Tech workers want to grade companies on quality of blue-collar jobs - San Francisco Chronicle

Tech workers want to grade companies on quality of blue-collar jobs - San Francisco Chronicle

In San Francisco, white-collar tech workers see shuttle drivers, cafeteria workers and security guards every day. Many view them as colleagues, even though the blue-collar workers often work for different companies.

Some tech workers have even joined contractors at the picket line as they form unions and make their own demands. Now, a Bay Area nonprofit is opening up a new point of pressure on tech companies that contract out work — a call that comes from inside the building.

TechEquity Collaborative, an Oakland organization that educates and engages tech workers on civic issues, said this week it’s drafting a set of standards for what it calls “responsible contracting.” The idea is that tech firms can grade the quality of service jobs they provide against these guidelines.

Catherine Bracy, a co-founder and executive director of TechEquity Collaborative, said it won’t be handing out “report cards” for tech firms, or the contractors that supply some of their labor.

Related Stories

Instead, the group is relying on its more than 4,000 members, who are mostly rank-and-file workers at hundreds of Bay Area tech companies, to lean on employers and demand better treatment for service workers.

“The voice of the white-collar worker at these tech companies is very powerful. We’re thinking about what are the best ways to make use of that,” said Bracy, a former director at Code for America.

Typically, service workers are full-time or part-time employees of contractors. The contractors compete against each other to supply services for the tech giants, said Katherine Stone, a professor of employment and labor law at UCLA.

“There is a darker side to that,” Stone said. “Often when companies are hiring (contractors) to run their cafeteria or whatever, they will sort of solicit bids, and they will pick the lowest bid.”

The lowest bid often comes at the cost of fair wages and benefits for the shuttle drivers, line cooks, dishwashers, janitors and security guards whom they employ, she said. The tech firms also award short contracts that they can cancel easily to coerce contractors into offering a competitive price.

Steven Tindall, an employment lawyer at Gibbs Law Group in Oakland, said contractors often hire workers part-time to get around paying for their health care, time off and retirement savings.

“The tech workers are thought of as the more important cogs in the machine, as opposed to the workers getting them to work and feeding them,” he said. “They’re thought of as replaceable.”

As employees, service workers have the right to organize. Some Bay Area shuttle drivers are represented by the Teamsters, which won new contracts for drivers carrying Apple, Tesla and Facebook employees last year. But labor experts say unions are rare overall.

“There’s a feeling that if you are a shuttle driver or a cafeteria worker, if you stick up for yourself, you find yourself out of the job because the company might find someone else to do that job,” Tindall said.

The new standards for “responsible contracting” measure the quality of these jobs across five main categories: wages, benefits, opportunities for professional development, safety and “worker’s voice.” The goal is that tech firms choose a contractor based on how they treat people, rather than cost.

“They may have a different name tag, but they’re still working at some of the wealthiest and most prestigious companies around the globe,” said Jeffrey Buchanan, director of public policy at Working Partnerships USA, a San Jose advocacy group that is also working to create the labor guidelines.

Still, “they don’t have the same sort of protection to fight for a dignified work environment,” he said.

The responsible contracting standards would encourage contractors to create outlets for workers to organize, as well as draft, policy around how employees can report and resolve their grievances.

The guidelines will be finalized over the next several months, as members of Working Partnerships USA and TechEquity Collaborative canvass the tech landscape to decide what a passing grade is. The groups said they have already spoken to labor organizers, lawyers, academics and corporate leaders.

“It’s not about naming and shaming,” said Bracy, the tech-worker organizer. “It’s more about providing a standardized view, creating opportunities for companies to meet the standard.”

On a bright Tuesday afternoon in July, some of Facebook’s cafeteria workers picketed at the social network’s downtown office in San Francisco, following months of negotiations over higher wages. The demonstration included several Google and Facebook employees, who came as worker allies and hoisted signs that read, “Workers for Workers” and “All Workers in Tech: We’re Stronger Together.”

The group’s union said cafeteria workers have to perform multiple jobs to make ends meet. The contract negotiations are ongoing, though organizers say they like what the protest signaled.

“We believe that when workers picket in front of their employers, that is progress,” said Anand Singh, president of Unite Here Local 2, which represents Facebook’s cafeteria workers.

A spokesman for Facebook referred The Chronicle to its food service operator, Flagship Facility Services. Flagship did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

In April, Google said it will start requiring contractors to offer some benefits, which include a minimum wage of $15 per hour, health insurance, paid parental leave and an education stipend to learn new skills. The change may have been prompted in part by an open letter that urged the tech giant to make those accommodations, and was signed in April by more than 900 Google workers.

“When workers find that voice it can be very powerful,” said Singh, the labor organizer. “It drives attention to the fact that not all is well in some of the shiniest new skyscrapers in San Francisco.”

Melia Russell is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: business@sfchronicle.com

2019-08-23 11:00:00Z
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tech-workers-want-to-grade-companies-on-14371852.php

Bagikan Berita Ini