Austin City Council resolution YouTube workers seeking Austin City Council support get cut from jobs
Dozens of YouTube Music workers were hopeful that Austin City Council might be able to help urge their tech giant employers to come to the bargaining table and negotiate.
But on Thursday, a year of tension that has included a strike, a unionization vote, return-to-office and National Labor Relations Board disputes, came to a head when tech staffing agency Cognizant held a meeting in their Austin office informing dozens of workers that their employment contract had ended.
The news came as some union members spoke before the City Council on a council resolution that called on Google and tech staffing agency Cognizant to negotiate with the union.
Katie Marie Marscher, a subject matter expert for YouTube Music and a member of the union’s organizing committee, interrupted her co-worker while she spoke to say that they, along with the rest of the Austin-based team, had been laid off.
The workers, part of YouTube’s Music’s Content Operations team, are employed by Cognizant, a major subcontractor for Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube. The union and the NLRB consider Google an employer of the workers, but Google does not and is working on appealing in federal court the NLRB decision.
Cognizant confirmed to the American-Statesman that the contract had ended. The workers will be considered Cognizant employees for an additional seven weeks, which includes logging in daily, and during which they will be able to train and apply for other positions as part of the company’s “bench” program. The company said it is common for bench workers to be moved to new contracts.
Cognizant did not respond to a question about the number of workers affected, but Marscher estimated it’s about 41 people. Google maintains that the workers are Cognizant employees.
“As we’ve shared before, these are not Google employees. Cognizant is responsible for these workers’ employment terms, including staffing. As is the case here, contracts with our suppliers across the company routinely end on their natural expiry date, which was agreed to with Cognizant.” a Google spokesperson said.
Marscher said she and her colleagues had reached out to Council Member Zohaib “Zo” Qadri and initially drafted the resolution language for him. Qadri, in a statement, confirmed that the Alphabet Workers Union provided the initial language.
“Our office originally met the workers as part of the larger rise of the labor movement we have been seeing across the country, including autoworkers, actors, screenwriters, and Starbucks and Amazon employees,” Qadri said in a statement.
The City Council was originally slated to vote on the resolution Thursday but had postponed it.
Several City Council offices received an email Tuesday from Katharine McAden, the head of public policy and external affairs of Google South, asking the City Council to postpone the vote to allow for time for “stakeholder engagement,” the Statesman confirmed.
“While we have not had a discussion with City Council members about this item, we believe it would be beneficial to Austinites, and to those impacted in the individual Council districts, for Google to be allowed time to discuss how item No. 100 will affect our work,” Google’s email stated.
However, after finding out about the layoffs, Qadri moved to put it back on Thursday’s agenda. The resolution passed with Council Member Mackenzie Kelly as the only no vote, saying she doesn’t believe the city should interfere in the affairs of private companies. Resolutions are formal expressions of opinion approved by the City Council, according to the city.
Since the union vote in April, neither company has met with the union to start bargaining their first contract, Marscher told the Statesman.
When asked if the company was negotiating or planned to negotiate with the union, a Cognizant representative said, “This is still pending in court.”