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“Today is a historic day for workers across industries. Finally, tens of thousands of vendorized workers will be able to hold major corporations accountable to their obligations towards workers. The NLRB has once again reviewed our substantial evidence proving that Google exercises control, directly and indirectly, over YouTube Music employees, including on things like our everyday work tasks, performance evaluations, benefits, timecards and more. Google attempts to distance themselves from workers like us by assigning sole responsibilities to contracting companies.— Neil Gossell, Music Generalist and member of the Alphabet Workers UnionThis false divide benefits Google and other Alphabet subsidiaries by denying responsibility and culpability to workers, who spend their entire day working exclusively on Google branded products. Tech corporations like Alphabet rely on a split workforce of full time employees and thousands of contract workers who are denied the same quality benefits and pay that full time employees get, even when they are performing the same job. After overwhelmingly winning our union election we are eager to move forward and meet both Google and Cognizant to the bargaining table and secure our first union contract.
Two months ago, Youtube Music workers associated with Alphabet Workers Union voted unanimously to unionize. At the time, their status as Alphabet employees under the law was unclear—they were subcontracted through Cognizant, which Alphabet maintained was their ultimate employer. An NLRB regional director rejected this, but Alphabet was in the process of appealing at the time Youtube Music's workers won.
Now, though, it's settled: Youtube Music workers are employed by Alphabet, and accordingly must bargain with them. An NLRB panel comprised of Chairman Lauren McFerran and members Gwynne A. Wilcox and David M. Prouty found yesterday that:
Google possesses and exercises such substantial direct and immediate control over one or more essential terms or conditions of the petitioned-for employees’ employment as to warrant a finding that Google “meaningfully affects” matters relating to their employment relationship and is therefore their joint-employer under Section 103.40(a).
For the more labor-law inclined, the case number and info here is Case 16–RC–305751. Cognizant Technology Solutions U.S. Corporation and Google LLC, Joint Employers and Alphabet Workers Union—Communications Workers of America, Local 1400. There seem to be four major sticking points as to what makes Alphabet (through Google) the joint employer of Youtube Music's workers. These are, in order, that it:
This is huge because IT Consultants working through staffing firms like Cognizant, TechMahindra, Capgemini, etc are often treated like dirt but more often than not know more than the actual employees they work alongside.
