Shortly after he discovered he now not had a job with YouTube Music, Jack Benedict went again to his workplace to be met by a cardboard field of a few of his stuff that co-workers had thrown collectively whereas being ushered out. Many of the crew of round 40 workers had already left the constructing, having discovered their contracts had ended and that they’d been given half-hour to depart, Benedict tells Fortune. Coming from the town corridor, Benedict, 25, was unable to enter his office to gather the remainder of his issues, and says he has but to have the ability to re-enter.
Final week, Benedict was certainly one of a number of dozen unionized employees on the YouTube Music Content material Operations Staff who came upon that they had been dropping 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 stated. The video of Benedict, clearly stunned, went viral. (Reached for remark, Cognizant spokesperson Jeff DeMarrais stated if Benedict “needs help retrieving his things [left behind], that can be arranged very quickly.”)
For the reason that employees first joined the union, Google has appealed the NLRB’s resolution that they’re joint employers, which obligates the corporate to discount with them, with the board siding with the workers to this point.
After a protracted push to get to the bargaining desk, Benedict instructed Fortune that not solely had been his and his former co-workers’ roles out of the blue eradicated, however they’ve now been outsourced to employees in India whom Benedict and his colleagues had been instructed to coach. These employees had been employed after the Austin employee’s first strike final yr over returning to the workplace, says Benedict. Primarily, in his telling, YouTube Music workers had been compelled to dig their very own grave.
In line with Benedict, the workers had been instructed that the abroad crew would cowl every time 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 employees 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 stated, 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 check with union and non-union labor.
Each corporations problem sure key elements of the account of the YouTube Music employees. With regards to who’s chargeable for negotiating with the union and who terminated them, Google shirks accountability. Cognizant, then again, challenges the notion that employees had been laid off solely.
A consultant from Google instructed 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 stated 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 stated. “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 the moment 11 open unfair labor apply expenses filed towards Cognizant and Google, a spokesperson from the NLRB tells Fortune. When requested for a response to those expenses, DeMarrais stated 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 Employees Union-Communications Employees of America (AWU-CWA) is submitting one other Unfair Labor Follow cost with the NLRB towards Google and Cognizant, it stated in a press release to Fortune. Urgent expenses 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 deal with the declare that Austin-based employees had been changed by workers in India, which has additionally made the rounds on TikTok, however stated that the employees weren’t laid off. As a substitute “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 employees have been petitioning to barter for a few yr now. On the lookout 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 most recent growth 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 dad or mum Alphabet reported document internet revenue within the fourth quarter of final yr, 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 position in September 2022, in keeping with his LinkedIn. Final April, employees voted 41-1 to be represented by Communications Employees 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 keeping 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 stated 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 employees ushered out
Each Google and Cognizant say that they didn’t terminate workers however that the contract ended naturally. DeMarrais, the Cognizant spokesperson, instructed 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. Although it was a contract gig, in keeping with Benedict, the union was led to consider the contract with Google could be renewed. Different Google layoffs usually contain giving months discover, however YouTube Music employees got half-hour to depart the workplace, in keeping 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 Employees 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 celebration. “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 stated 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 combating for his or her particular jobs for which they had been educated for and have experience in.
And your complete contracting system seems to purposely cloud who’s chargeable 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 exhausting to talk to any precise particular person from both firm, and the union has previously acquired one-word solutions when requesting data. In response, Cognizant stated “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 instructed Fortune that communication was Cognizant’s accountability.
Contractors problem companies
Even earlier than a yr 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, employees had been additionally coping with a lack of advantages as their 40 hours of paid sick go away had been taken away when the CDC declared the pandemic over, and plenty of employees got here in sick, in keeping with Benedict. DeMarrais didn’t reply to a query in regards to the sick go away coverage. Google, as soon as once more, stated 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 revenue. At the same time as inflation raged, wages had stayed on the identical price since 2019, when the venture started, in keeping with Benedict.
Nonetheless, Benedict and his former co-workers are motivated to maintain pushing. He tells different tech employees “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 folks throughout generations. A report from the assume tank the Financial Coverage Institute discovered that main strike exercise skytocked by 280% final yr. Taking word from previous wins of the UAW in addition to WGA and SAG-AFTRA, Benedict explains it’s thrilling that YouTube Music employees’ 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 unstable economic 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 technology, “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 combating and hopes to do some good on the earth, Benedict says “people are just fed up, and I think we’re gonna see some positive change coming real soon.”