I mean here in Argentina, we IT workers push against unions. When we have issues at work, be it salary or whatever, we just leave and jump ship into the next one Most work is remote and beyond junior positions, salaries are good. We don’t even have to worry about compliance with law because most work in IT has to be taxed.
Negotiations? We do that when the relationship between both parties begins. Firing? Sure go ahead and do it, we don’t give a shit.
I imagine IT workers in USA have even better salaries and benefits, so this measure makes no dent. Obvious even, given the size of the union, I mean 80 people come on.
I tell you, this isn’t the news item they are making it out to be
To afford good lawyers in order to fight back, unions need money, which requires more members to pay union dues.
To keep politicians honest and to credibly threaten their electibility, unions need more members that can be politically mobilized.
It’s a feedback loop. The more people unionize, the more powerful unions become and the more powerful unions become, the more they can protect people who unionize.
I support unionising in general but not for contractors. By definition contractors have agreed to do short term work according to a specific contract. Trying to negotiate the contract later seems dishonest. That’s a very different to a regular long-term open-ended employment contract where unionising makes sense.
The “contractors” are W-2 employees, they’re employed by an external agency rather than by Google itself. This agency then contracts to provide services to Google. It’s a bit like if a building outsources their janitorial to A1 Cleaning Services Corp, and then A1’s employees unionize. The thing is then it might be legal for the building to cancel the A1 contract, and then for A1 to fire all their employees due to the lost contract, and then for the building to hire A2 to do the same thing. This is a loophole in union busting laws.
I find it hard to believe that the workers didn’t see this coming…
They’re contractors. They’re not permanent employees. They can, generally, be let go at any time for any reason whatsoever - or no reason at all. It’s crap, but they’re some of the risks of being a contractor. The benefits of higher pay, choose your own hours, choose your own workplace, etc have to be weighed against said risks.
It’s a bit misleading. They’re not private contractors but employees of a different company instead. The union busting in the US is pretty extreme. I just hope these people can put their talents to work in a company that doesn’t have so many issues complying with the rule “don’t be evil”.
Yeah Google is well known for employing “contractors” which is just really a way for them to avoid any of the annoying regulations you have with actual employees, by having them be employed by a third party but really they’re just working for Google full time. Also looks better on the balance sheets.
There have actually been a few cases that have made it through the courts that apply “employee” status based on how the company treats the worker rather than how they’re paid.
Especially in cases where the worker is on long-term assignment somewhere like Google.
They wouldn’t have a case, since this other app can prove they’ve been available under that name for 4 years. However, I bet the low-ball offers to buy the app and domain have already started. I wonder what number they’ll eventually settle on…
True. They have a fair bit of leverage, though. Even just renaming the competing product would probably cost Meta a small fortune. I wouldn’t mind being in that situation.
You should see some of the usernames I’ve seen reported from the sh.itjust.works instance. I’m not going to post any but it seems like there is no moderation of usernames at all as far as I can tell. Major oversight on their part.
I am all for political correctness and some restraint is needed.
But I also seen people criticizing other people for using their home country’s name Niger or the Spanish word for black as Spanish speakers (in that case even more cynical as the person who was criticised was a PoC from Cuba).
“We had exercised our right to organize as members of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA in order to bring both Google and Accenture, a Google subcontractor, to the bargaining table to negotiate on several key demands, including layoff protections.”
Google only started accepting contractors and recruiters because they were expanding before the pandemic. They probably wanted to get rid of both of those anyway.
They will show through internal communication that this was planned all along. Any retaliation protection this union thought they had doesn’t exist.
Accenture and Google’s relationship has changed throughout the years. They are partners in cloud services. I’m not sure what their role is in other divisions though.
Not to stick up for Dorsey's new baby, but that's a misinterpretation of the text. Those labels are for reporting content, not for tagging your uploads. That's for moderation purposes, for users to report a post as CSAM.
engadget.com
Active