the company"?

Tool becomes external because a customer needed the functionality. Regression was silent until the customer found it. “Whoops, we couldn’t possibly have seen that coming”. It happens.

If you turn internal tools into external tools without thoroughly reviewing them, that's a far bigger problem.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#444

Post by chii »

ahelwer wrote: post #407
twblalock wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's a refutation: Microsoft spends $250k/employee/year on stock dividends and buybacks. That's quite a large slice of the pie the union could negotiate for. Those buybacks increase the stock price, and employees are compensated in stock, so stock buybacks benefit employees already. I find it hard to believe that the company would just give that money as salary instead -- and even if they did, that would mean tha…

As an employee I might have $100k in MSFT stock after five years. Those buybacks gave me what, a few hundred/thousand bucks at most? Come on. For such a supposed math-literate profession this objection is weirdly common. If you get cash you can turn around and buy company stock. Nobody is stopping you. Unions would also certainly see the value in employee ownership of stock, which broadly aligns with ideas of workers…

> contributed nothing to its creation.

no, they contributed capital. This capital came from somewhere - e.g., they took a risk and borrowed it. Or they took their own saved capital from their own past working life (or inherited, which is just the past working life of their parents).

When speaking of labour and value creation, the concept of capital is often seen as "nothing", and is certainly wrong. Without capital, labour is useless. Without labour, capital is useless.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#445

Post by lucian1900 »

wwtrv wrote: post #379
lucian1900 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are democratic organisations, the whole point of them is for workers to gain power together. You’ll only get tabs enforced if the majority of workers agree that’s a useful rule to have.

This just reiterates what the parent comment said. In this case up to 49% of all workers who did not want to use tabs will be forced to.

The alternative is having no democratic power over the workplace at all. Being in the 49% that disagreed with something is still better than your boss mandating the choice instead.

In practice, it’s also quite rare for workers to strongly disagree among themselves. Disagreements tend to happen between groups with different material incentives, so largely between workers and owners/management.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#446

Post by phendrenad2 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #191

True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information." When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would nev…

Google is the expert at scaling, and that probably applies to hiring as well. If someone takes too long to get through onboarding, kicking them out is preferable to allowing it to disrupt onboarding other engineers. Would you waste time trying to debug an oddly broken kubernetes node, or just drop it and bring up a new one?

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#447

Post by colinmhayes »

ahelwer wrote: post #376
twblalock wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days where "being in IT" made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past. Are you kidding? Salaries have never been higher in tech. Senior engineers make more than $400k (sometimes way more) at Google and other large companies. It is likely that engineers at FAANG companies would make less money if they join a union, because the union would level…

Here's a refutation: Microsoft spends $250k/employee/year on stock dividends and buybacks. That's quite a large slice of the pie the union could negotiate for.

That's not how salaries work. Microsoft would just say no. Are microsoft employees really willing to strike? Seems unimaginable to me at their salaries.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#448

Post by lopmotr »

MereInterest wrote: post #251
sneak wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like the way Google does business, you are free to not do business with them, either as an employee or customer. I don't understand your snark.

If you don't know the way Google does business, because you don't know the terms of the contract, then you cannot make an informed choice. You are not free to choose unless you have information to guide that choice.

You know that you will have to sign a contract. And even if you don't, they're in an "at will" state so they can fire you whenever they want (eg. on your first day) without giving a reason. You know all that going in and can choose to work in a state or country with stronger labor laws if you don't like it.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#449

Post by quesera »

an_opabinia wrote: post #420
quesera wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it helps you decide whether to sign, or to walk, right? But who would pay $3K for a contract review??

...someone whom Google is about to make a millionaire?

Employment contracts are fairly uniform, and just not that complicated. A simple contract review is not expensive. One or two hours, a few hundred dollars per -- if you're feeling fancy.

Special cases are special. But most cases are not special.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#450

Post by discordance »

sandworm101 wrote: post #244
janesvilleseo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason. If my employer needs me to have a mobile phone they are paying for separate device and plan. It’s a little silly I need to carry 2 phones around but it makes my life so much more convenient. Unknown call on my work phone guess I’ll answer. If it’s on my personal then it’s spam. Leave company, no need to update or port my number. Want t…

>> People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason. I carry three. One is from work, the other is from a different department in that same work. They both insist I have a particular type of phone running particular software. But work never calls me on those phones. They always call my personal phone.

Do you accept work calls on your personal number? - if so that’s sounds more like training issue.
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