[Kalium]

You're absolutely right. It's wildly unethical to treat people as second-class citizens for no reason at all. This just might not be a scenario where there is no reason.

There's actually a rather complex wrinkle here. Failing to treat contractors as sufficiently different from employees can incur liability as if they are employees. This is not speculation, and has bitten large software companies - https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...

In order to treat contractors as equal with employees, any company would have to essentially make them employees. While I'm absolutely certain this would be better for many people! I'm also certain that some would wind up unemployed. Not to mention that some people prefer contracting for their own reasons.

Perhaps there's cause for a careful examination of some subtlety here?

[pesmhey]

It's definitely complex. Thanks for the link to Microsoft's trouble in this area. It seems somewhat similar, based on this line:

Microsoft’s problem was that it failed to treat them like ICs — that is, like people running their own independent businesses. Instead, Microsoft integrated the workers into its workforce: They often worked on teams along with regular employees, sharing the same supervisors, performing identical functions and working the same core hours. Because Microsoft required that they work on site, they received admittance card keys, office equipment and supplies from the company.

From the information made public in the grievance letter, it seems that a significant portion of Google's TVCs (their name for ICs) would fall into this bin - workers doing the same work at a different level of compensation.

It'll be interesting to see this unfold as time goes on. People were out for blood even back in the 90s, and Bill Gates didn't even set out to create a walled garden for Ivy leaguers (and Stanford). Seems like Google may find itself at the forefront of another national conversation, this time about the growing class divide.

[Kalium]

It definitely seems like a different name for the same arrangement at first blush!

Looking at it a bit, Google is using a different structure than Microsoft did. Microsoft had direct contracts with ICs. Google has contracts with vendors or contracting agencies, and TVCs are employees or contractors with those companies. I realize this seems like a distinction without difference, but in legal terms I suspect it's probably very different.

It's certainly a common arrangement for a company to have a series of teams that they contract out to other companies. I know some people in Sofia who make locally-spectacular wages doing this that they would struggle to access other ways.

As for a "conversation", I'd rather Teh Grauniad had no part of it. You can't have a conversation if you're wearing earplugs and using a megaphone, and that's really their MO.

[pesmhey]

Totally agree, that distinction will be important. Personally, I think it’s a distinction in letter and not in spirit.

Had to look up Teh Grauniad, thanks for the laugh!