YouTube Music team laid off by Google while workers testified to Austin City Council about working conditions::Some workers learned of the YouTube Music layoffs while testifying to the Austin city council about Google’s refusal to negotiate with the union.
YouTube music being built by Cognizant makes sense tbh.
… Realest comment so far
Hmm I wonder if they’re responsible for the Audible app, too?
It all makes sense now.
Cognizant, a professional services company that Alphabet contracted the YouTube Music team through, said in a statement that the workers were let go after their contract ended at its intended date, according to KXAN in Austin.
A spokesperson for Google told Business Insider that Cognizant is responsible for ending the workers’ employment, not Google.
“Contracts with our suppliers across the company routinely end on their natural expiry date, which was agreed to with Cognizant,” the company said in a statement.
Not sure how much of the fault is from Google’s side here since the employees contracted from another company.
I am not defending Google here, but Cognizant is trash. I run a firm of specialist and a bulk of our work is cleaning up after outfits like Cognizant , Infosys, etc.
All that said, firing a group of 43 workers that chose to unionize during an Austin City Council meeting as it was being live streamed is all sorts of spicy. Google and Cognizant fucked up.
How’s that work, is there lots of hair pulling? Or are you able to charge an arm and a leg and set your timelines because the clients don’t have much of a choice?
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My complaints on quality of code, maintainability, et cetera are met with “they move faster”, “they have more expertise doing projects like this”, and “they help keep us lean”.
This is all corpo speak for “they were cheap and their H1Bs were close to expiration”
It’s no surprise, after all Cognizant is the first letter in CHWTIA. 🤭
The National Labor Review Board ruled that Google was a co-employer of these union members and, thus, ruled that both Google and Cognizant had to come to the table to hammer out a bargaining agreement with them. Google refused. When this council resolution was put forth, Katherine McAden of Google Austin emailed the Austin City Council members on 02/28/24 to ask them to postpone the vote to “give Google, and the City Council, time to fully understand the direction of this item and potential local outcomes.” The very next day (02/29/24), while two members were in the middle of testifying to the council, that was the exact moment Google fired the lot of them.
I don’t see how much more open and shut you can get here.
Thank you for this. This should be the top comment.
I wonder how the new Cemex framework affects this.
At least in the UK, if you work like an employee enough, the court can overrule the technicality of your employment status as a contractor and apply labor law protections.
This is exactly what happened with these union members. The National Labor Review Board ruled that Google was a co-employer along with Cognizant, and they ruled that Google just come to the bargaining table with these union members. They refused. They emailed city council members asking for a postponement of their vote to give them time to sort stuff out, and it was granted. The very next day, the fired the entire union out of retaliation for speaking to the city council voicing their concerns.
Blaming another business? Hmmm. Sounds like Boeing’s attempted solution.
Damn it, what am I supposed to do with this pitchfork now?
But seriously, shitty misleading headline.
If you watch the video, one of the union members is at the Council meeting speaking to the City Council and another union member walks up to him to inform him that they were laid off with immediate effect. The workers both seemed genuinely surprised that they were laid off.
Use it.
Don’t be fooled by layers of bureaucracy.
As along as it lands in the soft belly of those in the owner class or their supporters, it has served it purpose.
Take your dumb reddit shit back to reddit.
The “pitchfork” joke dates back to Fark, my friend.
That sounds all kinds of highly illegal and I cannot wait for the delicious lawsuit
Well, well, well… who would have thought that the company who said don’t do evil did evil anyway. This is why I don’t trust corporations because their only loyalty is to investors who just wants more money.
Genuinely, why is it so difficult to be a good company? There’s that one company that paid all their workers like 70k and the employees would die for the company. Loyalty means something and reinvesting in your workers builds a stronger company, no? What’s the deal? Everyone fights for pennies vs building a strong foundation in a company culture and living it.
Honest answer. Infinite growth is the only business model we universally accept. This puts unrealistic expectations on how we define success.
It’s not enough to own a successful diner making good cheap food for 500 people a day. Why can’t you do that for 5000 people? 50,000 people? Then in comes efficiency and questions about profit. Meanwhile your Zadie who started the restaurant 60 years ago is long dead and so is the simple life he envisioned for his kids.
Are you talking about Gravity Payments and its CEO, Dan Price? Sorry to break the fairy tale but it has been shown that he is some weird, creepy guy who ran his team like a cult and accused of sexual allegations. He resigned over a year ago. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/18/dan-price-resigns-ceo-gravity-payments
Interesting. Thanks for sharing, I had no idea. I only checked wiki, but I see that the company is still doing well and has continued to pay it’s staff well through 2023 (wiki link).
There’s a handful of ethical companies and does not trade as public or private entity, so they’re not beholden to shareholders, but we wouldn’t hear about them often. Mondragon is a successful co-operative and worker federation company in Spain.
In most cases the shareholders that own the company don’t care about the company’s purpose, just their ROI in a certain time frame. And then the executives incentives are structured to reward quick financial results.
If you want to listen to music on YouTube but don’t like this type of fuckwadary, try out the Clear Skies chrome extension to skip ads and let them keep their advertisements to themselves.
