Controversy stirs once again in Google’s offices. This time, a group of Google employees wrote to the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai demanding equal rights and benefits to all its workers. This issue comes to light in the wake of the worldwide walkouts staged by their employees last month.
Google’s contract workers, known as TVCs (Temporary, Vendors, and Contractors) within the company expect the company to treat them on par with the full-timers.
TVCs are disproportionately people from marginalized groups who are treated as less deserving of compensation, opportunities, workplace protections, and respect. We wear different badges from full-time employees, which reinforces this arbitrary and discriminatory separation,
they wrote in the letter.
In spite of working just as hard as the regular employees, the TVCs still miss out on some of the perks of working for Google. They are not provided with complete access to information. When there was a shooting at YouTube’s office earlier this April, TVCs say Google sent out updates only to full-time employees and left them out of the loop. They aren’t entitled to stock and can’t enter certain offices. Most of them do not receive even health insurance. And many contractors are left clinging to Google’s promises of converting them to full-time employees.
One of the contract workers said they are treated as “collateral damages” who can be hired and fired easily to help the company achieve business goals quickly and cheaply. This ill-treatment by Google is shocking as contractors make up more than 50% of the company’s workforce.
A report by Bloomberg outlined that the contractors outnumbered the full-timers for the first time in the company’s history. Many activists assert that a company which churns in more than $ 30 billion in profits in a single year can very easily treat all its employees alike, but it just chooses to not do so.
The employees were enraged by the company’s lack of action against sexual misconduct and its ties to the Pentagon. This led to Alphabet Inc – Google’s parent company completely revamping the way they handle allegations against sexual harassment and assault.
