Around 80 Google Help subcontractors who recently voted to unionize with the Alphabet Workers Union-Communications Workers of America (AWU-CWA) found out last week that they will be laid off.
How does a contract union even work? Isn’t the whole point of contractors that it’s a less binding temporary position that can be terminated if needed?
Surprised this wasn’t talked about in the article or anywhere else in the comments. I feel like it doesn’t make sense for contractors to unionize during a contract job as that would change the terms of the contract.
Contracting isn’t always that cut and dry. Different industries and sectors of employment can use it for indefinite employment, and as such, many people can end up relying and hoping for longest possible work. I.e., USA Federal Contracting. Creating a union to protect workers and fight for financial fairness isn’t something that Contractors should be excluded from – it is still work after all. And in the case above-mentioned the actual workers do not negotiate with the contract issuer, but the middleman, a contract company – human capital.
That’s interesting, my company takes a different approach, if we don’t go contract to hire in a year, we choose a new person to fill the role.
I wasn’t mentioning it as a preclusion, more as a how the heck would they expect a tech union to work. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is an example of a union for contractors, but that’s more nice role as the positions are very difficult to fill for and the roles often can’t be reasonably replaced. Tech workers though, that pool is HUGE. If you had a tech union it would need to contain a significant portion of 8% (26,000,000) of the US population. It would seem they would lack the bargaining power as they’re easily replicable. Perhaps if you were unionizing inside a single company that provided contractors you could destroy their workforce by all walking at once, but google doesn’t need to fire these people, they can just terminate the contract with the company that provides them.
If the contractors were employees, there would be a massive lawsuit incoming (may be anyway) as the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects the rights of employees to organize and join unions, but it generally does not cover independent contractors.
California seems to have some at-will variances for unions but it’s still listed as employees. Should be interesting to see this play out.
In my little experience, I assume, now that they’ve formed a union they can collectively bid on contracts as a shop and ask for a prevailing wage to complete it.
I would be surprised if Accenture wasn’t pretty upset by this as well. Not a great selling point for potential clients: go with our contractors and they just might join your employees union!
How does a contract union even work? Isn’t the whole point of contractors that it’s a less binding temporary position that can be terminated if needed?
Surprised this wasn’t talked about in the article or anywhere else in the comments. I feel like it doesn’t make sense for contractors to unionize during a contract job as that would change the terms of the contract.
Most contracts are through contract companies, who then employs (ala W2) the workers.
I could see all tech workers that work for these companies forming a union—that could make a real, honest change in the tech workforce overall.
Contracting isn’t always that cut and dry. Different industries and sectors of employment can use it for indefinite employment, and as such, many people can end up relying and hoping for longest possible work. I.e., USA Federal Contracting. Creating a union to protect workers and fight for financial fairness isn’t something that Contractors should be excluded from – it is still work after all. And in the case above-mentioned the actual workers do not negotiate with the contract issuer, but the middleman, a contract company – human capital.
That’s interesting, my company takes a different approach, if we don’t go contract to hire in a year, we choose a new person to fill the role.
I wasn’t mentioning it as a preclusion, more as a how the heck would they expect a tech union to work. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is an example of a union for contractors, but that’s more nice role as the positions are very difficult to fill for and the roles often can’t be reasonably replaced. Tech workers though, that pool is HUGE. If you had a tech union it would need to contain a significant portion of 8% (26,000,000) of the US population. It would seem they would lack the bargaining power as they’re easily replicable. Perhaps if you were unionizing inside a single company that provided contractors you could destroy their workforce by all walking at once, but google doesn’t need to fire these people, they can just terminate the contract with the company that provides them.
If the contractors were employees, there would be a massive lawsuit incoming (may be anyway) as the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects the rights of employees to organize and join unions, but it generally does not cover independent contractors.
California seems to have some at-will variances for unions but it’s still listed as employees. Should be interesting to see this play out.
deleted by creator
Every major contract I’ve worked on has has a union presence.
In my little experience, I assume, now that they’ve formed a union they can collectively bid on contracts as a shop and ask for a prevailing wage to complete it.
I would be surprised if Accenture wasn’t pretty upset by this as well. Not a great selling point for potential clients: go with our contractors and they just might join your employees union!