Alphabet Workers Union complains that contract workers receive COVID-19 testing that is inferior to the $949 Cue Health devices given to full-time WFH employees
- Full-time employees at home get instant results from Cue — Contractors in office are offered cheaper mail-in tests
The timing matters because the union's contractor-focused strategy was gaining traction — YouTube Music contractors from Cognizant voted to unionize with AWU, and an Accenture-employed group followed with its own drive. A visible, easily communicated disparity in pandemic protection gives those campaigns a concrete grievance.
First-order effects
On-site contract workers at Google continue receiving slower mail-in COVID tests while full-time WFH employees test instantly on company-provided Cue devices — a two-tier standard the union is now publicizing.
Second-order effects
Staffing vendors like Adecco, Cognizant, and Accenture face pressure to match client-side benefits or absorb the reputational cost, since the union frames Alphabet as the joint employer responsible for contractor conditions.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, benefit disparities between direct and contingent workers become a primary organizing lever in tech, with joint-employer disputes — already central to the Cognizant appeal — determining who bears legal responsibility for contractor welfare.
The trend: Tech's reliance on contract labor is turning workplace-benefit gaps into the main battleground for unionization, with Alphabet as the test case.
my friend is dating a guy who works for Google and i kid you not apparently they gave him a little high-tech at-home COVID test machine that he can use to get accurate results every day. while thousands of essential workers wait for hours in the cold to fight over tests
Oh, it gets worse. Full time Google employees (FTE's)—even if they are exclusively WFH—were given at-home COVID test. “But, what about Google temporary, vendor or contract workers (TVC's)?” you may ask. Not so much. https://twitter.com/...
blown away that this is real, that the cost of household-based PCR machines is only ~$200 for setup & initial tests, & that obviously produced at scale that would decline sharply. But even if it DIDN'T, it would cost $25bill to offer them to each US household, a familiar number h…
Im pretty confused why Google is the bad guy here so maybe someone can help explain it for me. Our government should be making testing easy and accessible. Google is invested in their profits so they spend a bit more money to make testing easier for their employees. https://twitt…
If you work for FAANG and other big tech start-ups, you're surrounded by big and small benefits like this. They do it on purpose — they know you'll want to stay because quality of life is too high to leave. It's golden handcuffs, but not in the traditional sense. https://twitter.…
Unbelievable. While essential workers are being told to come back to work early without adequate testing or protection, tech companies are providing their employees with their own at-home PCR-equivalent machines that test for COVID ( https://www.axios.com/...) h/t @kadish_josh ht…
If there is one thing that Google does well for its salaried employees, it is recognizing that employee health is inextricably tied to the success of the company. That's a lesson that applies to the entire damn national economy. https://twitter.com/...
I just learned Google employees who haven't worked in their offices in nearly ~2 years~ all have their own PCR-like instant tests! While shift working clerks, instacart shoppers, factory workers stand in the cold on lines or go without tests! A very underclsss made at every turn!…
the response to this shouldn't be “getting mad at google for buying expensive tests in order to protect its workers”, it should be “getting mad at other companies for doing so little, and at the federal government for not prioritizing free/cheap access to tests for everyone” http…
@jzux Here is the at-home PCR COVID test machine that I believe was given to all Google employees. Why aren't these being mass-produced?? https://twitter.com/...
Even though these are the workers expected to show up in person EVERY DAY. (So you would think these workers would be best suited for a more instantaneous results type COVID test...) But the real kicker is—many TVC's aren't aware that testing is available to some of them.🤦♀️
So, unlike FTE's, not all TVC's have access to Google provided COVID tests to protect themselves & their communities. And, unlike FTE's, the few TVC's who can access tests don't get the instantaneous results kind—they get a mail-in kind.
Unlike FTE's, only TVC's who are required to work on site can access Google provided Covid tests. But not the fancy, instantaneous results, kind that FTE's got. TVC's who qualify only get a mail-in type test. https://twitter.com/...
To be clear the nominal safety offered by Google sending FTE's at-home COVID tests is not real safety. We are not safe until we are ALL safe. https://twitter.com/...
If you're a full time employee for Google, working from home, you get a high-end Cue reader and Covid tests with rapid results. If you're a contractor going into the office, you get tests you have to mail in to a lab: https://www.bloomberg.com/... by @NicoAGrant @mhbergen
They cost about $1,000 each (source https://www.bloomberg.com/...) There are 122 million households in the US—send one to each household would be a lot of money, about 120 billion—or, about 15% of the Defense budget. https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...
“Google's direct employees have long enjoyed perks that the company's vendors, temporary and contract workers, who number as many or more than direct staff, go without.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @NicoAGrant
Google full-time employees working from home get fancy and fast Cue Covid tests while contractors coming into the office receive home tests they must mail in — another example of different treatment of employees and contractors. With @mhbergen https://www.bloomberg.com/...