What occurred at YouTube Music with union staff, Austin testimony, Google and staffing agency

Final week, Benedict was one in every of a number of dozen unionized staff on the YouTube Music Content material Operations Workforce who came upon that they had been losing their jobs whereas testifying to Austin Metropolis Council. They had been talking, paradoxically, about their work—the refusal of Google and Cognizant, whom the Nationwide Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had decided to be their joint employers, to barter with their union, which the employees claimed was unlawful union-busting. Whereas Benedict was testifying, his co-worker Katie Marschener relayed the sudden information: “They just laid us all off. Our jobs are ended today, effective immediately,” Marschener mentioned. The video of Benedict, clearly shocked, went viral. (Reached for remark, Cognizant spokesperson Jeff DeMarrais mentioned if Benedict “needs help retrieving his things [left behind], that can be arranged very quickly.”) 

Because the staff first joined the union, Google has appealed the NLRB’s choice that they’re joint employers, which obligates the corporate to discount with them, with the board siding with the staff to date.

After an extended push to get to the bargaining desk, Benedict advised Fortune that not solely had been his and his former co-workers’ roles all of the sudden eradicated, however they’ve now been outsourced to staff in India whom Benedict and his colleagues had been instructed to coach. These staff had been employed after the Austin employee’s first strike final 12 months over returning to the workplace, says Benedict. Primarily, in his telling, YouTube Music workers had been pressured to dig their very own grave. 

In line with Benedict, the staff had been advised that the abroad crew would cowl at any time when there was an American vacation or a union strike. However “it appears that they were having us train our own replacements for the job,” he says, including that it’s “incredibly frustrating” and it means that “Google and Cognizant really don’t care about their products.” 

Cognizant denied that it fired staff in retaliation, whereas making its opinions concerning the union drive clear. “While we respect the right of our associates to unionize, our philosophy is that we work best together with direct open dialogue and collaboration,” Cognizant spokesperson Jeff DeMarrais mentioned, including that he’d “like to first challenge you to stop using charged terms like ‘workers’ and other standard rhetoric in your reporting.” DeMarrais then claimed that Fortune has traditionally used completely different phrases to seek advice from union and non-union labor.

Each corporations problem sure key components of the account of the YouTube Music staff. On the subject of who’s liable for negotiating with the union and who terminated them, Google shirks duty. Cognizant, then again, challenges the notion that staff had been laid off totally.

A consultant from Google advised Fortune that members of the YouTube Music crew weren’t Google workers and that “Cognizant is responsible for these workers’ employment terms, including staffing.” The spokesperson added that Google had no objections to the unionization, however mentioned the corporate plans to attraction NLRB’s joint-employer ruling.

Google added that elimination of advantages and outsourcing coaching course of is Cognizant’s sole area and selection. “We’ve long had many contracts with unionized suppliers and we expect everyone who we contract with to treat their employees fairly, whether they are unionized or not,” a spokesperson from Google mentioned. “We do not select or alter contracts based on whether our suppliers have unionized workforces and we do not treat anyone differently if they choose to join a union or not.”

There are at present 11 open unfair labor observe fees filed in opposition to Cognizant and Google, a spokesperson from the NLRB tells Fortune. When requested for a response to those fees, DeMarrais mentioned that “all matters pertaining to the NLRB will be discussed in court, which is the appropriate forum for that conversation.” Google didn’t reply this query. 

In response to final week’s incident, the Alphabet Staff Union-Communications Staff of America (AWU-CWA) is submitting one other Unfair Labor Apply cost with the NLRB in opposition to Google and Cognizant, it mentioned in a press release to Fortune. Urgent fees on behalf of the laid off crew at YouTube Music, the union alleges that “workers were unlawfully terminated by Google and Cognizant in retaliation for their union organizing.”

The outsourcing allegation

DeMarrais didn’t handle the declare that Austin-based staff had been changed by workers in India, which has additionally made the rounds on TikTok, however mentioned that the employees weren’t laid off. As an alternative “they have become part of Cognizant’s deployable talent pool where they are given seven weeks of dedicated, paid time to explore other roles within the organization and build new skills through our training ecosystem.”

YouTube Music staff have been petitioning to barter for a couple of 12 months now. Searching for higher pay, advantages, and extra versatile work, the employees struggled to get their employers to the bargaining desk. For Benedict, the abrupt finish to his job is simply the newest improvement in a yearslong course of. “They’re not done with us yet,” he tells Fortune. “We are absolutely going to keep fighting. We want justice. I think our employers, or former employers, would love it if we just moved on and forgot about it,” he provides. He says that what justice appears to be like like isn’t clear proper now, however vows that the union will push again.

“I think everyone’s pretty sick of not being paid for the hard work that they do, losing their jobs while the corporations make record profits,” Benedict asserts. “Something’s not right. And it really needs to change. I’m hoping that our campaign can help change that.” (Google father or mother Alphabet reported report internet earnings within the fourth quarter of final 12 months, at $20.7 billion, though its peak on an annual foundation was $76 billion in 2021.)

The unionization effort was already brewing when Benedict first joined YouTube Music in a completely distant function in September 2022, in line with his LinkedIn. Final April, staff voted 41-1 to be represented by Communications Staff of America. Shortly after the crew went public with their efforts, Google and Cognizant introduced a brand new five-days-a-week return to workplace mandate, in line with Benedict. The brand new coverage was “essentially a layoff for the many people on our team who didn’t live in Austin, or even Texas,” he explains, including that they went on strike in response. Cognizant spokesperson DeMarrais mentioned the corporate “communicated its return to office policy to our Austin-based employees repeatedly since December 2021. Any other depiction of that timeline is mythical and rhetoric.”  

Cognizant and Google level fingers, YouTube Music staff ushered out

Each Google and Cognizant say that they didn’t terminate workers however that the contract ended naturally. DeMarrais, the Cognizant spokesperson, advised Fortune that the contract’s finish was pre-planned.

However Benedict says that it was “absolutely a layoff,” pointing to his shell-shocked demeanor within the Metropolis Corridor video. “We had absolutely no idea that this was going to happen,” he tells Fortune. Regardless that it was a contract gig, in line with Benedict, the union was led to consider the contract with Google can be renewed. Different Google layoffs sometimes contain giving months discover, however YouTube Music staff got half-hour to depart the workplace, in line with Benedict. 

The union backs Benedict’s account. “Google and Cognizant have claimed that what happened last Thursday to the YouTube Music Content Operations Team was the planned expiration of a contract in the course of ’business as usual. In reality, workers were informed midday that their jobs were gone, effective immediately, and put on a timer to gather their belongings,” Alphabet Staff Union-CWA shares in a press release to Fortune. 

However the former YouTube Music crew is feeling the blow, even when each employers shunt blame to the opposite occasion. “It’s just a very, very obvious example that they are trying to bust our union. And I think it’s made even more obvious by the fact they had us train a team in India to do the same thing and that team did not lose their job” even when the Google contract ended, says Benedict. “Only the unionized people in Austin lost their job with Google and Cognizant.”

Cognizant maintains that the previous YouTube Music crew was not laid off, however “will become part of Cognizant’s deployable talent pool, better known as our ‘bench.’” DeMarrais mentioned that “tens of thousands of Cognizant employees move between active projects via the bench,” and two members of his personal crew had been employed from the bench.

However Benedict believes this bench is merely a holding pen earlier than an eventual layoff. “We don’t know of anybody who’s ever been rehired from the bench,” he says. He provides that the bench itself is “besides the point,” noting that the union members had been preventing for his or her particular jobs for which they had been educated for and have experience in.

And the whole contracting system seems to purposely cloud who’s liable for the employee’s rights, provides Benedict. “It seems to be their design … Google and Cognizant can point fingers at one another to avoid responsibility for negotiations.” He explains that it’s been arduous to talk to any precise particular person from both firm, and the union has up to now obtained one-word solutions when requesting info. In response, Cognizant mentioned “there were regular, in-person weekly standup meetings in the Austin office so it ‘being hard to speak to an actual person’ simply isn’t true.” He added that Benedict “chose not to be in the office on the day that our associates were notified of the contract expiry (during the regular, in-person weekly standup meetings).” Google advised Fortune that communication was Cognizant’s duty. 

Contractors problem firms 

Even earlier than a 12 months of difficult layoffs, the tech world wasn’t precisely the dreamy world it was portrayed as, particularly for contractors. “There’s the assumption that because we work for YouTube, or we work in tech that we made six figures, had amazing benefits, [and] work fully remote,” says Benedict. However the stereotype couldn’t be farther from the state of affairs at hand. 

Working in-office 5 days every week, Benedict was paid solely just a little greater than $19 an hour. Navigating an costly metropolis and a “brutal” commute, staff had been additionally coping with a lack of advantages as their 40 hours of paid sick depart had been taken away when the CDC declared the pandemic over, and plenty of staff got here in sick, in line with Benedict. DeMarrais didn’t reply to a query in regards to the sick depart coverage. Google, as soon as once more, mentioned this coverage concerning advantages was not of their area however Cognizant’s. 

“People were struggling to make ends meet,” says Benedict, including that some workers had been single dad and mom and plenty of labored a number of jobs to complement their earnings. At the same time as inflation raged, wages had stayed on the identical price since 2019, when the undertaking started, in line with Benedict. 

Nonetheless, Benedict and his former co-workers are motivated to maintain pushing. He tells different tech staff “the union fight is absolutely worth it,” and that the “more people that join the fight, the more likely we are to change the system that is working to underpay us.”

Having beforehand labored in a warehouse in a small city in Wisconsin that was additionally unionizing, Benedict believes that this can be a motion from working class individuals throughout generations. A report from the suppose tank the Economic Policy Institute discovered that main strike exercise skytocked by 280% final 12 months. Taking word from previous wins of the UAW in addition to WGA and SAG-AFTRA, Benedict explains it’s thrilling that YouTube Music staff’ efforts have “la[id] some of the groundwork for the rights of contractors and temps.”

The crew at YouTube Music is pretty younger and feeling the generational burns of navigating an particularly risky financial system and a crumbling social contract between employers and workers. “The system has been not good for us,” says Benedict, talking of a ballooning worth in school, hire, and affording housing.

“We’re coming into a world that’s not set up for us to succeed,” Benedict says of his era, “as well as just anyone who’s doing some sort of working class job, it’s not working for them either.” Including that he needs to maintain preventing and hopes to do some good on the planet, Benedict says “people are just fed up, and I think we’re gonna see some positive change coming real soon.”