[HN Gopher] Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers
___________________________________________________________________
Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers
Author : jdkee
Score : 298 points
Date : 2021-09-10 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| pengaru wrote:
| Never forget: if slavery weren't illegal there would be no
| shortage of slave owners.
| threatofrain wrote:
| > Google executives have been aware since at least May 2019 that
| the company was failing to comply with local laws in the UK,
| Europe and Asia that mandate temporary workers be paid equal
| rates to full-time employees performing similar work, internal
| Google documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian show.
|
| > But rather than immediately correct the errors, the company
| dragged its feet for more than two years, the documents show,
| citing concern about the increased cost to departments that rely
| heavily on temporary workers, potential exposure to legal claims,
| and fear of negative press attention.
| heisenbit wrote:
| The crux is that one needs to be willing to pierce through the
| pretend veil of separation:
|
| > "the correct outcome from a compliance perspective" and could
| place the staffing companies it contracts with "in a difficult
| position, legally and ethically".
|
| The systemic abuse of subcontracting companies to undermine the
| rule of law by these large corporations needs to stop. But it
| only will if executives at Google would face the same
| consequences as executives at the subcontractors (which tend to
| escape criminal punishments as well by hiding behind multiple
| shells and false ids).
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| The systemic abuse from the rule of law needs to stop. How
| dare anyone try to tell me who I can work for or how much I
| can charge for my services.
|
| All this nonsense does is keep the privileged in their place
| by not allowing the poor to underbid them.
| nickff wrote:
| The minimum wage was one of the earliest examples of this;
| attempting to make it more expensive (and uneconomical) to
| employ black people.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think I'm going to start using reverse psychology on
| these issues. "I love these laws. I don't want the poors
| undercutting me. They should be deported instead."
| ashtonkem wrote:
| As I keep saying: there's nothing more dangerous than a company
| (or department in this case) that was once wildly profitable
| and is now merely profitable.
|
| It's absurd that even at places like Google, which has
| effectively infinite money, there's still this present attitude
| of not being able to afford paying workers. Nuts.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Its not really "dangerous" only because that wording implies
| another state of possible affairs that could be safer.
|
| unfortunately, ceteris paribus, the tendency of a rate of
| profit to ultimately slow is one of the costs of a free
| market, there is not really a way out of it long term!
| worik wrote:
| Where is this thing called "Free Market"?
| stadium wrote:
| Competition from Facebook and now Amazon ad businesses
| eating away at profit margins
| RIMR wrote:
| It's not that they don't think they can afford to pay fairly.
| It's that the decision makers are incentivized to cut every
| possible cost and are rewarded for it with multimillion
| dollar bonuses.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Yes, you're right. I worded my post for the sake of
| glibness and not clarity.
|
| I think what's particularly fascinating is not the
| relentless drive for more profits, that's been hashed to
| death and I have nothing original to offer here, but how
| the internal narrative of "we can't afford to pay them"
| holds in cases where it's transparent bullshit. Of course
| Google can afford to pay its temp workers a fair wage, and
| of course they don't want to. It's just surprising that the
| story they tell themselves is so trivially falsifiable.
| 0des wrote:
| What is the mechanism by which an entity that has the resources
| to spend on wrist-slaps is prevented from just continuing the
| behavior forever? I notice this a lot, and it feels like there
| are these opportunities everywhere that are exploited by
| corporations who know they'll skate every time with minimal
| financial impact.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the mechanism is turning the heat up to 11. Whatever money
| they saved, 20x it and fine them. Do it for every minor
| infraction until they comply. Drag their executives in front
| of a camera and make them issue a public apology. What are
| they gonna do, drop out of the entire European or Asian
| market?
|
| The problem is just lack of political willingness to reign
| them in, nothing else.
| burlesona wrote:
| Agreed. Executives need to start getting personal punishment
| if we want corporate behavior to change.
|
| Alternatively, start issuing fines such that it's X percent
| of revenue plus Y percent of salary from all employees. Even
| a fine of 1% of annual pay would light a big angry fire under
| most employees, and perhaps incentivize them to stand up to
| the execs and refuse to follow illegal or unethical
| decisions.
| lumost wrote:
| The gdpr fine system has seemingly been very effective and
| convincing corporations to comply with laws. Maximum of 20%
| in revenue fines, enough to cause many businesses to
| recapitalize - wiping out shareholders and executives.
| yupper32 wrote:
| You want to directly fine low level employees for the
| actions of execs? My god, no. That's such an evil idea.
|
| They're fined indirectly with stock prices already, but man
| is your idea really bad.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Penalties should be high enough, that even if 10% of the
| cases are uncovered, the fines become more expensive than
| actually working within all rules.
|
| Also, a lot would be solved if responsible people would get
| punished too, especially if they knew about the illegal
| stuff, and didn't do anything.
| bko wrote:
| The "wrist slaps" will make up for the entire amount that the
| offending party short-changed the workers and penalties on
| top of that not to mention the cost associated with
| litigation.
|
| So it's not economical for the offending parties to continue
| such behavior.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > So it's not economical for the offending parties to
| continue such behavior.
|
| Of course it is. The only needed change is to take adequate
| care to not leave incriminating evidence such as emails
| around.
| [deleted]
| chitowneats wrote:
| This assumes a 100% success rate of catching such behavior.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Penalties just have to be set correctly.
|
| If I don't pay a parking meter I'm likely to lose up to 100x
| as much as I saved... if Google doesn't pay its employees...
| RIMR wrote:
| Honestly, underpaying employees should be viewed no differently
| than any other for of theft, and executives willfully allowing
| it to happen ought to be facing time behind bars for it.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Wage theft is the largest form of theft
| ren_engineer wrote:
| nothing will change until high level executives start getting
| thrown in jail
| [deleted]
| pembrook wrote:
| My question is, if it's so advantageous to employ people via
| onsite staffing firms (basically half of FAANG's workforce is
| employed this way), why doesn't Google stop directly employing
| people _altogether?_
|
| Without fail, if it's a giant publicly-traded company, a huge
| percentage of the workforce will always be onsite vendors. It
| seems so bizarrely arbitrary where they decide to hire direct vs.
| contract.
|
| And I'm not talking about janitors, I'm talking highly paid
| software engineers, product managers, etc working on the same
| teams with Google employees.
|
| Based on the rates I've seen, I can't imagine it's cheaper than
| having direct employees. So I'm guessing its more about making it
| easier to fire people, harder to get sued by them, and offloading
| the hassle of benefits onto a third party. It's clearly legal in
| the US, so why not take that strategy with _all_ employees.
|
| Does anybody have insight as to when this trend started in
| corporate America and why it's only popular with big publicly
| traded companies?
|
| When a company goes public, do they suddenly get a mandate from
| the Board that they have to start mass-hiring people through
| Adecco?
|
| Based on stories of mailroom workers rising up to executive ranks
| in the past, this clearly wasn't true as recently as the 1970s.
| syshum wrote:
| It is not only public companies, and the reasons are too
| numerous to list
|
| A more recent trend it so they can claim to offer good benefits
| but in reality that is only for the select few actual
| employee's
|
| Take for example the one company the claims to have a minimum
| wage of 70K (or what ever it was), I bet they are not paying
| the janitor, or other positions like that wage no they
| contracted those jobs out so now they can make the PR
| announcement they have this extremely high Min wage
| arve0 wrote:
| > My question is, if it's so advantageous to employ people via
| onsite staffing firms (basically half of FAANG's workforce is
| employed this way), why doesn't Google stop directly employing
| people altogether?
|
| Because it's the mix that is advantageous, not either one
| (employees only vs contractors only).
| epc wrote:
| There's a perverse distaste for hiring FTE for bland, routine
| work or to fill roles that have year to year volatility.
| Microsoft was notorious for this in the 1980s and early 1990s.
| If you were a superstar programmer you got offered a full time
| job as an employee. If you were "just" a technical writer you'd
| go through the same recruiting process but get offered a
| contract through a third party.
|
| From 1994-1999 I ran ibm.com (whatever that meant). For most of
| the five years it was just me, one other FTE, and a roving band
| of 5-10 contractors. Any time I suggested converting the
| contractors to FTE I got slapped down, even though it
| eventually meant the loss of a lot of talent.
|
| All I can figure is that the companies want to avoid long term
| benefits commitments. Healthcare. Pensions or 401ks, etc. They
| rarely saved money, the burden rate for my team was easily
| 30-50% more than my burden rate (not that the individuals got
| that largess, it usually went to their "manager" in the
| contracting agency).
| pembrook wrote:
| I guess it could be a practice that started when companies
| still gave out pensions.
|
| Pensions were a _massive_ burden (just look at the auto
| companies who still have massive pension liabilities), so it
| probably made a lot of sense back then.
|
| But now that corporate America has eliminated pensions in
| favor of 401ks, the contractor/employee juggling just seems
| wildly inefficient for anybody who's not a janitor.
|
| It feels like now its just a case of the sheep following the
| herd, for no one reason anymore.
|
| Anybody I talk to about this gives a nebulous response that
| basically amounts to "Hell if I know, that's just the way
| everybody does it!"
| jonas21 wrote:
| > And I'm not talking about janitors, I'm talking highly paid
| software engineers, product managers, etc working on the same
| teams with Google employees.
|
| As I understand it, nearly all of the contractors at FAANGs are
| janitors, cafeteria workers, content moderators, etc. It would
| be rare to find contractors working on the same tasks as full-
| time engineers unless it was some sort of niche area where the
| company didn't have expertise.
|
| The reason is that if it's not the core focus of your company,
| there's probably someone else who can do it more efficiently
| than you.
| ffggvv wrote:
| the engineers etc i've worked with that were contractors were
| far worse and way below normal google hiring bar. sorry if
| that's not PC but it's the truth. if they could get hired at
| actual google they would've done it.
|
| hell, if they could get hired as a SWE at a comparable firm
| they would do that instead of taking a massive pay cut to be a
| contractor
| [deleted]
| pembrook wrote:
| That's ironic then, because a huge percentage of the full-
| time employees at FAANG are actually _former contractors_ who
| 've been converted. So that would suggest a large chunk of
| their full-time employees are sub-par.
|
| And that still doesn't answer the question--why hire anybody
| directly at all?
|
| If you're so much better than the other contractors, they
| could just pay you higher rates. It'd be the same thing.
| ffggvv wrote:
| "huge percentage".. got any numbers to back that up? i can
| tell you its a single digit percent at G.
| luckylion wrote:
| That begs the question: why is Google using subpar
| developers? It's hard to imagine there just not being any
| better ones, and it probably isn't a money issue. Are they so
| against having good old employees?
| ceras wrote:
| Contractor SWE's at Google are very rare. In my several
| years there as both a SWE and EM (I'm no longer at Google),
| I never encountered one. My understanding from other
| EM's/Directors was they were only hired for non core
| product work, which did not overlap with the work that
| Google FTE SWE's did, and was very routine work. Most
| likely without internal code access - it was that separate.
|
| Core product/infra work, and anything non-trivial, is
| always done by FTE's.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| Opinions are my own. I also make no claim on the expertise
| of contractors.
|
| The common saying in engineering is you use the right tools
| for the job. Likewise, you place the right people to the
| right job. It would be a mismatch to put an L5+ to do some
| low impact work. That would be an inefficient use of
| limited resources. The SWE would also be unhappy since that
| affects their perf/promo. Depends on the potential
| impact/difficulty/urgency, it might be more appropriate to
| save that work for an intern, fixterm, or TVC.
|
| It's not about "so against having good old employees". It's
| business.
| poopypoopington wrote:
| Just speculating (I work at a FAANG) - a lot of "software
| engineering" at these big tech companies is just centering
| divs and refactoring code - you don't need a 10xer to do
| that stuff.
| ffggvv wrote:
| sometimes you just need someone who can write super simple
| scripts to help process/clean some data or do grunt work
| that none of the devs want to do. And sometimes this need
| is just temporary for 4 months etc.
|
| I wouldn't waste a google dev's on grunt work that any
| coder could do.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Sounds like they were caught red handed, mens rea and all. Any
| chance this ends up with serious repercussions like prison time?
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > any chance this ends up with serious repercussions like
| prison time
|
| When has any staff member of a FAANG company faced prison time
| for a similar crime? Not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely
| curious though my instinct is to say 'never'.
| dekhn wrote:
| I was going to say that Italy convincted David Drummond in
| absentia but it turns out the sentence was suspended so he
| wouldn't actually have to go to jail.
| syshum wrote:
| Executives only go to jail if
|
| 1. They do something to harm the government (i.e Tax evasion)
|
| 2. They do something to harm a Rich person
|
| 3. They do something to harm another multinational
| corporation
|
| If they just harm a few citizens... the government literally
| does not care
| paxys wrote:
| The only time this happens is when the employee was harming
| the company in any way (insider trading, selling IP etc).
| It's pretty obvious who the law favors in these situations.
| aemreunal wrote:
| The only one I can think of was Anthony Levandowski for
| stealing Waymo's trade secrets but he was pardoned a few
| months later.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's not really a similar crime; that's a crime against
| another corporation.
| nullc wrote:
| Years back Google and Apple conspired to illegally fix wages
| and were caught no less red handed, including executives
| emailing to keep the program out of email because it's illegal.
| The conspiracy even used threats of ruining other competitors
| with patent claims to force them to participate.
|
| The fines and judgement they paid were but a tiny fraction of
| the cumulative wages they stole. The lesson was that wage theft
| is profitable.
|
| Until we start imposing a corporate death penalty in situations
| like this there will be no reason for companies to not simply
| do the economic calculation and decide the defrauding their
| employees is the right thing to do for their bottom line, one
| that can be optimized by lowering the risk of prosecution by
| better obscuring the crime or building up a legal team that can
| tie up the largest of nation states in court for decades.
| bko wrote:
| > Civil law vs. criminal law: Punishment
|
| > Another important distinction between civil and criminal law
| is the type of penalty paid for being found guilty. In a
| criminal case, if the individual charged with a crime loses the
| case, they're likely facing incarceration or some type of
| probation. For civil cases, the resolution to a case doesn't
| result in the "losing" party going to jail. Often the judgement
| results in a financial penalty or an order to change behavior.
|
| https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/civil...
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Section 2 makes it an offence to commit fraud by false
| representation in any form. For a representation to be false,
| the representation being made must be wrong or misleading,
| and the person making it must know that it is, or might be,
| wrong or misleading.[0]
|
| I think it is reasonable to presume that by paying it's
| contractors, Google and by virtue it's executive team was
| representing to said contractor that they were being paid
| according to the labor laws. Google executives knew that this
| was not the case, and withheld that information, likely in
| order to increase their own personal bonuses. That would seem
| to me to be theft by deception, illegal in every nation on
| earth as far as I can tell.
|
| That's not even to mention the shareholders, who were
| defrauded as the company financials do not accurately reflect
| their labor liabilities. This in turn may have increased the
| value of Google stock, that then the people committing fraud
| around wages receive as a considerable portion of their
| compensation.
|
| If knowingly lying for personal gain and costing potentially
| tens of thousands of people life changing amounts of money
| isn't fraud, what is?
|
| [0]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-fraud-
| act-200...
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Well, everything is securities fraud, so why not?
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/every
| t...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-22/every
| t...
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >costing potentially tens of thousands of people life
| changing amounts of money
|
| Have any numbers on this implication? How much is life
| changing in your opinion? Is there evidence this many
| people were shorted near that amount?
|
| It's hard to imagine that local wages are life changing for
| those "potentially tens of thousands of people" but paying
| market clearing wages would be significantly different.
| willcipriano wrote:
| If the amounts of money involved or the number of parties
| is small, why commit the fraud?
| scohesc wrote:
| The feds shouldn't do anything until bonuses are handed out to
| the board of directors then snag them all away. Options,
| stocks, hard cash, a new car? Yoink!
| sneak wrote:
| This is not the first time Google has been known to do this. Eric
| Schmidt was personally involved in the criminal conspiracy that
| formed one of the other high profile cases, and enjoyed a long
| and prosperous career at Google for many years afterward.
|
| Google is not an ethical employer.
| dekhn wrote:
| It continues to impress me that Google says it hires smart
| people, trains them not to put incriminating evidence in emails
| (really), and then hires managers who then put an entire chain
| into email (probably also archived as a group) and get the
| company written up on the front page of the NY Times (the very
| criteria they try to scare you with).
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Actually curious.
|
| Are these folks even paid by google? Or does google pay some
| contractor who then pays folks?
|
| Are the laws designed to cover temporary staff hired by google,
| or temporary staff hired by a contractor hired by google?
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I'm betting they legally underpaid a fair share of workers too.
|
| Corporate corruption like this is one of the reasons we can't
| have nice things.
| tdeck wrote:
| The presence of an underclass of low-pay contractors depresses
| wages for everyone.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Personal Googler story: In Ads and in Search, at least as of 2010
| or so, Google employed independent companies who hired "raters"
| to provide "ground truth" for the ML systems. For example, they
| would rate proposed ads for a given query, so that the ML system
| could learn from their "truth". For Search, they'd rate proposed
| search results for a given query. There was a whole pipeline to
| bring in the raters' results and use them.
|
| Those "raters" were contractors to the independent companies, and
| had no Google privileges at all. They couldn't come to campus and
| eat at the cafes, for example. They had no direct contact with
| any Google employees. I helped a relative get hired as one of
| those. This was about 11 years ago.
|
| These outside companies had minimal oversight from Google, by
| design. My cousin joined the Search rater company and was given a
| test problem, which was timed and they had max times allowed.
| When she finished, they said "sorry, you took too long, we're not
| paying you."
|
| I raised a stink and HR sent a representative to meet with the
| Search people. I sat in. The Search people were obnoxious little
| corporate toadies who claimed they couldn't interfere with any
| particular contractor's case, because of the legal separation
| requirements.
|
| I _so_ enjoyed watching the HR rep calmly and politely tell them,
| "That's great! Good job, you guys! But you know... when you hire
| someone and they don't do a good job, your remedy is to fire
| them. Not to refuse to pay."
|
| She got paid.
|
| I can't make any general statements about what happens to
| everyone, but in _this particular case_ , I can't complain at all
| about HR's handling.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Was it Leapforce or Lionbridge? I used to do search rating for
| both of those.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not following. Which company did the HR rep belong
| to? Which company did the "corporate toadies" belong to?
| Perhaps I'm just confused how you were able to have such a
| direct influence on the internal goings on of a supposedly
| independent company.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _I can 't make any general statements about what happens to
| everyone, but in this particular case, I can't complain at all
| about HR's handling._
|
| That's kind of _the exception that proves the rule_ , you
| think?
|
| That is, your outlining of the situation gives a strong
| suggestion that this sort of thing is common and unless the
| contractor has pull (say, a relative that works at Google),
| they can't do anything.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've always thought the phrase "the exception that proves the
| rule" is nonsense, btw. There's no such "proof."
| ggm wrote:
| The phrase is misunderstood. Historically "Proof" is
| contextually meaning the nature of the test, not passing
| it. "failed the test"-proof has been "disproved" by this
| exception, which shows a belief does not generally apply.
| I'm not explaining this very well but a Google search will
| throw up better explanations.
|
| Some how it's morphed to colloquially mean "yes, that one
| exception aside, I'm right and you're wrong" as if the
| negative somehow reinforces the positive..
|
| The phrase "the proof of the pudding is in the eating"
| helps understand this. The pudding may prove to be bad or
| good. Find which proof by eating it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| jerf's explanation makes sense. The negative certainly
| does not reinforce the positive.
| ggm wrote:
| Yes. They said it better. It certainly doesn't reinforce
| the positive, yet people seem to insist on using it as if
| it does. "Well, yes, that penny did land on it's edge but
| the exception proves the rule it had to be either heads
| or tails" type statements abound. No.. the exception
| proved pennies have three states not two: your argument
| is busted.
| jerf wrote:
| It is an old phrase. In this case, "proves" means something
| more like "tests". In modern terms, I'd say it's something
| like, "You don't really know you have a rule until someone
| has tested it by claiming an exception." e.g., setting a
| child's bedtime to 9pm will pose no challenge if they
| voluntarily go to bed at 8:30, it isn't until the exception
| comes along that you know whether or not you really have a
| rule.
| walshemj wrote:
| Rather odd as in the UK id expect to get paid a lot more as a
| contractor for the same roll as a FTE.
|
| A bit of "schadenfreude " that clerical jobs in HR are some of
| the one in the UK
|
| Update
|
| Having said that I was underpaid as full timer when I worked for
| a BT subsidiary back in the day and the HR director was a "piece
| of work"
| bjohnson225 wrote:
| > Rather odd as in the UK id expect to get paid a lot more as a
| contractor for the same roll as a FTE
|
| As a software dev/management contractor, sure, but as a "self-
| employed Yodel delivery driver" or similar low skill role?
| (Which it seems to be in this case)
| notJim wrote:
| > A whistleblower represented by Whistleblower Aid has filed a
| complaint about the alleged violations with the US Securities and
| Exchange Commission.
|
| Nice.
| azernik wrote:
| Matt Levine strikes again - Everything Is Securities Fraud!
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > whistleblower represented by Whistleblower Aid
|
| > https://whistlebloweraid.org/#
|
| Wish I had known about this when I worked at a catering company
| that hires "contractors" but then tells you what hours you can
| work, and when you can leave for the night. Sounds like a great
| company and I'll have to reach out and see if my info might be
| useful after all.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Hopefully they're getting paid [1] for their efforts!
|
| [1] https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower
|
| "The Commission is authorized by Congress to provide monetary
| awards to eligible individuals who come forward with high-
| quality original information that leads to a Commission
| enforcement action in which over $1,000,000 in sanctions is
| ordered. The range for awards is between 10% and 30% of the
| money collected."
|
| From this post:
|
| "While international labor law is not under the purview of the
| SEC, the complaint alleges that Google's failure to disclose
| the pay parity liabilities, which it estimates could amount to
| $100m, constitute material misstatements in its quarterly
| financial reports, a violation of US securities law."
|
| "The disclosure makes it clear that Google hasn't just broken
| labor laws around the world, but has misled investors about
| major legal and financial liabilities," said John Tye, founder
| and chief disclosure officer of Whistleblower Aid. "The lawful,
| anonymous whistleblower disclosure is a critical step toward
| ensuring that Google is held to account. We urge the SEC to
| bring an enforcement action against Google, and protect the
| rights of investors to receive complete and accurate
| information."
| elliekelly wrote:
| It's pretty messed up that "defrauding investors" is the
| legal action most likely to succeed in court and not, ya
| know, defrauding the people they actually defrauded.
| neil_s wrote:
| That's a jurisdiction issue though. Of course, the
| underlying cause is that the US, unlike other countries,
| doesn't have a pay parity law for US-employed temps.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Yep, seems to be a lot of that [1] going around.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28484294
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Time for a class action against Google. The whole industry could
| have depressed wages from their actions.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Today in "class action over the whole industry having depresed
| wages from their actions" history, this month marks the 21st
| anniversary of the DoJ filing a complaint against Google,
| Apple, Intel, and Adobe for agreeing not to poach each other's
| employees. The companies eventually settled a civil class
| action suit for $415 million.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| 11th anniversary Sept 24.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| It wasn't enough to correct their malevolent behavior.
| Alphabet's assets should be frozen pending a full
| investigation.
| kennywinker wrote:
| I'm with you that it's time for a class-action. But when I say
| class action I don't mean a law suit, I mean the labor class
| joining in action against the owning class. Collective
| bargaining, collective action.
| fnord77 wrote:
| ah, surely just incompetence or a bureaucratic black hole and not
| malice.
|
| > But rather than immediately correct the errors, the company
| dragged its feet for more than two years, the documents show,
| citing concern about the increased cost to departments that rely
| heavily on temporary workers,
|
| whelp
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Again?
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-lawsuit-
| excl...
| hnbad wrote:
| This is as good a time as any to remind workers that wage theft
| is among the biggest white collar crimes:
| https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
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