Bloomberg: ‘Inside Google’s Shadow Workforce’

Bloomberg published an article recently discussing the issue of Google’s contract workforce — employees that are expected to work just as hard as everyone else at the company without any of the benefits, and reportedly outnumber full-time Google employees.

In an article published by Bloomberg titled “Inside Google’s Shadow Workforce,” journalists Mark Bergen and Josh Eidelson discuss an issue not often discussed when mentioning Google: its army of contract workers. Google’s office system works on a colored badge system, each color dictating a person’s employment status at the company. Full-time Google employees receive white badges while contractors are given green or red badges. These employees work in the same buildings as all the other Googlers, eat in the same cafeterias and perform similar duties to full-time employees — they just receive almost none of the benefits that Google employees receive, including in some cases health insurance.
The Bloomberg article states:

Google’s Alphabet Inc. employs hordes of these red- and green-badged contract workers in addition to its full-fledged staff. They serve meals and clean offices. They write code, handle sales calls, recruit staff, screen YouTube videos, test self-driving cars and even manage entire teams – a sea of skilled laborers that fuel the $795 billion company but reap few of the benefits and opportunities available to direct employees. Earlier this year, those contractors outnumbered direct employees for the first time in the company’s twenty-year history, according to a person who viewed the numbers on an internal company database. It’s unclear if that is still the case. Alphabet reported 89,058 direct employees at the end of the second quarter. The company declined to comment on the number of contract workers.

Google isn’t the only company that runs this way, tech giant Apple also hires a large number of contractors to perform employee tasks. This is a tried and true method to keep the employee headcount low, freeing up millions of dollars to invest in high paid professionals in other research industries, such as artificial intelligence. However, Bloomberg notes that this can result in an “invisible workforce” that does the heavy lifting without any reward:

The result is an invisible workforce, off the company payrolls, that does the grunt work for the Silicon Valley giants with few of the rewards. “Many of these workers don’t have a voice on the job. They don’t necessarily get the benefits that many of us think about when working at a big, glitzy tech company,” said Maria Noel Fernandez, campaign director for Silicon Valley Rising, a union-backed group based in San Jose, California that advocates on labor and housing issues. “And they’re not really part of this wealth.”

Bloomberg notes that companies like Google have faced criticism for this practice and as a result has brought some positions in-house. But the odd working arrangement has caused issues in the workplace on more than one occasion:

In recent years, Google has brought some contract positions in-house. Following criticism, in 2014 it announced that some security guards would become direct staff. Most contractors do not work longer than two year stints, according to multiple contract workers who spoke to Bloomberg News,  but some serve multiple terms on the hopes of becoming direct employees. Google did not provide data on how many achieve that.

 

Read the full article in Bloomberg here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com