Apple, Google, Bringing Low-Pay Support Employees In-House 98
jfruh writes One of the knocks against Silicon Valley giants as "job creators" is that the companies themselves often only hire high-end employees; support staff like security guards and janitors are contracted out to staffing agencies and receive lower pay and fewer benefits, even if they work on-site full time. That now seems to be changing, with Apple and Google putting security guards on their own payroll.
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Staffing agencies are scum. Pretty much modern day slave-traders.
I applaud any move to cut out the corrupt middleman from things like this. Staffing agencies are just that - corrupt labour pimps.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought Apple had already done this. Their cafeteria workers have been employees since the late 90s, give or take, and the folks who sit at the front desk are also employees. I had always assumed the security guards were as well, but apparently not.
Re: Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
I worked for Apple as a low-fat contractor. Yeah, the cafe people are Apple but everyone eating in the cafeteria aren't. Team Leads, "Trainers", and a few other people are Apple, and out numbered 35:1 if not more by contractors, and it runs like shit. Miserable job. My specific department Trainer didn't know anything and we couldn't talk to each other. You sat there with and ESD strapping you to a table. You repair Apple products for next to nothing. It's crap.
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What horrible department were you in? That doesn't sound like any department I encountered. Well, I'm not sure about the IT folks.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've only had good experience with staffing agencies. Because it's easy for them to let you go, that means they're also more willing to take risks in hiring you. I was able to get a job really fast right out of college with one, which helped establish my new skill set. Few people want to permanently hire somebody with a degree and no experience because it's too easy to find somebody who is a dud, even if they have a 4.0 GPA like I did.
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No, in Network Systems Administration. (Although I was a security guard many times in the Army, that was years ago.)
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and you need a BA / BS to be a low pay security guard (must be why they did not put on the site that deals with lot's of cash to many people where taking it just to cover the student loans)
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Worked with a staffing company before, but not with a security guard position.
The put me to work in a factor making $9 an hour doing work that should have started at a minimum of $15 an hour at the least. I was one of the only people there short of the managers who spoke english as the main language, half of the employees didn't even speak english at all and they had betting pools on how long before the new guys quit.
And have to love the schedule, 6 days on, 1 day off, 6 days on, 2 days off, 6 days on, 4 da
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I've had a job like that too. Do you know why they pay $9 an hour for that job? Because it's unskilled and you can find people all day at that rate. The only reason it isn't minimum wage is because then people wouldn't stay longer than their first day. The forces of supply and demand end up pushing the rate to what it is.
Personally I wouldn't even do that kind of work for $15 an hour. My sanity just isn't worth that price. I wouldn't even do it for $25 an hour. Why? Because I've been able to land jobs that
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can pretty much guarantee that the reason for this is the difficulty hiring competent guard staff in the SFO area. Silicon Valley salaries have have inflated the local pay scale enough that security companies are having trouble finding people willing to work for crap wages and still have an IQ above room temperature. The way contracts for the really large companies are generally done is the security vendor will offer to cover staffing for all their sites throughout the country for a certain price. Too many management types will automatically go for the lowest bidder, and competition for the major contracts is fierce. Of course the salescritters will always low-ball the price, so the local security managers are stuck trying to pinch pennies while providing the staffing levels contracted for. Apple and Google are going to skim off the cream of the available guard staff, leaving the dregs for the security contractors to dispatch to their other customers.
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We can only hope. It's not an easy job, and the pay/benefits tend to dissuade those most capable of doing it well. Application and network security get all the attention and all the budget, but what good are they if someone can just walk up to the server, download the database to an external drive, and walk out?
Exception, not rule. (Score:1)
I've only had good experience with staffing agencies.
That's a rarer bird than a good full-time job. Realistically, the only enitity that has any good experience is the agency itself.
Because it's easy for them to let you go, that means they're also more willing to take risks in hiring you. I was able to get a job really fast right out of college with one, which helped establish my new skill set. Few people want to permanently hire somebody with a degree and no experience because it's too easy to find somebody who is a dud, even if they have a 4.0 GPA like I did.
This is a bigger reason why staffing agencies should be subject to the same laws as labor unions - even if it means that joining a staffing agency isn't a condition for accepting work at a given organization. If it really is about "flexibility" and not benefit-dodging "disposability", then they would welcome the challenge of competing with better forms of work.
The IT/tech world
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This is a bigger reason why staffing agencies should be subject to the same laws as labor unions - even if it means that joining a staffing agency isn't a condition for accepting work at a given organization. If it really is about "flexibility" and not benefit-dodging "disposability", then they would welcome the challenge of competing with better forms of work.
I'd say no thanks there. Labor unions are perhaps the biggest reason why it is often so risky to hire people. Case in point:
http://neighborhoodeffects.mer... [mercatus.org]
Before condeming, that includes RTW as well (Score:1)
Staffing agencies and other forms of contingent employment operate in a manner not unlike labor unions. Unfortunately, it is still possible for a job to require you to sign with one instead of going direct, which RTW prevents with labor unions. With that in mind, applying labor laws to contingent employment, especially RTW, would replace the benefit-dodging incentive with a benefit-providing one.
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What type of jobs? What type of job do you have now if this was long ago?
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Still a net benefit for society.
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Re: Good. (Score:2)
Re: Idea (Score:1)
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Most states are still "employment at will" which means they either party can terminate the employment at any time for any non-protected reason. Yeah it sucks when you get fired, but you still want to be able to quit for any reason don't you? This is being said by someone who was fired for a bullshit trumped up "safety violation" to avoid getting severance pay.
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What for? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure there's nothing wrong with screwing your security staff to save a dollar.
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Bringing your security staff in-house makes them a more 'bought in' part of the organization. Apple and Google take security very seriously, because they think they are the most innovative organizations on earth and that they have many secrets to protect.
It just makes sense to not have outsiders guarding the gates.
Re:What for? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Google, which has been under rising pressure along with other tech companies to release diversity data"
And here: [blogspot.com]
"Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,"
Now, by in-sourcing their "low-pay employees," they are instantly closer to where they want to be.
Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to eliminate local outsourcing then tax services the same as physical items - with a sales tax.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
That's done in Canada. It's called the GST (Goods and Services Tax.)
It's done nothing to reduce contracting and outsourcing, because the taxes are write-off expenses for the companies involved.
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Identical in Australia as well (also called the GST), same effect - in fact, I switched to being a contractor after the GST - I've had better job security and higher paying jobs now than I ever had full time... :\
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"taxes are write-off expenses" (Score:5, Informative)
In what world are tax deductions 1 to 1 with tax liability? That's certainly not how the math ever works out on my taxes. $5k in deductions saves me less than $1k in taxes.
I'm not saying that the parent was right and that taxing services is enough incentive to hire your own people, but the idea that if you can write something off on your taxes means it's "free" is simply silly...
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When it comes to goods and service taxes, or VAT etc, almost always. That's the point of said value added taxes - you pay tax only on the value you add, so any costs are 100% deductible against any gains.
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You're thinking of income tax deductions. Value-added taxes aren't the same thing at all, and percentages don't enter into it.
If you have a value-added tax of, say, 10%, the total money collected by the government on the sale of a final good is 10% of the final good's value. And ultimately the person who pays that money is the end consumer.
How do you figure out what a final good is? In a value added tax, the answer is you charge the tax on *every* sale, but when it comes time to give the taxes to the gov
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And if your business expense just happens to be an appreciating asset then you can in fact get it for free, or even make money off of it.
Sure it's more complicated than that as there's a whole phone book of taxes and levies you have to try and navigate to avoid being stu
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I'm going to to be terribly pedantic here, but GST, like all VATs, does not work like that. It is not an expense (as in it does not effect profit and loss). Like all VATs, GST collected on sales is subtracted from GST spent on purchases, and if the remainder is positive, then you pay that to the government, and if it is negative the government sends you the difference. The point is to make a fairer sales tax, where goods and services are not taxed at multiple points. All these financial operations happen on
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Technically your GST expenses are used as credits to pay your GST due, but the net effect is that you don't pay for inbound GST.
Unless, of course, you're bleeding money like a sieve, in which case your incoming GST is greater than your outgoing GST.
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bleeding money like a sieve,
Which is a pretty accurate description of a startup company. So the GST system penalizes companies that are trying to get off the ground. In spite of al the loopholes and other funy business in the US tax code, this is one of its benefits. Low/no taxes on new businesss give them a chance to get started and eventually become tax revenue sources.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Ideas like this would hurt smaller businesses and overall be quite damaging to the economy.
In many cases outsourcing puts things in your grasp that aren't possible to do otherwise simply because your business isn't large enough or doesn't have enough capital to handle the task. For example, if you're a mom and pop bakery who wants to sell to other local stores, you probably don't have enough capital to afford large scale logistics or a distribution network. The solution is to outsource your logistics and shipping to a distributor.
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That sounds like yet another barrier to entry for a small outfit looking to compete with larger enterprises. If you are too small to bring everything in-house, you'd be at a government-imposed disadvantage by having to pay taxes on whatever service you require.
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And why would you want to do that? If you eliminate outsourcing you will eliminate jobs.
If an organisation creates a small amount of a particular workload, ie less than 1 full time equivilent, their options are to employ a part time or to outsource. If the work is seasonal or related to work spikes then the part time option is not even there. So in the end you will force all companies to employ people on a casual basis to do this work. This is expensive for a business to do as finding people to do a job
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Doesn't work with the current US tax structure - sales taxes are only collected on end-user purchases. Businesses do not pay sales taxes on business-to-business transactions in the US. It would create an accounting nightmare for most businesses.
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Actually, you've got that backwards. Businesses pay sales taxes on materials consumed within the business. But not on materials used in the final product. So that's the accounting nightmare. Taxing everything would make accounting much simpler.
So 2000 (Score:1)
In socialist china, foxconn uses fully digital employees with patented algorithms and systemd.
lets not be fooled (Score:2)
i like apple as much as the next fanboy but this is not charity or benevolence of these companies, it is free market adjusting to a better cost/value of local workforce compared against consistently rising labor costs in china and india.
we're pretty much at or past the point when a little bit of cost benefit is simply not worth the loss of quality of support.
so.. yes, good development, thank you free market system.
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custodial staff no, but there are plenty of jobs in this space that get outsourced you wouldn't thin are outsourceable. anything from reviewing security footage to internal support helpdesk, sorting through mail (its scanned and then read overseas) etc etc. its pretty crazy how many jobs have been creatively "digitized" this way and outsources.
Diversity (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a great way to change your diversity numbers without actually changing your core business.
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And a way to hire more brown people without having to actually let them do any skilled labor.
Good Move (Score:1)
I think this is smart. These workers will give much more of a shit if they're directly employed. I worked at our regional power company (National Greed) and our "security people" were low-rent contractors. As a joke (this was back in 2008 after the Giants' super bowl win), a coworker of mine taped a picture of Plaxico Burress over my picture on my ID. The guards didn't even bat an eyelash. According to policy, I should have been barred entry.
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time and motion studies results (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
begun the corporate wars have (Score:1)
true it is you know
Apple has been talking about this for a long time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has been talking about this for a long time.
You really don't want your security people to be contract workers; they have access, at least at the supervisory level, to all sorts of sensitive areas of your building, including Jony Ive's office in the design wing, where they could happily use their phones to photograph prototypes.
Google began talking about doing this about three years ago, when they switched to the same contract security firm Apple used, and the Apple/Google relationship started to become more and more adversarial on top of that (I knew the supervisory staff, and many of the individual contractors at Apple, and recognized them when they came to work for Google.
I think this is being done more to prevent industrial espionage, than anything else.
At both Apple and Google, we moved our trash outside explicitly sensitive secure areas at night, so that the janitorial staff avoided entry. For a lot of it, it was honor system (if you count being on camera but not having a lurking linebacker ready to take you out if you make a wrong move, as "honor system"), where the secure offices without physical electronic security locks has a red sticky dot placed above the room doorknob to prevent people trying to go in.
This also has dick-all to do with any kind of "gentrification" issues that the article claims, since most of the people I know who worked security lived East Bay, and many of them owned their own houses.
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including Jony Ive's office in the design wing, where they could happily use their phones to photograph prototypes.
Right. And at Apple, that's the core intellectual property right there.
Re:Apple has been talking about this for a long ti (Score:5, Interesting)
Friends of ours have a business cleaning corporate offices. Twice they have been offered money to plug a netbook into a network port in an unoccupied cubicle, leave it for a few days, and then bring it back. They didn't of course, but it must have been tempting.
Gaurds? Proofreaders? (Score:3)
This is one of many reasons web based journalism is still a joke. No matter how small the story editors can't be bothered to proofread.
If the service really matters, have it in house (Score:1)
Amazing that this was ever contracted out (Score:4, Insightful)
It always amazed me that tech companies would contract this work out in the first place. Security has virtually unrestricted access to every area of the building (if they don't actually have it, they control the equipment that grants it). Janitorial has similar access, in fact probably more since people might find it odd that a Security badge was accessing an area at night but Janitorial is practically expected to be in there every night to empty the trash. With as easy as it is to gather up loose papers, plug keyloggers or hacking devices into computers (If you epoxy closed all the USB ports, where are you going to plug the keyboard and mouse in? And if the ports for the keyboard and mouse are usable what's to stop someone from plugging a dongle with a built-in hub in and plugging the keyboard/mouse into that?) and photograph whiteboards, why would any company that values intellectual property allow contract employees (who they can't control and can't screen) access? I'd have all that stuff in-house first thing, and pay the people well enough that if approached about espionage their first reaction will be to smile and nod and make all the right noises and then immediately report the details to the company because the offer isn't worth losing their paycheck and benefits over.
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It always amazed me that tech companies would contract this work out in the first place.
Contracting it isn't the biggest problem. Paying bottom dollar is. That means that you don't get the best people. Paying people more means they're less motivated to engage in profitable hijinks when someone asks them to plug something into your network, or photograph your documents. That's because happiness stops increasing dramatically with money after you reach middle class. Once your needs are met, bribery is less effective. Obviously not ineffective, of course. That's where loyalty used to come in. Prob
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Everyone has a price. If the act is simple and has a low-to-none risk of the evidence being pointed towards you and the motivation is large enough, even middle class people can be bought.
If someone tells an employee: here is a USB drive, stick it in a random computer and you won't have to work the rest of your life, I think most employees would do it.
Heck, you don't even have to give them money, all you have to do is give them a free USB drive (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/yet_another_peo.
A preventive measure against legislation? (Score:1)
It seems like it's a preventative measure against legislation that would affect staffing agencies.
If they bring in those individuals, they can effectively immunize against the others that aren't brought in from the cold.
As you like it (Score:1)
"All they do is create high-pay jobs and price out the local apartments!"
"Oh, nice, creating low-price jobs for the uneducated, exploiting them!"
"Oh, hey, a coffee shoppe!"
Is it about liability? (Score:2)
I thought the reason to outsource security is because the contractor takes the hit for liability. Let's say your security guard open fires and hits some bystanders. If it's your employee you are liable. The lawsuit will look into your hiring, training, etc. Since you have deep pockets you are on the hook for damages.
Now if you hire it out you can claim you are an IT company and don't know anything about security guards which is why you hired experts to do the job.
By the way most government facilities hire s
Private armies (Score:1)
And so it begins. Google and Apple are building their own private armies. First it starts with these security people that are just for show. Then after some kind of incident they get weapons. Yada yada yada, Google and Apple have nuclear arsenals.
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