Every Google Worker:
An Examination of Alphabet's US Shadow Workforce
1) Alphabet excludes thousands of US workers from receiving the basic pay and benefit standards which Alphabet has proclaimed available to its extended workforce. Search Raters are just one of these excluded groups. See Jay Buchanan’s Story, a Google Search Rater who is denied Alphabet's minimum standard for wages and benefits.
2) Alphabet's US Standards have been poorly communicated to workers or not enforced at vendor companies. See Rhys Crabtree’s story, who had to organize to have existing standards enforced in his workplace.
3) For workers who are not excluded from US standards, the pay and benefits standards are themselves increasingly inadequate in the face of the nationwide cost of living crisis. See DaYeong Song's story, a Google Maps worker supporting her family in the Seattle area.
4) Inequities among vendors are exacerbated by race, gender, sexual orientation, and ability, resulting in wage gaps. See Kaitlin Blaylock's story, a Google Help Center Writer with Accenture Flex
• Alphabet's diversity and inclusion is touted in its annual diversity report, however non-white workers are overrepresented in lower wage and benefit vendor roles. 65% of vendors surveyed were non-white.
•There exists significant pay and benefit disparities between FTE and TVCs. However, even only within vendors there exist significant racial, gender, and sexual orientation wage gap at Alphabet. Non-White vendors on average make nearly 10% less than their white counterparts ($75,024 versus $82,802/year).
• The disparity is even greater for Black and Latinx/Hispanic vendors, who make on average 20% less than their white counterparts ($66,056 and $62,710/year respectively).
• LGBTQIA2S+ vendors at Alphabet make on average 15% less than their cishet coworkers ($67,660 versus $80,159/year).
• Vendors with disabilities make on average 18% less than their able-bodied coworkers ($64,105 versus $77,866/year).
• Veteran vendors make on average 10% less than their non-veteran counterparts. ($70,281 versus $77,385)
5) Vendors of all wage levels (not just the lowest wage workers) report having significant work issues. See David Jones-Krause's Story of how Google treats TVCs of all wage levels differently than Employees
These issues include lack of job security, unnecessary isolation between FTE / TVCs, undefined career ladders, poor work life balance, fair compensation and benefits for their work, and a meaningful voice in decisions that impact their jobs.
Of those surveyed that shared salary information:
Even among those earning more than $100,000 a year, lack of respect, work life balance, and disparities between FTEs ranked high concerns.
“If we work fulltime and have counterparts with the same titles who are FTE then we should not be separated. Our benefits are so much less than.“
“Recognition [by Alphabet] that just because we are not FTE doesn't mean we are not skilled, knowledgeable and competent.”
“[We need] more job security.”
If you work for Google or Alphabet—you should not be struggling to make ends meet. Every Google Worker deserves dignified wages, quality benefits and a voice on the job. However, hundreds of thousands of temporary, vendor and contract workers (TVC's) are being denied comparable benefits, pay and resources provided by Alphabet to full-time employees. This is true, even when TVC workers provide the same services as full-time employees.
This problem is expansive. Globally, nearly 50% of Google workers are temporary, vendor and contract workers.
Google and Alphabet try and invisibilize this labor, in an attempt to minimize their overhead to investors and shareholders. This has created a complex web of Alphabet contractors and subcontractors—leaving TVC workers vulnerable and without basic transparency on the job.
In 2019, in the wake of workers organizing, Alphabet published a minimum standard for wages and benefits for members of its extended workforce in the US.
In 2022 nearly 26,000 of the estimated 50,000 US based Vendors were surveyed by members of Alphabet Workers Union via on-corp email. 1,853 workers employed directly by 248 vendor companies responded to AWU's survey, making this the largest and most comprehensive survey of Alphabet Vendor workers in history.
Our results reveal that Alphabet's current minimum standards fall well below the needs of workers who qualify, are often not received by workers who do qualify, and pointlessly exclude essential segments of the Alphabet extended workforce. While the major shortcomings are significant is severity and scope, none are insurmountable, especially where workers themselves are represented with a collective voice.
Each year, Alphabet surveys its Full Time Employees (FTEs) soliciting feedback for how to improve its products, services, and organization. Like many aspects of work at Alphabet, Temps, Vendors, or Contractors, (TVCs) have been excluded from that feedback system, and recently even locked out of sharing wage information which is the subject of an ongoing federal labor charge.
In early 2022 nearly 26,000 US based Vendors were surveyed by members of Alphabet Workers Union members via internal on-corp email. The survey was planned and conducted by members of the Alphabet Workers Union which asked 80 objective and subjective questions about wages, hours, working conditions, and benefits. Data analysis was provided by Véronique Émond Sioufi, PhD Candidate Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University and the Platform Organizing research collaboration.
1,853 workers employed directly by 248 vendor companies responded to AWU's survey, making this the largest and most comprehensive survey of Alphabet Vendor workers in history. In addition to surveys, many follow up conversations were conducted to better understand the diversity of experiences represented in the survey.
Alphabet Workers Union - CWA is a union of full-time employees, temporary employees, vendors, and contractors at Google and other Alphabet companies in the United States and Canada. We organize to build power to ensure our workplaces are equitable and that Alphabet acts ethically. We are members of Communications Workers of America Local 1400 and currently represent over 1,200 workers across Alphabet.
Learn more at alphabetworkersunion.org or follow us at @AlphabetWorkers.