Google Contractors Officially Vote To Unionize (vice.com) 103
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Eighty Google contract workers in Pittsburgh employed by HCL America voted Tuesday to unionize with the United Steel Workers (USW). They will organize under the name Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals (PATP). The vote to unionize passed, with 49 voting in favor of unionization and 24 voting against unionization. Damon Di Cicco, organizer with the United Steelworkers, said that PATP was formed with support from the Department for Professional Employees (DPE), a semi-autonomous branch of the AFL-CIO, representing more than four million professional, technical, and other highly skilled workers. The vote to unionize is historic for white collar tech workers, and could spur others in the industry to take similar action.
The idea, said Di Cicco, was to create an umbrella organization to facilitate organizing in the tech sector, and eventually to help tech locals coordinate and cooperate amongst themselves. Di Cicco said the formation of PATP happened separately, but simultaneously, with the push to unionize by HCL workers. Now, the group has its first victory. The vote comes despite attempts by HCL to prevent its employees from unionizing. Emails shared with Motherboard show that Jeremy Carlson, HCL America's deputy general manager of operations sent at least a half-dozen emails to contractors in the two week period before the vote. Many of them urged employees not to unionize.
The idea, said Di Cicco, was to create an umbrella organization to facilitate organizing in the tech sector, and eventually to help tech locals coordinate and cooperate amongst themselves. Di Cicco said the formation of PATP happened separately, but simultaneously, with the push to unionize by HCL workers. Now, the group has its first victory. The vote comes despite attempts by HCL to prevent its employees from unionizing. Emails shared with Motherboard show that Jeremy Carlson, HCL America's deputy general manager of operations sent at least a half-dozen emails to contractors in the two week period before the vote. Many of them urged employees not to unionize.
In other news... (Score:3)
...it appears that 80 new positions just opened up in the Pittsburgh area for Google, as a number of contracts were suddenly terminated over discrepancies in how they were written-up...
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it will go down that way. Instead HCA is going to fail. Google will simply keep the same contract terms. It's a contract, these are not Google's employees. In turn these workers are going to demand much more from HCA. But HCA is not getting anything extra from Google. HCA is going to get squeezed and in all likelihood fail. And that will be the end of the union. These workers will then drift off to other body shops and probably repeat this over and over.
Re: In other news... (Score:2)
Is that a serious post?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm afraid it's ....
A serious Bern!
Depends on political organization (Score:5, Insightful)
They're also useful for telling folks how to vote on confusing issues. Where I am there are constant propositions that are worded to disguise their true meaning. I've seen competing propositions meant to cancel each other out too. I often turn to my local Union and/or Democratic party for an explanation of what the propositions mean.
This isn't to say I blindly do what the Unions say, but with the mainstream media owned lock stock and barrel by the billionaires ever since the Sinclair buyout competing sources of information are critical.
Why does that mean anything (Score:2)
Unions don't just bargain, they help organize voting drives. Much like the AARP and NRA do.
Speaking from experience a group of contract employees "voting" on anything is going to go over like a lead balloon, both with Google and with the contracting firm.
What on earth leverage can a union there possibly have?
Not sure what the heck the contractors thought they were voting for to begin with, would love to hear an account of what they THOUGHT they were getting out of this.
If everyone in the working class organized (Score:1, Flamebait)
The problem we have is people don't focus on economics and their own interests. They do that because they're not well organized. So they're vulnerable to misinforma
Ummm? (Score:4, Insightful)
to defend their interests then NAFTA wouldn't have happened.
Ummm? What?
So they're vulnerable to misinformation and voter suppression. Unions fixed that.
That's perhaps the funniest thing I've read all day.
Laugh it up fuzzball (Score:2, Insightful)
The will of the people didn't matter one wit.
Why? Why can politicians in a democracy ignore the will of the people? Easy. Wedge issues. Gun Control and Abortion and Gay Rights. Social Issues. Divide and Conquer. Works _every_ time. split the electorate and the working class into manageable chunks along racial/class/employment/caste lines and le
Re: (Score:2)
NAFTA was overwhelmingly unpopular.
This isn't what you said before, the fact that NAFTA was unpopular doesn't mean that it was against peoples' interests. Free trade is generally beneficial, though it can negatively impact people in certain industries.
Think about the argument that you're making here: you're advocating for populism. Blindly following the will of the people, no matter how misinformed that will may be, is not how a representative democracy is supposed to work.
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Read the article (Score:3)
Surely 24 of them will keep their jobs.
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Execute 1 random prisoner until the culprit confesses. Then execute him too.
It's an effective way to run a hell prison, so why not adopt it as a business model?
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Execute 1 random prisoner until the culprit confesses. Then execute him too.
Then execute everyone else -- no witnesses.
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Executioners all the way down (Score:2)
Recursion ... stack overflow
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So, which button to press? "Fuck the workers" or "Fuck Google?"
...why not both?
(what?)
Enjoy (Score:5, Insightful)
Enjoy having your contracts dropped. I don't think Google hires very many steel workers anyway.
There is zero reason for a corporation to ever sign a union contract. There are way more people willing to work than there are union goons. Unionization is only ever successful when a large portion of an existing workforce decides to strike until unionization with a successful contract happens. 80 contract workers won't put any squeeze on Google, even if every single one of them follows through with refusing to work.
Re:Enjoy (Score:4, Interesting)
It does depend on whether the state is right-to-work or not. Once a union gets its foot in the door, it can stay there for a very long time (and require everyone else in the room to join) if the state isn't right-to-work.
In this case, though? I can see Google happily complying, but then a certain contract doesn't get renewed, and Google just using another vendor.
==
A perfect example would be a company I used to work for long ago that made/sold solar panels (they don't exist now, so...) they bought up a petrochemical corp's pet solar division. One of the sites had an all-union shop. Everything runs tickety-boo, until the union decides they want to threaten to strike because they didn't get everything they wanted. Company 'backs down'. And by 'backs down', I mean they agreed to everything the union wanted, then six months later converted that site to a warehouse, as they moved all production to site that had just come on-line in a right-to-work state just over the border. This meant a loss of work for 99% of the staff (incidentally, all of the union workers and most of the on-site managers), leaving only a caretaker crew and a few non-union load/unload workers.
This is just one example why, outside of a few specific circumstances, unions are more or less useless, especially outside of their traditional fields and industries. I think only the government unions have seen any real growth (and why there are government worker unions allowed to exist I'll never guess.)
Re:Enjoy (Score:4, Informative)
In this case, though? I can see Google happily complying, but then a certain contract doesn't get renewed, and Google just using another vendor.
Google complying with what? The union workers work for HCL America, which has a standing contract with Google. The union has no power to change the terms of that contract, the only demands they can make are to HCL America. If they strike they don't perform the tasks required in the contract, Google terminates said contract due to poor performance and BAAM, union or not, these people are most likely out of a job.
Re: Enjoy (Score:2)
Thing is, local kangaroo courts may be fooled by the subcontracting dance, but no one else is. Everyone knows these people work for Big Brother Google. Whatever happens to them is Google's responsibility.
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It does depend on whether the state
The other guy pointed out why it really doesn't matter (it's not Google but HCA that is affected), however... these days nothing really depends on state laws since even if it were Google affected, Google could simply pull out of that state altogether if workers there got too uppity. Hey guess what everyone, your jobs are all moving to Nebraska!
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This is just one example why, outside of a few specific circumstances, unions are more or less useless...
That sounds like an awful place to live
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Really?
To date...I've LOVED living and working here.
I've never had need for a union, and never wanted one.....
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Aren't most states "right-to-work" states these days?
Re: Enjoy (Score:3)
"they don't exist now, so..."
So... apparently this company's perfidious union busting efforts weren't enough to keep them afloat. Maybe if they focused more on their product and less on fucking over their workers, they would have survived. Just a thought...
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I think only the government unions have seen any real growth (and why there are government worker unions allowed to exist I'll never guess.)
Don't know about state government unions, but federal government unions aren't really unions. Not allowed to collectively bargain (the biggest thing that makes you a union), and not allowed to strike. So they basically exist to keep people who would otherwise be fired employed and to offer a dental/vision supplemental insurance plan.
I kid, a little. They also help with individual grievances like a second HR department that is entirely behind the worker, rather than the Government HR.
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In other words, don't complain overly about taking it up the ass because there's some smuck somewhere that will accept it deeper before they too complain ?
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Basically, unfortunately.
Re: Enjoy (Score:2)
Get good at sucking sick and leave the taking it up the ass to the next guy.
Re: Enjoy (Score:2)
In other words, don't complain overly about taking it up the ass because there's some smuck somewhere that will accept it deeper before they too complain ?
This is what the "free market" (and capitalism) is at its core.
I don't want socialism, but I do want a regulated workplace with rights and strong protections for those rights.
If it's "everyone for themselves" all the time then we'll be in the dark ages of workers rights. The slipping of benefits, pay, etc, has been happening for years -- yes, some few ar
well-trodden road (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:well-trodden road (Score:5, Insightful)
> Workers vote to unionize.
In between those two steps you omitted . . .
Successful company exploits workers.
Well treated workers might never have a reason to unionize. Unions didn't spring into being for no reason.
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In some countries unions are mandatory. When a company gets to a certain size it must have a union.
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Notice how they really didn't create a union from scratch. They were courted by the USW who likely made them a bunch of promises they never intended to keep. These old unions are run like small governments, that is to say they are slow and inefficient self-licking ice cream cones that exist to perpetuate their own infrastructure rather than represent the workers.
Re: well-trodden road (Score:2)
Didn't you notice - these workers are already outsourced to an Indian company. If Big Brother Google thought these jobs could be done for peanuts in India, they would already have done so.
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Good for them. (Score:3, Insightful)
These folks spend more time at work than they do with their families. They should absolutely have a say in a place they will spend at least 25% of their waking life.
--
Without labor nothing prospers. - Sophocles
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, this move is misguided. They will be let go, and can be as they are contractors. What is your new union going to do? Strike? All 80 of them? Not a problem. Google can rehire those guys no problem. There is a line waiting. If these contractors were so important, Google would hire them. But if Google is managing their contractors correctly, they won't be in those positions.
If maybe you had something like 1000 people, then maybe you'd have some leverage. Everything Google is doing can
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Also, aren't these contractor positions typically for stuff like cafeteria or custodial staff? Maybe some of these are for more technical positions, and if that's the case maybe it explain
Re: Good for them. (Score:1)
They do. They can choose that place. If that place also chooses them, they are in luck.
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Some of them don't even have families especially if they just graduated from colleges.
These aren't Google employees (Score:3, Insightful)
Google isn't going to start paying HCL more money for its services, it will go to a different subcontractor. Any money the union can get for the workers will have to come out of HCL's pocket. I don't think there is a whole lot there.
Re: These aren't Google employees (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like HCL, as a foreign company that is hated by almost every American who has heard of them, is not really in that strong a position. If they are seen to fire people for unionizing, that might be a convenient time for Uncle Sam to stomp them. Companies like that are usually corrupt as fuck. So I'm sure they have a few skeletons in the closet.
Re: These aren't Google employees (Score:2)
So they will in effect be fired by Big Brother Google for striking. That's still pretty bad PR for a company that's already on Uncle Sam's shitlist.
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Not correct in the slightest. If you hire a contractor to build you a deck, and sign a quote saying it will be done in one month for $10k. Then he comes back and says it's actually going to take 2 months because my workers went on strike, and now costs $15k. Do you think you are somehow obligated to accept that? No, you tell him to finish according to the terms, or give back your down payment and take a hike.
Re: These aren't Google employees (Score:2)
This isn't an individual hiring a small business for a short term project. Not even remotely similar.
This is an evil domestic megacorp that needs full time permanent employees, contracting with an evil foreign megacorp to provide those employees, as a tax and benefits dodge.
A neighbour's story (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll start off by saying I'm neither pro- or con-union, but my neighbour once told me an interesting story about attempts at his work to unionize (a factory).
The owner had build the business and employed probably about 100 people (give or take a dozen), but wasn't keen on unions; despite this the workers still talked about doing it.
One day, the owner had had enough, so went to the main machine that runs the entire line, turned it off, then told all workers:
then turned the machine back on and work resumed. That was the end of the effort.
When he told me this, it reminded me of a recent effort in a nearby town of a furniture maker where the workers had been on strike for months, demanding things like higher pay, job security, etc., which the company, because of economic and competitive factors, couldn't guarantee. The strike ended the day the company filed for Chapter 11 because they didn't have the finances to go forward due to lack of sales from the strike. About 40% of the staff got laid off and workers didn't get anything out of the strike.
Yet another story, of a McDonald's employees voting to unionize, whose franchise owner decided to close up shop in the early morning hours the next day, suddenly leaving all those employees without a job.
So why do I bring these up? Simply because there's nothing that says that a business has to exist or provide anyone a job - so anyone going up against management does so at their own peril. Of course the examples I give are all of smaller companies.
Now I do believe that employees make up the largest part of any company, so a company that treats its employees right likely doesn't need to worry about unionization if workers don't feel the need to unionize because of being undervalued. But ultimately, employees aren't "the boss", so any actions on their part may end up backfiring.
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Yet another story, of a McDonald's employees voting to unionize, whose franchise owner decided to close up shop in the early morning hours the next day, suddenly leaving all those employees without a job.
The idea is to get all the McDonalds workers unionized. Sure, they can close them all, but they won't.
Service jobs are the best targets for unionization because they have poor wages and benefits, and have to be done locally. Sure, automation could be a problem one day, but skilled workers are a bigger target for both automation and outsourcing.
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The idea is to get all the McDonalds workers unionized. Sure, they can close them all, but they won't.
What you are missing is the antecedent to "they". In the case of McDonald's, the antecedent is "the local franchise owner". Local franchise owners are not multi-national companies with deep pockets. They run half a dozen locations or so. They have to meet payroll and pay the costs. When payroll exceeds income and the store loses money, they can't just up all the prices, because prices are set by the parent company. That means they go out of business.
Can "they" close all the stores? Absolutely. Our local W
Re: A neighbour's story (Score:2)
But a lot of service jobs donâ(TM)t need to be done at all. Nobody NEEDS to go to McDonaldâ(TM)s.
Re:A neighbour's story (Score:5, Informative)
There are some regulations that prevent companies from just suddenly shutting down. For example, the Federal WARN act applies to companies with 100 or more workers and generally requires 60 day notice of mass layoffs or plant closings, or to pay employees for the 60 day period following the announcement of a mass layoff or plant closing.
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Closing up shop 2 months after a vote to unionize would still be suddenly, and would still suck for the employees.
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So why do I bring these up? Simply because there's nothing that says that a business has to exist or provide anyone a job
And you forgot the corollary: Nothing says that workers have to provide labor for every employer.
You can be a dick to your employees, play power trips with the machinery, and pay shitty wages. But you get what you pay for, even in the labor market.
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Nothing says that workers have to provide labor for every employer.
Except basic human nature. The employer can fire everybody because there are more people waiting to get a job. They keep making new workers, they don't keep making new jobs. And workers will bend over backwards, take it up the ass, and stab each other in the back when they're looking at a mortgage payment, their child, etc.
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Except basic human nature. The employer can fire everybody because there are more people waiting to get a job.
And you get what you pay for. You'll get workers who do a worse job and are more inefficient.
They keep making new workers, they don't keep making new job
Actually, they do keep making new jobs. That's what "economic growth" is.
And workers will bend over backwards, take it up the ass, and stab each other in the back when they're looking at a mortgage payment, their child, etc.
For a time. And then they stop.
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Union vs. small business might have a few bad instances.
But if Capital can organize, and protect themselves with Corporations, Labor can do the same with Unions.
I would be OK with banning labor unions if all corporations were dissolved, and workers could just hop to the next small business employer for better terms.
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I think you missed the point of most of these posts. No one says that unionizing should banned (or at least few say it), they just say in many cases the result of unionising will be counter productive.
I'm more of an even playing field person. If unions are great, then pass laws requiring all employers (of a certain size) have unions. Then that solves some of the issues of employers playing games, and the employers know up front the requirements to grow their business and can do a cost-benefit analysis.
Othe
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The McDonalds is because it's corporate policy to shut down unionized locations (like Walmart). It's hard to blame to union for their shitty corporate policy. The furniture manufacturer couldn't afford labor. If they couldn't afford lumber, would anyone care? And the owner was most likely bluffing, but if not the appropriate answer is "well, if you're doing this as a hobby/don't need the cash spend more profits on your employees, and if you want more money out of avarice, well, that's what the union is
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Walmarts are corporate owned and can easily shut-down and move (they have the resources).
McDonald's are almost entirely franchised, there's no way they have a corporate policy to shut down a franchisee's location if they unionize. It's more likely the individual owner's close due to fact that their business is about to be unprofitable.
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McDonald's doesn't just let a franchisee board up the building. They own it, and they'll force the franchisee to sell to a new owner. Either way, there's either a McDonalds still there or not based on corporate's desires. Although selling to a new franchise owner is a great way to avoid lawsuits when they fire everyone for being in a union^W^W^W because the new owner is bringing in a new team.
With Google's CEO, I would too (Score:2)
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Hell, he's making Steve Ballmer and Larry Ellison look like saints.
(...rate he's going, people will start talking fondly of Scott MacNealy...)
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But not John McAfee......
Won't end well (Score:2)
Unfortunately for these contractors, (a) they're contractors and Google is going to find some excuse to get rid of them in 3...2.., and (b) things aren't bad enough for people to sit up and take notice.
There are probably 500 people lined up to take one of these contractor spots at Google. All the big tech firms are doing the permatemp thing and holding out hope that one day, you too can have 3 meals a day and a fully catered existence in exchange for 80 hour weeks. Same thing with the video game industry...
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EA and friends treat their employees like garbage and they know they can just pick someone outside the factory gates when you complain or keel over at your desk.
And people wonder why all newly-released games from the big studios are bug-ridden, massively derivative shit.
You get what you pay for. Even when buying labor. Yes, EA currently makes money, but their cash cows are becoming less and less bountiful.
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Yes, EA currently makes money
I wouldn't be so sure of that, they toke some pretty nasty write downs after anthem's failure, And I heavily suspect that selling gambling to children ("loot boxes","surprise mechanics"), is going to be made illegal in most places. Depending on the quarter the only profitable part of EA, is their sports games. And that is in jeopardy due to point above.
Congrats to them (Score:3)
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Congrats, you'll soon have company in the unemployment line.
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This is the wrong thing to do. I don't know anyone that speaks well of unions.
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This is probably the wrong thing for this particular set of workers to do, but we will see. Sure, HCL won't get a bigger contract from Google, they will get what they have always gotten.
If HCL continues to stay in business, then management will lose money. If the company doesn't stay in business, everyone finds new work. Depending on how large of a slice of the pie management is taking versus paying it's workers, everything will be fine.
If HCL is running razor thin margins, this will kill the company. If th
Re: Congrats to them (Score:3)
HCL has over 100,000 employees and the chairman is a billionaire. I think they can afford to pay decent wages.
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They're contractors dude, not employees. I dunno why Google is even in the title of this story, they literally have nothing to do with this. The sub-contracting company is going to bear the entire brunt of this. Google's contract is already signed, and this is going to cost them 0$. Not to mention that any time these employees spend on Strike would mean penalties for Breach of contract payed to Google by HCL. This is like the most laughable thing to "Congratulate" as it is one of the dumbest moves I've
Re: Congrats to them (Score:2)
"I dunno why Google is even in the title of this story,"
Because no one is fooled by the subcontracting dance. These people work for Big Brother Google and the public knows it.
any guess (Score:2)
Since they are not google employees, any guess what will happen to the contractors when the contract expires :-) Nothing the union can do.
Cause for vote (Score:2)
Isn't general knowledge being a long term contractor usually means lower wages and fewer benefits? I know there are cases where to get highly specialized talent, that some contractors have greater salaries and benefits, because the cont
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I've seen quite the opposite in my past 20+ years in the contracting circuit...both as a W2 employee of a contracting house and as a direct corp-to-corp 1099 contractor.
Pay is excellent...you just have to know how to negotiate a bill rate that makes it worth your while.
You have to know your worth.
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But in general, the use of contractors is to offset costs for the company using contractors.
You are correct. However less cost != lower salaries for employees.
If your company has so much overhead that it takes 10 people the same amount of time to do what it takes a contracting company 5 people to do, with the same result, the contracting company can usually offer a much lower estimate. That's one example.
I would probably unionize at this point (Score:2, Insightful)
My employer just laid off (forced to "retire") 50 people at the same time the board voted to give the CEO an additional $5M bonus for his excellent performance in reducing both revenue and profit for the company, with slumping sales and loss of market share to competition.
But, he dealt with it like a champ by firing 50 engineers and technicians, so clearly he deserved to get a bonus that was worth several years worth of all of their salaries put together.
Workers (Score:1)
How soon we forget. (Score:3)
The vote to unionize is historic for white collar tech workers, and could spur others in the industry to take similar action.
No it's not and no it won't.
The Free Software Foundation employees unionized almost 20 years ago. Check their job listings. [fsf.org] "This job is a union position that must be worked on site... The salary is fixed ... and is non-negotiable." As I recall, they joined the UAW.
There was no wave of tech worker unionization after that. There won't be now either.
Re: How soon we forget. (Score:1)
You forget that the software industry used to pay well, but wages have been stagnant for years. Tech workers are waking up to the idea of solidarity.
And just like that... (Score:2)
Google stopped using contractors.
Ah, my former employer HCL America (Score:3)
I know they were scrambling to fill those positions because they hired two non-Indians for the DBA spots - me and a DBA from the PRC. The (unspoken, but virulent) preference is for Indians in a given role.
Anyway, these are not steelworker contracting jobs, though union affiliation is with USW. It's a bunch of IT schlebs in steel country, which is probably why the contract is filled with Americans instead of H-1Bs.
I can see why these people got the bad idea to vote for an additional tax on their net income in the form of union dues. Whatever you negotiate for in terms of salary, PTO, etc is all you're ever going to get from HCL. I ended up quitting and getting re-hired in order to get a pay raise from them. That's a possible option when you're staffing a position in flyover country because it can be very difficult to convince someone to relocate to backfill the job. The few they do find are often not up to the task.
I expect a union to be a nominal entity in these contractors' lives for the most part, certainly not solving their problems. I would advise any of them to make a plan to increase their skill set and seek more lucrative opportunities, which is the traditional IT path.
Remote Scab (Score:1)