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Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

theguardian.com

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Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#231

Post by burlesona »

Aeolun wrote: post #188
burlesona wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Executives need to start getting personal punishment if we want corporate behavior to change. Alternatively, start issuing fines such that it’s X percent of revenue plus Y percent of salary from all employees. Even a fine of 1% of annual pay would light a big angry fire under most employees, and perhaps incentivize them to stand up to the execs and refuse to follow illegal or unethical decisions.

That’s a fantastic way to make any employee shut up immediately the moment any form of inspector enters the building.

A fair point, but doesn't this happen already? My experience working in a large corporation is that there's a pervasive "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to outside auditors, inspectors, etc., as well as a mindset that "they're just here to make our life harder," via imposed red tape, controls, etc. If this was really an issue perhaps there could be a whistleblower provision stating that anyone who assists with an audit or investigation is exempt from any personal fines that may result.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#232

Post by itsdrewmiller »

gricardo99 wrote: post #167
AlbertCory wrote: post #37

Personal Googler story: In Ads and in Search, at least as of 2010 or so, Google employed independent companies who hired "raters" to provide "ground truth" for the ML systems. For example, they would rate proposed ads for a given query, so that the ML system could learn from their "truth". For Search, they'd rate proposed search results for a given query. There was a whole pipeline to bring in the raters' results and…

These outside companies had minimal oversight from Google, by design. Could this be so that the google corporate toadies could bid out the lowest possible price, yet remain isolated from the predictably unethical, shoddy, or even illegal practices of the cut-throat priced contracting companies? It just seems strange that you’re lauding google HR, when your description suggests google was complicit, if not directly re…

For contractors to avoid classification as employees you need to be pretty hands off - the more you tell them how to do their jobs the more likely they are to be classified as employees if such a question arises. I don’t think immediately assuming bad faith is fair here (or there or anywhere really).

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#233

Post by lotsofpulp »

user5994461 wrote: post #214
lotsofpulp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story does not make sense to me either. Google’s HR should surely know better than to get involved in a labor issue at company they contracted with and claiming are not google employees.

HR is always involved with external contractors. The way contracting usually work is that the contractor must submit timesheets daily or weekly to a supervisor at the parent company. The supervisor must approve the timesheet. The contractor will be paid the hours in the timesheet. The story is a classic example where the manager (google employees) refused to acknowledge the hours for no valid reasons, preventing cont…

That would be about compensation for the contracted firm itself though, which would make sense. I may have misunderstood the story as Google HR getting involved because the contracted firm did not pay an employee of the contracted firm.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#234

Post by eyelidlessness »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #200
eyelidlessness wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who have high regard for it are literally queer. Reference: myself.

What's 'it' here, I can't tell if you have high regard for pedantry about words or if you have high regard for semantic drift.

The latter

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#235

Post by CameronNemo »

stephenhuey wrote: post #143
abdabab wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you were talking about other companies. Google is still wildly profitable. > the company just set an all-time record revenue of $61.9 billion this quarter, and record profits for the fourth quarter in a row at $18.5 billion. From https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22596592/google-q2-2021-r...

Wow, at what point do their profits balloon enough that Google's moat is no longer intimidating enough to fend off a gold rush of people willing to pour heaps of money and ingenuity into outdoing their search product? I've been searching with Google since the beginning and it definitely feels worse than in the days of yore, yet they make more money than ever...

Who has access to the amount of data that Google does? Microsoft and Apple come to mind, but they are already profitable for their own reasons so may not want to risk their current profit centers doing the "shady" work Google is known for (not necessarily saying Google is evil/shady, but their products have a reputation).

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#236

Post by CameronNemo »

burlesona wrote: post #120
yupper32 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to directly fine low level employees for the actions of execs? My god, no. That's such an evil idea. They're fined indirectly with stock prices already, but man is your idea really bad.

All employees would include execs obviously. I admit it's unorthodox and might feel a little unfair, but I imagine for these big tech companies that are so often guilty of just ignoring the law and paying fines to make their problems "go away," having the employees be furious at the bosses would be a far, far more effective punishment. In terms of dollars, I don't think it would take much to make the point. Suppose y…

But what does fining the low level employees accomplish? They can't really change the direction of the company in many cases.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#237

Post by AlbertCory »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #97
Cederfjard wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I’m not following. Which company did the HR rep belong to? Which company did the ”corporate toadies” belong to? Perhaps I’m just confused how you were able to have such a direct influence on the internal goings on of a supposedly independent company.

The story does not make sense to me either. Google’s HR should surely know better than to get involved in a labor issue at company they contracted with and claiming are not google employees.

> "Google’s HR should surely know better than to get involved "

.. and yet, it happened. I was there. Maybe you should look up "slave labor and clothing factories" or "janitorial service companies."

A modern company that contracts with another company to do something for them does not get to completely wash its hands of their practices. Up to a point, they do, but when the contractor egregiously violates the law, then they usually get involved anyway. Judges and juries and regulatory officials and employees take a very dim view of illegal conduct by your contractors. It reflects badly on you.

In this case, I don't know what happened afterwards, but I would guess that Google amended its contracts with those companies to better regulate cases like this. Just a guess.

Maybe they even intervened without mentioning my cousin's name -- maybe they just said "hey, in general, you can't violate labor laws, and you definitely can't refuse to pay people for being too slow!"

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#238

Post by AlbertCory »

user5994461 wrote: post #214
lotsofpulp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story does not make sense to me either. Google’s HR should surely know better than to get involved in a labor issue at company they contracted with and claiming are not google employees.

HR is always involved with external contractors. The way contracting usually work is that the contractor must submit timesheets daily or weekly to a supervisor at the parent company. The supervisor must approve the timesheet. The contractor will be paid the hours in the timesheet. The story is a classic example where the manager (google employees) refused to acknowledge the hours for no valid reasons, preventing cont…

No, not what happened. The contracting firm was officially "arms' length" from Google and no Google employees even knew my cousin's name.

However, it turns out that "arms' length" doesn't mean the contractor can get away with absolutely anything.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#239

Post by Kankuro »

pembrook wrote: post #52

My question is, if it's so advantageous to employ people via onsite staffing firms (basically half of FAANG's workforce is employed this way), why doesn't Google stop directly employing people altogether? Without fail, if it's a giant publicly-traded company, a huge percentage of the workforce will always be onsite vendors. It seems so bizarrely arbitrary where they decide to hire direct vs. contract. And I'm not tal…

In France, contractors cannot work in the same way than the regular employees. They have to be hired for a well-defined mission (on-site or on the staffing firm site) and take orders from their hierarchy, not from people of the customer company (otherwise it's called "délit de marchandage"). It has been abused a lot (to get staff that can be fired quickly and legally).

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#240

Post by lotsofpulp »

AlbertCory wrote: post #237
lotsofpulp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story does not make sense to me either. Google’s HR should surely know better than to get involved in a labor issue at company they contracted with and claiming are not google employees.

> "Google’s HR should surely know better than to get involved " .. and yet, it happened. I was there. Maybe you should look up "slave labor and clothing factories" or "janitorial service companies." A modern company that contracts with another company to do something for them does not get to completely wash its hands of their practices. Up to a point, they do, but when the contractor egregiously violates the law, the…

>A modern company that contracts with another company to do something for them does not get to completely wash its hands of their practices

They do if they want to maintain their position that the employees of the contracting firm are not their own employees.

If an employee is not getting paid by an employer, that is between the employee, the employer, and the state department of labor.

Slave labor and clothing factories are not relevant in this case as those operate in other countries where the government's labor laws and enforcement are much less effective than the US.

Janitorial service companies is what I am referring to. If my company hires a janitorial service company for $x to perform janitorial tasks, then the janitors are clearly not my company's employees. But if my company now starts getting involved in compensation disputes between the janitorial service company and its janitor employees, now my company is risking wading into a dispute in which it has no need to and risks raising questions about whose employees the janitors really are.

Perhaps what you said really did happen, but I cannot find the motivation for people in Google's HR department to do so, especially if it was in a state like California with a pretty decent labor department that would undoubtedly support workers who did not get paid for time worked.

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