A Google spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement at the time of the unionization that it had “no objection to these Cognizant workers electing to form a union,” but that it would not bargain with them. “We are not a joint employer as we simply do not control their employment terms or working conditions—this matter is between the workers and their employer, Cognizant,” the spokesperson said.
NLRB seems to disagree. This will be an interesting case, I suspect …
So Google, like Amazon, is trying to play the “they work for a subcontractor that only supports us, so it’s their fault, not ours” card. I really want to see the NLRB smack this pattern down hard and set an example for all the other companies to try to avoid unionization by way of not directly hiring people.
NLRB changed their criteria for what is considered co-employment last month, widely broadening the definitions used to determine this status. Essentially, if a company has significant control (not just exclusive control) over any of a worker’s employment status or conditions, then they are considered a co-employer now. It used to be that a company needed exclusive or overriding control over another company’s employees to be considered a co-employer.
I’m certain we are going to see more lawsuits and legal challenges from employees because of this. I’m pretty certain there already are lawsuits from some other Google contractors over this exact thing; they are providing a case that Google is their co-employer due to the control they have over every aspect of their work.
Doesn’t appear so, seems Google is okay with them unionizing. According to a ruling from a while back Google is required to bargain with the union just as much as cognizant is but it appears cognizant is the one which is unwilling to bargain with the workers. Google’s track record with workers leads me to believe that they have no issue with workers unionizing.
What planet are you living on? Did you read the article? Or even the headline? Google is constantly union busting, and this article explicitly states that Google is refusing to bargain with the bargaining unit, despite court rulings that they are required to.
The only reason why they say they dont care about these people unionizing is because they fully intend on ignoring the union. They believe they can appeal the decision that they are required to bargain and win.
I want to, but I can’t shake off the feeling that Google does have a point here: it’s like requiring Amazon to bargain with DHL’s drivers. It’s kind of not their issue: they pay DHL for their services and DHL commissions their employees to do particular tasks.
Yes, I think that’s the reasonable argument Google’s lawyers and PR will use - but your example kind of demonstrates why that argument falls flat. The service DHL is providing to Amazon is logistics and shipping. This is an established, well-regulated industry all its own.
Meanwhile, at Google, this contractor’s services are listed in the article:
ensuring music content is available and approved for YouTube Music’s 80 million subscribers worldwide
That sounds an awful lot like running the service to me. These employees perform key YouTube-specific work on an ongoing basis. For all intents and purposes, they work for Google, in Google’s offices, on Google’s systems, but their paycheck comes from Cognizant. The services being rendered aren’t on the level of “you make the widget and we’ll transport it to stores around the country because we’re a shipping company”. This is more like “we employ people for you, but provide a flimsy air gap so you don’t have to treat them like actual employees. We sell legally plausible deniability as a service.”
ensuring music content is available and approved for YouTube Music’s 80 million subscribers worldwide
this could really mean anything from running the entire service to merely scraping lyrics. and since it’s a group of 49 people, I wanna say it’s probably something along the lines of the latter. but yeah, your point in general stands.
Yeah, apparently working as a contractor apparently involves a middleman, a ‘pimp’, if you will, that brings nothing to the contractor, the person doing the labour, but instead just serves to make it easy for the company in need of services to skirt labor laws. Even unionized, what are you going to do, strike against the one with which you do the actual contracting by not attending the monthly check-ins with PimpCo and refusing to submit your timesheets?
I wonder, however, shouldn’t not doing the work cause a breach of contract between the company requesting the service and the middleman and thus cost the middleman some valuable business?
NLRB contact details If workers provide a service, they should be allowed to bargain collectively to be adequately paid for that service. Full stop.
I’m very much pro-union, but meanwhile artists and creators who made that content in the first place are getting fucked by everyone
A YouTube creators’ strike isn’t an impossible notion. It’d just have to be led by a couple of big names, like a Mr. Beast type.
Mr Beast is the result of the trendy gen Z libertarian millionaire pipeline. He will never unionize nor support strikes.
They could argue for
- a greater share of the value
- more certainty about being allowed to stay on the platform
Pretty much like anyone’s top two asks. More money, more security.
No, it is not all upside. What has more value. Content people want to watch somehow. Or an empty “platform” that slurps up most of the gains.
I’m not saying there is no value inherent to platform’s. Merely pointing out the disingenuous nature of that argument.
Artists, techies, and socialists need to come together. To build a platform focused on sustainability ultimately. Devoid of profit for the sake of profit. And more focused on meeting the needs of their members. No overpriced CEO or board of directors. Or layers of redundant management. Once the service costs are covered. Anything after that could be split somewhat proportionally within strict limits.
A lot of the basic pieces are in place. Torrenting/peer tube for distribution. Modern day royalty free codecs. Realistically the two biggest hurdles are how to monetize responsibly, and bringing people in. It’s something that in one shape or form will always require some small donation of time and resources. And it’s easier to convince someone to join a Ponzi scheme telling them you will make them wealthy. Than it is to get someone to join guaranteeing that you’ll never make them wealthy but you will try to make them secure in their lives.
This is a good thread and good comment to throw this up on:
https://youtu.be/PJSTFzhs1O4?si=3SalhKn7wN6dgUpP
Benn Jordan, perhaps better known as “The Flashbulb” as an EDM artist, has an excellent YouTube channel. This video dives into some details on how we could get artists paid, and stop getting our art jerked around by corporations. For less than we pay to not get free healthcare healthcare, you could have access to all copyright content, ad free, and artists would be better compensated.
It’s an idea worth spreading.
The article became increasingly redundant as it continued. The crux seems to be Google isn’t their employer. These workers work for a subcontractor, Cognizant. Cognizant performs services for YouTube Music.
Cognizant is refusing to bargain citing the ongoing relevant litigation* between its employees and Google.
- I’m not sure what the legal process is called for union claims.
Some of the employees are striking for 1 day.
It’s redundant because there’s basically a circular argument that G and C are using to not respond to the workers. Workers want to C negotiate with G on the terms of their work with G but C says they can’t because they’re just contracting with G. Then G says the workers can’t negotiate with G because they work for C. Both companies point the finger at the other as to why they can’t help and just give nothing back to the workers.
The article is confusing but it sounds like the union wants both C and G at the table, but C and G both agree that C should be the employer and G doesn’t need to join the talks. So C is saying, if you really want G to join, you’ll have to wait until the appeals are finished.
I’m guessing the union doesn’t want to negotiate with C, have C go to G with the terms and G refuse and just causing endless delays in a game of telephone bargaining.
What’s to stop every single corporation from leveraging third party contractor companies just to escape union bargaining? Cognizant seems like a company that basically exists for this reason. Both Amazon and Google play this game and it’s infuriating.
Nothing. It’s one of the alluring aspects of using third-parties. You pay a flat fee, people do work. You avoid all the overhead of HR, benefits, workers compensation and unemployment insurance. If you want someone gone there’s no process, you simply tell the third party that Joe doesn’t need to come back to work, ever, and you’re done.
Amazon and Google are not alone in this practice, nor is it exclusive to Fortune 500 companies.
I work as a contractor dev for fortune 500s. It’s wide spread. Handful of full timers, padded with contractors.
Brain drain is a real problem, but it also means there’s a culture of FTE being willing to jump through corporate hoops and on call hours, because they want to keep the FTE position instead of finding a new job every 1.5 years (in California where there are max contract lengths)
Hopefully people turn out in 2024 and stop us going down the 1930s Germany route… my mother recently moved to Pennsylvania from a deep red state, and was saying that due to Bidens “corruption”, she didnt think she would vote in 2024. Upon further questioning, my hyper conservative fundemantalist Christian uncle had been sending her news.
Hope my arguments convinced her otherwise, she detests Trump & the Republicans. Her vote DOES matter now. Have her set up with a variety of news websites & Firefox/ublock origin etc, and not “Townhall” garbage.
Depending on where in PA, it might be just as red as where she came from. If she’s not near Pittsburgh, or basically bordering NJ, then she’s probably in good ol Pennsyltucky.
That state really should be broken into three states, it’s way too large and it’s already divided geographically.
Nothing (yet). Yup, this model insulates corporations of all kinds from bargaining, costs (like healthcare), liability, and much more. Check out this episode from the Pitchfork Economics podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vUFBZNTY2NzY3ODY3NA/episode/M2JmMzVlNGMtMDk2NC0xMWVlLWFjMGUtYzc3Mzc0OTZlODFi?ep=14
People use YouTube Music?
I’ll use it as long as they keep it bundled with YouTube Premium. The day they unbundle I’m out.
$10 a month to have basically every song ever and never have to worry about YouTube ads. Yes, I use it.
hah, this was me with Grooveshark.
and then I lost everything when it shut down.
and then me again with Google play music. “upload your music, we’ll keep it for you”
and then I lost everything when it shut down.
“oh it’s ok, you can just use [new service], it’s better anyway”
it just isn’t the same, you lose stuff everytime. I don’t think it’s worth it.
and then me again with Google play music. “upload your music, we’ll keep it for you”
and then I lost everything when it shut down.
There was a long period where you could transfer your GPM uploads to YTM.
It worked perfectly for me - all my previously uploaded music is in my Library under “Uploads”.
Grooveshark. Now that’s a name that I really miss. I’ll never stop being mad about that site being taken down.
There’s apps to sync your stuff when you move to another platform. It won’t be perfectand certain features on certain apps are paywalled, but you should get a fairly acceptable copy of your content after using a service like this.
Your mileage may vary coming up in December. The $10 crew in the US will see a 40% increase at or near the end of the year. Grandfathering is going away.
This brings the cost of Google’s video/music service to match Amazon’s video/music service. Are those services of the same quality?
Soundcloud ($10) Is the real competitor to YT-Music in my book. Both benefit from user-generated and user-uploaded content. While there is crossover, I have found more tracks on Soundcloud that aren’t on YT than the other way around.
If by “savvy”, you mean flubbing your location to somewhere in the developing world where that’s the price point, I refuse to do that. I have no issue pretending to be in say, Germany and taking up a 75% off deal. But I won’t put myself somewhere where the regular $10-$15 price point is genuinely out of range of the locals.
If too many people fake their location to these places, the Googles and Steams of the world will stop giving those nations lower prices. I won’t have my own selfishness take something away from thousands of people.
YouTube Music is a much better option than Spotify, in my opinion.
On top of the music you get ad-free YouTube.
I also upload any music I buy via Bandcamp or physical CD so I can listen to it anywhere. No one else offers that as far as I know.
Just make sure you use the unofficial YouTube Music desktop app (http://ytmdesktop.app/) if you’re on a PC because using it in a browser sucks.
in theory i agree, but i could not stand the UI when i tried youtube premium, compared to spotify which is just seamless
Not sure if you were referring to YT Music by YT Premium. But YT Music is a different interface specifically for music.
6 family members for $15 a month and no YouTube ads. Also that money was basically paid for by Google Rewards. The Web App is good too. I don’t have to deal with CEF/Electron or any install really.
The Web site says $24 for 5 members. Is it different per location? How do you pay less?
Yeah, sorry that was bumped up recently though I was grandfathered for a long while. But that was the impetus for getting it back when it was just GPM.
It’s 6 actually (1+ 5 other members). My uncle basically paid for half of it.
It’s $22.99 for me now which includes YouTube Premium. Just YouTube Music (for 6) is $16.99. Individual $10.99 and Student $5.49.
I don’t use YouTube Music but I love using YouTube for my music. Tons of songs on there that just aren’t on either YouTube music or other services like Spotify.
You can listen to just the music that’s on YouTube via YouTube music. That’s one of the main reasons why I’m using YouTube music.
Yeah, I switced to YouTube music when Google Play music went away because that’s where I stored all of my music at. But The category is massive, especially for niche songs and you can choose to watch the video or just listen to the song, Also with a lot of the songs you can look at the lyrics in real time while the music’s playing and that’s kind of nice. Also ad free YT is nice.
For me, every other music app is missing alot of the songs I want to listen to (Cover songs, and remixes are the big 2) and they are only available on yt music.
Soundcloud might be an alternative worth looking into. For the music I tend to search for, I find I’m more likely to find it on Soundcloud, and it can take years to migrate from SC to YTM.
While YTM and SC were both $10, putting up with the worse platform was a reasonable price for no YT ads. Now that the grandfathering is ending and the price is jumping to $14, for US folks, I’m feeling the pressure to migrate.
Totally. I was already in the ecosystem so it was only natural I go to Music when it was available. Is it better than Spotify? Shrug. Just different.
I do because I pay next to nothing for a family membership, I can access YouTube covers and music normally unaccessible in my region (yeah, that happens!) and it works with Android Auto which my father needs (otherwise I would simply use Revanced). Also could never learn Spotify, it’s so counter-intuitive to me
Revanced, yeah. Still sucks when you’re looking for an album and all of the songs are from the official channel except for one that some schlub uploaded which repeats the previous track as an intro, has the levels maxed across all channels and sounds like it was recorded with a USB lapel mic in a paper bag
