YouTube Music team laid off by Google while workers testified to Austin City Council about working conditions::Some workers learned of the YouTube Music layoffs while testifying to the Austin city council about Google’s refusal to negotiate with the union.
The National Labor Review Board ruled that Google was a co-employer of these union members and, thus, ruled that both Google and Cognizant had to come to the table to hammer out a bargaining agreement with them. Google refused. When this council resolution was put forth, Katherine McAden of Google Austin emailed the Austin City Council members on 02/28/24 to ask them to postpone the vote to “give Google, and the City Council, time to fully understand the direction of this item and potential local outcomes.” The very next day (02/29/24), while two members were in the middle of testifying to the council, that was the exact moment Google fired the lot of them.
I don’t see how much more open and shut you can get here.
Thank you for this. This should be the top comment.
I wonder how the new Cemex framework affects this.
Lol corporate world is not for you my guy. They contract other companies specifically for this reason. Order cognizant to fire workers and when questioned , oooohh they were contractors. 🤷♀️
I am not defending Google here, but Cognizant is trash. I run a firm of specialist and a bulk of our work is cleaning up after outfits like Cognizant , Infosys, etc.
All that said, firing a group of 43 workers that chose to unionize during an Austin City Council meeting as it was being live streamed is all sorts of spicy. Google and Cognizant fucked up.
How’s that work, is there lots of hair pulling? Or are you able to charge an arm and a leg and set your timelines because the clients don’t have much of a choice?
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This is all corpo speak for “they were cheap and their H1Bs were close to expiration”
Yeah I don’t understand why Google is being blamed here. If the contact ended with Cognizant then it is upto Cognizant to find other projects for the people who were part of the contract. That’s how it works with these companies. If CTS couldn’t find work in other projects then it’s on CTS and not on Google
Damn it, what am I supposed to do with this pitchfork now?
But seriously, shitty misleading headline.
Take your dumb reddit shit back to reddit.
The “pitchfork” joke dates back to Fark, my friend.
Welcome to the internet.
Use it.
Don’t be fooled by layers of bureaucracy.
As along as it lands in the soft belly of those in the owner class or their supporters, it has served it purpose.
If you watch the video, one of the union members is at the Council meeting speaking to the City Council and another union member walks up to him to inform him that they were laid off with immediate effect. The workers both seemed genuinely surprised that they were laid off.
Blaming another business? Hmmm. Sounds like Boeing’s attempted solution.
If the team is finding out that their job ends on the same day, it’s totally Google’s doing, and not the vendor company.
Google loves cheap, disposable workers, that why half of their workers are contractors.
I mean, if you’re a contractor and they haven’t discussed extending more than a month ahead of time, expect your contract to end on its end date. That’s just common sense.
I’ve worked at two employers who used the contractor loophole. At the first one, the length of the contract and extensions were never mentioned to me ever. The second one constantly played games with extension. At one point I was set to have my final week of employment, only for them to extend it over the weekend.
I’ve been in the contractor shoes for way longer than I should have (which is zero), So as a hardfast rule, “expect your contract to end on its end date” simply doesn’t hold up. Corps like to play games with it, and leave employees out of the loop.
They did tell these employees to not worry about their contract ending, that it would be extended.
You assume the cognizant employees are privy to the contract terms.
I would never sign a contract without knowing the details.
The important part here is your signally that you do not side with workers. You are a class traitor. How you justify it does not matter.
Lol ok Hun. You tell me that when you need to pay bills and it’s the only offer on the table, idiot.
apparently you are the one in a position to pick and choose and look down on those who aren’t as clever as you.
wow, that is so brave and sexy of you
It’s brave to read a contract before you sign it? I guess I’m the bravest then, cuz not doing so is stupid.
Easy to say that if there is food already on your table.
I can’t believe it’s controversial to say you should read a contract before you sign it.
Cognizant employees don’t sign a contract. They are W2 employees, who are “contracted out” to other companies. The contract is between Cognizant and the third party. The employee literally never sees it.
That’s not true. When they sign to work with a client, they’re given an initial end date. Worked with many of them throughout the years.
I assure you, they are not. Unless it’s a one off project and not an ongoing project like YouTube music would be.
And I assure you they are. We had dozens of contractors that were doing ongoing work, not project based. They were all given a contract with terms to sign that outlined the timeline. Sometimes they were extended, other times not.
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At least in the UK, if you work like an employee enough, the court can overrule the technicality of your employment status as a contractor and apply labor law protections.
You have any idea the wide spread feelings on this?
It sounds like that’s what we should be doing in more countries,.US.
Oh the US has tried to fix this issue multiple times. The end result was many of us getting laid off after 18 months every time because they couldn’t extend our contacts any further by law. There’s no reason for a company to convert a contractor if they’re not required to.
that’s because they keep going at it from a timeline POV; I believe if they made required work time slots as a limitation against contract work (i.e if you are required to work between x-y daily) this issue would be resolved. There’s no real reason for many contract positions to be a static time slot, contractors are supposed to be fully flexible on their own time as long as the end product is correct and within SLA, thd only benefit to fixed scheduling is management level, so I think that would tip the scale onto employee instead of contractor
Yeah, it’s frustrating when people in turn can’t find good medical insurance.
The trade for sometimes higher pay or flexibility in assignments doesn’t work when you can’t afford insurance or other benefits.
Assuming you were even being paid about permanent positions.
This is exactly what happened with these union members. The National Labor Review Board ruled that Google was a co-employer along with Cognizant, and they ruled that Google just come to the bargaining table with these union members. They refused. They emailed city council members asking for a postponement of their vote to give them time to sort stuff out, and it was granted. The very next day, the fired the entire union out of retaliation for speaking to the city council voicing their concerns.
Contractors at Google and other tech companies are typically treated and managed as real employees except for minor legal-motivated things like travel which is treated differently.
Further, contracts are typically for a fixed period of time.
That these employees/contractors seemed genuinely surprised by the abrupt termination suggests this was not the natural end of their contract. Google, not Cognizant, decides when their contracts end. If their contracts were terminated with no warning or reason given, it was initiated by Google. And with that background it seems pretty likely it was in retaliation to the union activity.
“But they’re not Google employees”, right? But then, that’s why Google and other tech companies use contractors - to avoid giving those employees actual employee protections.