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.
Yeah I read this article and other sources on the subject that give more details. Google has said they support them organizing but it’s not up to them. As far as I’m aware Google is the only tech giant that has an employee workers union
Well you absolutely know wrong lmao the Alphabet Workers Union is not recognized by NLRB, and Amazon’s Workers Union is. Apple also has some unionization, as do several video game developers and support companies.
Google has said they support them unionizing because they think it will not affect them at all. Maybe go look into the handful of people who have attempted to formally unionize at Google and see how they have all been fired. Then try and tell me Google supports unionization.
Amazon Warehouse and delivery drivers unionizing is not similar to the situation that the YouTube Music workers are dealing with and aren’t the same as what the Alphabet union is but I’m glad you feel like undermining alphabet users achieving what they have but you are fully into recognizing two Apple retail stores barely passing and neglecting to mention their constant Union busting and propaganda. Thanks for supporting workers!
Two things: for one, I work at Google and am part of the AWU, so fuck you.
And for two, please explain exactly how amazon unionization is so fundamentally different from AWU unionization? Is it because AWU seeks to represent workers from every contractor/vendor alongside actual full time Googlers? Or what?
Lmao you’ve got nothing, that’s why you aren’t gonna waste your time. You tried saying I dont support workers or some shit when I’m part of the fucking union you just claimed me to be undermining. Maybe join and support a union yourself? I wouldn’t stoop as low as calling you a shit human, but you are severely misguided.
Sup bro, I hired nlbl whatever. They have a guy that’ll come fuck you in the ass and shit in your mouth every night. Don’t like it? Not my problem, talk to nlbl.
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.
Absolutely fair. But as one of those IT dudes who used to be a contractor but now work for the same megacorp I was contracting for - I wouldn’t bet on it being super menial stuff. I love my job and my employer, but it’s very well understood that the agencies are essentially a cover for some fairly serious labor law violations.
according to Times, Cognizant workers in Dublin were previously contracted for verifying business listings in Google Maps. this is far from “running the service” I’m afraid
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?
Your last paragraph is the actual value of a unionized strike as a subcontractor.
If your employees strike, you can’t fulfill your business obligations, and so you get pressured by the people you have a contract with.
The activity that skirts labor law is individual contractors, who are often indistinguishable from employees except for tax status and are much more often taken advantage of.
A contracting company is just a company agreeing to do business with another, and doing so via it’s employees. It’s basically identical to a auto parts manufacturer selling parts to a car company. A Ford parts supplier is largely just a middleman for managing the production of parts to keep Ford from having to manage that process itself. Ford can’t renegotiate those employees contracts, even though their work is directly to a spec dictated by Ford.
A Cognizant spokesperson told Motherboard in an email, “We have received the Alphabet Workers Union’s request for a Cognizant bargaining representative. The request put forward was for both Cognizant and Google to bargain. While we respect our associates’ rights to unionize, we firmly believe Cognizant is the sole employer of our associates. While the joint employer ruling remains unresolved, we cannot bargain at this time.”
“Google refuses to just admit that they are our employer, and then Cognizant is just using Google’s legal appeals as a scapegoat,” Marschner said. “That, honestly, is exactly why we filed for joint employer status in the first place. We knew that if we just tried to engage in collective bargaining with Cognizant, that’s exactly what they would do.”
Google has a shell company, Cognizant, that hires and subcontracts people to Google. When the workers unionize, they’re unionizing against cognizant, not Google. The workers are trying to say otherwise, will more than likely need a court case to sort it out.
Cognizant is very much NOT a Google shell company, they are a third-party contractor with business in healthcare, tech, energy, insurance, education, etc.
This isn’t right. Cognizant are a well known systems integrator. In Australia alone recently they bought out some of the best local SIs just to get presence - contino and Servian, with a rumoured third (versent) on the way…
Theyre a body shop looking to grow their born in the cloud generstion of engineers.
There’s been enough creators that have had enough problems with YouTube that maybe something could happen. I’m not putting money on it or anything but it wouldn’t be that crazy.
An empty platform has little value. Hundreds have gotten shut down for this very reason.
Content by and large makes the platform. Not the other way round. Yet the platform soaks up the lions share of the benefit. Leaving most who aren’t whales to see nothing at all. This is the problem google is very complicit with. I’m all for them making enough to sustain the service. I just think they owe far more than they are giving, to the content that made them.
Nebula is great. And is trundling along just fine. It could use some more promotion and love sure. But it’s goals aren’t the same as a behemoth like Google’s. Who’s talents aren’t in creating content, but promoting it.
Creators would exist without the platform. They always have. But the platform definitely does bring value. The problem is that for a while now, greedy corporations have slowly been pushing the balance so that they received most of the benefit of everyone else’s work. It’s an overarching problem of capitalism that we need to deal with. But have been putting off for 50 to 60 years.
Creators would exist without the platform. They always have.
Not sure what you mean with this. Youtube has allowed anyone with a camera and an internet connection to put content out in the world. It was completely different back before youtube existed.
I’ve been on the internet since 94. I know what it was like. YouTube did not create creators. People posted video to the internet long before YouTube was a thing. And long before Google owned it. Because they didn’t create it.
I’m not saying people didn’t share videos beforehand, but youtube created a platform that allowed people to do it more easily, be discovered more easily, and actually make a decent living through it. The internet landscape, especially in respect to influencers or content creators, is entirely different now than it was in the 90’s.
So did Vimeo and dozens of others. YouTube did not get where it is by being better. Or by even being a platform. It got where it is by being bought out by a large corporate entity with near endless sums of money to back it with over the competition.
And a decade or two from now the internet is liable to be as different again from today as today was from them. And many people will be wondering Google who? Because ultimately people will remember the content not the platform.
Yes, but the backing by Google turned it into a viable career path for many creators. Name a single creator who posts to vimeo as their full time job. I’m not saying that youtube’s rise in popularity was necessarily good or ethical, I’m just saying that it is objectively better for creators over the other options.
You’ve basically said the same thing over and over about four or five times now. And been shut down on the facts of it every single time. Aren’t you getting a little tired of that?
Publishing has existed long before Google and alphabet. And it will exist long after they’re gone. Creators don’t really owe them all that much to be honest. And yes Vimeo or other competitors could have just as easily been the ones to do what YouTube did. Because YouTube didn’t do anything. It was the leveraging of Google’s near Monopoly on search and advertisement that allowed them to guide everyone to YouTube once they owned it. Making it viable and profitable for them to share some of those profits no matter how small with the people who post. People made a living making videos long before YouTube.
You’ve basically said the same thing over and over about four or five times now. And been shut down on the facts of it every single time. Aren’t you getting a little tired of that?
Yes, I am getting tired. You consistently argue against the pretty inoffensive and commonly understood arguments I have made with completely irrelevant points. So I’ll say it one more time and see if it can finally sink in. If someone wants to get into making videos, they’ll go to youtube for better or for worse. I’m not arguing about the pros and cons of Google’s influence, I’m saying that the reality is that youtube has enabled a huge amount of people to monetize their video creation and build an audience in a way that other competitors haven’t caught up with. If you’re arguing that the landscape for video creation and publishing on the internet is the same as it was before youtube rose to prevalence, then you’re just dead wrong. Sorry.
Also, you do understand that youtube was more successful than vimeo before google’s acquisition, right? Their success is kind of the whole reason google backed them.
Going with what is happening in the SAG/AFTRA strike, perhaps the big names shouldn’t join the strike because they would come across as entitled, but they are more than welcome to donate towards the strike.
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.
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.
could they put bring the dislike count back on the demands? and make so video posters can’t delete comments, so we can call bullshit when needed? that would be nice
No they have bigger priorities, like retroactively demonitizing and removing videos that used to be just fine under the new ruse of “making everything more kid friendly” when we all know it’s to make it more advertiser friendly
If only there were an app… suited for kids that google could use… One that would give them the limitations and safety they want from people and not ruin the whole site while still chasing those kid viewers.
I get the technicality of all this, but this could be a watershed moment. Businesses like to contract people out to move liability and cut corners in their obligations to the workers. The bottom line is that its cheaper and easier to fire whatever contractors you don’t like for any reason, and artificially push their salaries/wages down.
Look at Fedex Ground, Amazon drivers, etc. Google is now firmly in the role of the bad guy here, with Sundar Pichai making 220+ million dollars with much of it on the backs of layoffs and ethnically bankrupt business practices. I honestly think the ramifications of this in a positive way for the workers is tantamount to the formation of the UAW itself with their sitting strikes. They sat at the machines and forcibly halted production.
That needs to happen here, and all you scabs, fuck you. You can just piss off.
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 …google.com/…/M2JmMzVlNGMtMDk2NC0xMWVlLWFjMGUtYzc…
Nothing, and they do just that. No labor laws apply to contractors and it’s practically the only way some of them can earn a decent wage, so striking is futile - they’ll just switch to other contractors.
Well, now you have contract bargaining with your contracting company, and those companies aren’t immune from their workers becoming disgruntled and unionizing.
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.
I used a tool that synced my Spotify playlists to Apple Music. It worked surprisingly well. I signed up the one time, moved everything over, and then made sure to cancel the service.
this hit me hard on multiple levels. There was a lot of live performances and remixes on Grooveshark that just don’t exist anymore.
But, I also lived where they were headquartered. They had started a “Grooveshark university” for local programmers to learn the ropes and it was really cool. I was self-taught but learned a lot from that experience. Such a shame
I actually met employees from the company at a conference years ago and knew people that worked there off and on. It was a pretty toxic environment and the management was basically a frat party. The office had an in-house chef for a while before they had to tighten the purse strings due to the multitude of lawsuits they were getting hit with (most of which I learned came from Sony BMG). Their team of lawyers basically worked around the clock. They also underpaid devs but had an array of talent from every level that allowed people to cut their teeth and work on some cool UI.
I used to have a ton of stuff on Grooveshark and had stuff shared to me (and vice versa) from others. It was a cool UI even if it was a little clunky at times. Great place to find obscure stuff.
You can still upload up to 100,000 tracks, I believe.
Though I’ve not personally tried to do a bulk upload since before it changed from GPM, so I don’t know if there’s still library import tools available to help with that
There are export options for many music subscription services now, as well as apps like TuneMyMusic, Playlisty, etc. which can transfer your library and services between services.
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.
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.
Same + foreign artists. Lots of J-Rock artists that are hard to find on Western music services, let alone other countries. Only stuff like K-Pop I can find consistently on Western music services just because of how in demand it is.
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.
they are talking about User Interface, it’s different for YouTube (the one for video) and YouTube Music (the one for music). Premium subscription can be shared between the two services, that’s correct
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.
Yeah. You can search for and add any YouTube video to a playlist for YMusic. I do this all the time with various Indies, remixes, and foreign artists that are hard to find otherwise.
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.
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.
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.
also pricing varies heavily by region. Family subscription is $6 and student is $2.50 where I live (Poland). But we also got 70% price cut when LJ introduced regional pricing for Sync ad-free because we are poor in general as an economy
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
Ever since Google destroyed Google Music i switched to Spotifly because at the time YouTube music couldn’t tell the difference between memes and music plus alot of my playlist was unavailable
The NLRB ruled that the nature of their work makes them employees of both Cognizant and Google, despite whatever those companies try to classify them as, and that both are required to negotiate with the union. Google is now just flat-out refusing to respect that decision.
I was a “contractor” for JnJ. Which ok, is a different company but it’s the same premise. The reason they contract the work out is so they can avoid giving benefits and cut costs for an essential job. All so when something like this happens they can just pass the buck off to the contracting company saying it’s not their responsibility for the working conditions they set.
DuckDuckGo is fine for some things, but if you want to do a search with a specific phrase in quotes, it doesn’t recognize it. I hate having to go back to Google for some searches, but sometimes it’s just better. I wish it wasn’t, but it is.
DuckDuckGo’s image search also leaves a lot to be desired.
I tried switching to DDG and then Qwant and sadly they both suck for some searches. For example neither could successfully find anything more specific than the home page on my country’s government websites. Perhaps Bing, but, again, it’s Microsoft?
You don’t need to do the quote thing in DDG. You can literally just search the quote, and maybe the domain it was hosted on. You will find what you’re looking for. DDG even has business profile widgets like google search does. I don’t even miss google search at all.
I don’t think you understand what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a search phrase that is partially in quotes for an exact match and partially not for an inexact match. Google handles that, DDG does not.
I use duckduckgo but just throw in the google bang if I need specific functionality. Usually DDG is fine for me usually but it’s convenient to be able to switch quickly.
Oh sweet summer child, you’ll be waiting a while. Pull up a chair. Let me tell you a story about how I’ve been waiting years, with an S, for the Android app remake that they keep pushing back.
Well, they aren’t even replying to whether the community-developed rclone backend breaks TOS, so don’t expect much… but yeah, i pay for Proton and they’re good for what they are.
Start your own email server!! Download all of your favorite channels! Sub to your fav youtubers patreons! If you need music, use Spotify until you amass a collection of digital/physical music! Use FireFox! Google does not need to have any grip on our digital lifestyles.
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.
One idea of subcontractors is to split and delegate societal responsibility to others to appear to be clean. Surely the law is focused on Cognizant here, but the responsibility lies fully on Google, including their ability to intervene.
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.
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