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Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

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Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#81

Post by thereisnospork »

RHSeeger wrote: post #70
dcolkitt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employee-status may come with certain benefits, but it also comes with many drawbacks and burdens for the employee. For me, and probably many on this board, the biggest risk is "works-for-hire". Under US law, contractors have strong legal protections of their own intellectual protection. Whereas it's much easier for a W-2 employer to claim IP made in personal time. I don't really care about healthcare of unemployment…

> Forcing freelancers into W-2 status is just another example of the government screwing people over "for their own good". It's the government screwing _some_ people over for the good of everyone else, where it's presumed that "good of everyone else" is worth more to society than what is lost by those that get screwed over by it. At least, that's generally the intent.

Considering that the people it was supposed to help are being fired every 2 years for 6 months I'd say the governments plan to help some people hasn't and caught people like the GP in the crossfire. Quelle surprise.

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#82

Post by ryanschneider »

danaris wrote: post #63
dannyw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people, like the grandparent or me, don't want to be employees.

And it's fine to be a contractor—as long as that's genuinely and meaningfully what you are. If you're contracting out your services to only one company, and they have primary say over when and how you work[1], then that's not a genuine "contractor" relationship; you're an employee that they're taking advantage of by paying less and not providing benefits to. If you really do want to be a contractor , who sells their…

RE: [1] this is somewhat dated but a “contractor” friend used this “twenty factor” list to determine her “employer” was acting questionably maybe ten years ago: https://www.lakeshoreacct.com/blog/what-irs-20-factor-test

The site says the IRS no longer uses it but it’s still generally a good rule of thumb. And yes I recognize the irony that both her and her employer used the terms contractor and employer when describing their relationship.

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#83

Post by fernandotakai »

dx034 wrote: post #38
randomifcpfan wrote: post #20

This is all due to Microsoft contractors (who were treated like regular employees in the 80s and 90s) winning a lawsuit that retroactively forced Microsoft to give them a ton of stock. Companies now have to be rude to contractors to avoid a similar lawsuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-...

Or they could hire them as employees. This is not temporary work, they only use agencies to save money and circumvent workers protections. I get that there are freelancers who like not being employees but that's not the case here. I bet most Temps at Google would love getting employee status and there's no reason most of them shouldn't. It's not like Google couldn't afford the extra payroll.

>Or they could hire them as employees.

some people don't want to be employees, they want to be contractors.

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#84

Post by yanderekko »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #65
yanderekko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a lot less interesting than people want to pretend it is. A company's willingness to throw away money should be largely invariant to its overall financial health.

I like that you're blunt about it, makes it much easier to reason why more regulation around labor is required. "BigCorp will avoid as much labor costs as possible. To improve labor conditions and compensation, regulation must require it."

"To ensure that people only have good jobs, we must ensure that people who cannot get good jobs are unemployable."

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#85

Post by [deleted] »

ahelwer wrote: post #25
jasode wrote: post #13

>Contractors love the good pay and engaging work in Google's data centers. They resent that Google and its staffing firm, Modis Engineering, make them quit every two years. >[...] But those two-year contracts are written in stone. Workers like Wait are not usually allowed to apply either to renew their contracts or to do the same job as a Google employee. If they want to keep working in the same job, they have to lea…

I also had to engage with this bodyshop arrangement. Heard a fellow contractor referring to it as "paying the pimp", which I guess has some similarities. It's worth noting that you can usually contract directly with a company as long as you maintain scoped part-time contracts with multiple companies, instead of a single open-ended long-term contract with a single company. It's true that independent contractors are so…

[deleted]

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#86

Post by qwytw »

scoopdewoop wrote: post #76
randomifcpfan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could not hire them at all. This is a version of a minimum wage, and runs into the same tradeoffs between economic growth and social fairness.

And who would keep the data centers running? The invisible hand of the market? Labor does stuff.

They They could hire a smaller of more qualified and invest more into automation.

The only reason Google is doing this is because they don't want to spend the same amount on benefits and other overhead on 15$ per hour worker as they do for a 30$ per hour one.

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#87

Post by IncRnd »

> "The only complaint I have is the fact that I have to leave for six months. I don't feel that's right that TVCs get recycled like this," he said. "I've never gotten a real answer as of why."

This is likely done so Google doesn't need to classify TVPs as regular working employees. The six month wait enforces this commoditization upon the people.

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#88

Post by ketamine__ »

dcolkitt wrote: post #53
taurath wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right thing for the company to do would be to hire people as employees, but it appears that worker protections are too strong for them to want to financially. Universal healthcare/dental/paid leave would allow for companies who’s employees currently are the only receivers of these “benefits” to not require companies to hold onto people so long. Worker protections are supposed to be so that catastrophic job loss i…

Employee-status may come with certain benefits, but it also comes with many drawbacks and burdens for the employee. For me, and probably many on this board, the biggest risk is "works-for-hire". Under US law, contractors have strong legal protections of their own intellectual protection. Whereas it's much easier for a W-2 employer to claim IP made in personal time. I don't really care about healthcare of unemployment…

> Whereas it's much easier for a W-2 employer to claim IP made in personal time.

I've heard this mentioned a lot but how often does it happen and how much of a risk is it? Employees developing IP in personal time doesn't seem like it would be that common.

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#89

Post by robertlagrant »

> He knows he would be reprimanded if he gave a contractor a Google t-shirt handed out for free during an event. "But there's no issue if they go on the Google merchandise store and buy it themselves," he said.

Yes, because one of those makes them look like a perm for tax reasons, and the other does not.

Re: Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

#90

Post by [deleted] »

yanderekko wrote: post #84
toomuchtodo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that you're blunt about it, makes it much easier to reason why more regulation around labor is required. "BigCorp will avoid as much labor costs as possible. To improve labor conditions and compensation, regulation must require it."

"To ensure that people only have good jobs, we must ensure that people who cannot get good jobs are unemployable."

[deleted]
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