Senators urge Google to give temp workers full-time status

Letter says more than 120,000 spots are filled by ‘shadow workforce’

A group of Democratic senators has demanded in a letter sent to Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, that the internet giant convert its more than 120,000 temporary and contract workers to fulltime employees.

The letter, written by Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, also urged Google to stop its “anti-worker practices” and treat everyone at the company equally.

“Making these changes to your company’s employment practices will ensure equal treatment of all Google workers and put an end to the two-tier employment structure you have perpetuated,” Brown wrote. Among the 10 senators who signed were three running for president: Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

As of March, Google had more temporary workers than full-time employees 121,000 temps and contractors and 102,000 full-timers, according to company data viewed by The New York Times.

The senators’ letter, which was sent last month, cites a May article by The Times that explained how Google had created a shadow workforce of temps, contractors and other contingent workers brought in through staffing companies.

The senators pushed for a number of changes to how the company treats temps and contractors, including moving them to full-time status after six months as well as equalizing their wages and benefits with permanent staff.

While many of the temps and contractors sit in the same offices as Google employees and often do similar work, they usually make less money, have significantly

worse benefit plans and do not enjoy the same rights.

Most of Google’s contingent workers are technically employees of staffing agencies, although the company acts like the employer in most cases deciding when they work and what they do and assessing the quality of their work, according to current and former temps and contractors.

They have said they joined Google hoping to land a full-time job. When they encountered sexual harassment or pressure to perform unpaid overtime from Google employees, they were reluctant to speak up for fear that they would be labeled troublemakers and not receive full-time jobs.

Eileen Naughton, Google’s vice president of people operations, said in a letter replying to the senators that the company strongly disagreed “with any suggestion that Google misuses independent contractors or temporary workers.” She said the company’s practices “accord with the highest industry standards.”

Naughton said Google worked with staffing companies that had a particular expertise and could offer a “career path to employees.” She added that using contingent workers was a common practice in almost every industry in the United States and the government.

She did not directly address any of the senators’ policy demands. Pichai did not respond to the letter.

Though Silicon Valley companies are among the richest in the world, they have embraced employing temps. And while the pay for engineers and executives in Silicon Valley continues to rise, a growing faction of workers at many of those companies are not sharing in the success.

Temps and contractors account for 40% to 50% of workers at most technology firms, according to estimates by OnContracting, a site that helps people find tech contracting positions.

By keeping a large portion of their workforces contingent, companies like Google save money and maintain flexibility to decrease their head counts should business conditions change.

Younger tech companies like Uber and Lyft have built giant businesses that depend largely on the work of independent contractors, not employees.

Some Democrats are seizing on the issue as another sign of inequality in the country. That has put Google in their crosshairs.

Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is also running for president, highlighted the widespread use of contingent labor at Google when laying out his economic plan to give more power to workers.