Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Google IT

Google Workers Protest Plans to Reduce Compensation in Three Cities in North Carolina, Texas, and Iowa (protocol.com) 65

Protocol reports that Google "plans to reduce the equity packages for Durham, North Carolina; Des Moines, Iowa; and Houston, Texas, in January 2022, according to an Alphabet Workers Union petition circulating today that demands a reversion to pay and equity cuts." The Washington Post notes that "For some employees, that means their stock grants could be 25 percent lower than if they worked at other Google offices, like in Atlanta, the workers said in the letter."

With over 800 members the Alphabet Workers Union is part of a larger effort to organize workers at tech companies. Protocol writes: The Research Triangle area, where the Durham, North Carolina, office is located, was also moved from the "National" pay band to a "Discount" pay band in late 2020, according to the Amazon Workers Union petition. The union said it would affect 300 workers there, but that Google plans to expand to 1,000 employees in the coming years....

Many workers relocated there before the changes in pay and equity were made, the union wrote.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Google Workers Protest Plans to Reduce Compensation in Three Cities in North Carolina, Texas, and Iowa

Comments Filter:
  • by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Saturday February 19, 2022 @11:36AM (#62283359)
    if they can hire at lower cost there they will lower compensation.
  • by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Saturday February 19, 2022 @11:42AM (#62283375) Homepage

    Many companies do this in those places. Where I work, if you move to one of the "cheaper" places, you do not get wage adjustments until your wage level lowers to what they believe the average wage in that area is.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday February 19, 2022 @12:04PM (#62283433)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • That ship has sailed a long time ago. Google is hiring over the full distribution. The best and brightest deal was sacrificed on the same altar as "do no evil" and ethics.
    • It is a shock to Google. What they will not expect is for people to walk. They will, and they will take their intellects with them. After all, these same folks are not claiming all the freebies Google offers them either, so they know they are doubly missing out if they accept unnecessarily lower pay based upon living in a cheaper location.

      Silly valley finally has competition.
    • Initially, a company needs highly energetic, dedicated, critical & lateral thinkers to pave the way. Once that way has been paved, those very same workers can get bored & restless with the humdrum day to day running of an already established business. My bet is that Google's workforce has been steadily changing since they became dominant in online advertising; "way-pavers" giving way to to "way-maintainers."
    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      So, they're not hiring the best and brightest after all, are they?

      Why do you say that? Based on their decision to retroactively reduce compensation for workers in certain areas?

      You are just jumping at any excuse to try and either tear-down Alphabet employees or build yourself up by comparison.

      Let's see if any of the other employers in NC decide to "snap-up" these soon to be under-paid employees, or will they simply stay at Alphabet and whine about how their peers in more expensive locations are better compensated.

      The obvious solution, if they are concerned about their com

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Just the most desperate and most cliquish, which their HR department interprets as "the best". I went through their interview process twice, for two distinct roles. The HR description of the jobs did not match what the interviewere had. The department members loved me, and many knew my work in my fields. They then called six months later to offer me distinct jobs, in different cities, after I'd said "we stay here, I support my wife's career".

      Every competent gets hired at least 3 months before they get an o

    • So, they're not hiring the best and brightest after all, are they?

      Statistics prevents a company with tens of thousands of engineers cannot hire the best and brightest. That only happens at the start, and that ship sailed decades ago.

      Nevertheless, Google will hire (and hoard) above average talent and will not recycle the lower quartiles of incompetence (*). And that's good enough, more than enough for a company like Google.

      (*) When I say "incompetence", I don't mean it just for being mean or just to throw a pejorative. There's a lot of people in software and IT that sh

    • The best and the brightest won't live in any of those states to begin with: republican control, fear of people using the @#$@# bathroom, anti-trans bullshit, etc. That said, given that *anyone* working for them long enough to vest will become rich by any reasonable standard. Plus in Iowa and NC at least, and much of TX, housing is relatively to very inexpensive. So I may have a minority opinion here, but I can't feel sorry for their upper-class outrage.
  • I don't know if they'll survive and make a profit unless they cut the pay of their workers (sarcasm intended). For these companies, it's a race to the bottom for what they'll pay their employees unless they're forced to pay more due to worker unionization or not being able to find anyone willing to work for the wages they're trying to pay. It's all about the profits, the investors, and the CEO's bonus - the people that actually make the money for them (employees and customers) don't really matter unless t
  • Union (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Saturday February 19, 2022 @12:10PM (#62283463)

    Any company that has a union deserves a union. Keep your employees happy and they won't have to organize on you.

  • After decades of mergers individual employees no matter how high up on the totem pole do not have any bargaining power. The talking heads on Fox News who tell you that you don't need a union all of them higher agents to bargain for them while telling you that you don't need any help do the same. And remember that when you threaten to unionize 100% of the time your boss will threaten to move your job to Mexico but they only ever do it 1% of the time because it's too expensive and if they could ship your job
    • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Saturday February 19, 2022 @03:24PM (#62284051) Journal

      With all those new voters suppression laws

      There are no "voter suppression laws". There are some laws designed to ensure that only actual voters, you know, vote.

      If your party can't survive with just real actual voters ... well, nuff said.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sabt-pestnu ( 967671 )

        I see your sweeping generalities, and raise you specific cases.

        There are some laws designed to ensure that only actual voters, you know, vote.

        There is a LOT of law designed to ensure that only actual voters vote. There is a lot of other law designed to ensure the validity and regularity of voting. So you are correct, but trite. What we're talking about here is not "law in general", we're talking "bills recently passed".

        There are no "voter suppression laws".

        Only in the sense that they are not titled "voter suppression law". Many provisions will sound good on paper, but will in practice discriminate. Many provisions wi

        • by mrbax ( 445562 )

          HB 531 also famously added a provision prohibiting people passing food or water out to people in line, in the same paragraph they had previously restricted solicitation of votes, as if the two were somehow comparable. You may have heard about that, it made the news nationally. Please describe that change in terms of "not suppressing voting".

          Typical left-wing propaganda. It was already illegal to give free stuff to voters. HB 531 does not only "not suppress voting" here, it changes nothing.

        • LOL.

          -Why did a Democrat go to the cementary?
          -To thank his voters.
        • Exactly. Voter fraud was demonstrably near zero before these Republican efforts. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is designed for "actual voters to vote". The Republican wave of voter suppression laws was sparked by Trump losing an election in which red states were already selectively suppressing legitimate voters. They've been *quoted* as saying that if all eligible voters vote, they'll never win an election again, which is tantamount to an admission of suppression. The GP is either del
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      English much?

      I welcome Alphabet employees unionizing, think that will make the stock price go up or down? As this article noted, the complaints about reduced compensation in NC (and presumably other locations) revolve around stock option values. Unionize to get higher stock options, only to watch the value of your stock options drop as the stock goes down in value.

      I've never seen a company's stock go up because of their workers unionizing - it may have happened, not saying it's impossible - but Investors te

      • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
        Take a look at the entire German economy. Unions are part of regular company governance, and have routinely kept businesses operating with agreements on reduced hours and pay on a short term basis to ensure long term survival.
  • Google parent Alphabet reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and revenue. Shares popped more than 9% in extended trading.

    The company also announced a 20-for-1 stock split that will go into effect in July.

  • Step 1, complain about shortage of workers Step 2, announce reducing compensation for workers.
  • There are tons of employees in those areas working for far less so of course any company in those areas could offer slightly above and lure lots of new e ployees. That the Googlers who moved there were too stupid to realize that is on them. Google is doing nothing wrong here. If you took your SV restaurant to Durham and charged SV prices you'd not get any customers. This is no different. Company buy employee time. The going rate in those cities is lower than SV, why would you over pay? I wouldn't play $25
    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      If they're working remotely, then what "company in those areas" do really don't make any difference. There are SV companies willing to pay SV prices regardless of where those employees live.

  • Federal jobs have a base pay identified per job. Then their location determines how much over that base pay they get for local cost of living. For example a federal employee in DC will get roughly 20% more on the base pay because the cost of living there is so high. If employee moves to a similar job in another region, the extra on their base pay would be adjusted. For example, if Durham NC had only a 10% adder to the base pay, the employee formerly getting an extra %20 percent in DC would now get only
    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      I'd love to see a $500K house in Silicon Valley, LOL.

      The problem Alphabet has is they started everyone at SV-level pay, now that their workforce is so dispersed, they want to reconsider that idea. The obvious solution is that Alphabet only employ workers in high cost of living cities, but that gets expensive.

      • Google already had different pay brackets for different regions, so moving could raise or lower your pay.

        The issue here is that people transferred with the promise of a certain amount of pay/equity and then Google changed the policy after they've moved. I don't think they got pay cuts, but I've heard that annual raises and equity refreshes were well below inflation for such people

        If you combine this with everyone working from home and the continued deferrals on return to office, many people are finding that

"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..." -- Badger comics

Working...