Google’s “shadow workforce”, known internally as temps, vendors, and contractors (TVC), published a letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai on Medium Wednesday demanding higher wages, equal benefits, and access to the same—sometimes life or death—information provided to full-time employees. 
 
 This comes a month after 20,000 Google Alphabet employees around the world staged a (managerially approved) walkout to protest how the company addresses sexual harassment—an act that led the company to change its policy and end forced arbitration. But while some celebrated this as a win, Bloomberg reports that the revised sexual misconduct policies didn’t include TVCs, who are employed by third parties to work alongside Googlers. 
 
 “We do essential work, from marketing, to running engineering teams, to feeding you and the rest of the Google staff — all without fair benefits or recognition,” TVCs, who Bloomberg reports make up half of the company’s workforce, wrote to Pichai. 
 
 TVCs make up more than half of Google’s workforce, and we demand fair treatment. #GoogleWalkout https://t.co/b85WMwi90T — Google Walkout For Real Change (@GoogleWalkout) December 5, 2018 
 
 Although Google TVCs perform the same role, the letter noted that they receive lower wages, worse health benefits, and also aren’t given access to town halls and internal communication. 
 
 “When the tragic shooting occurred at YouTube in April of this year, the company sent real-time security updates to full-time employees only, leaving TVCs defenseless in the line of fire,” the letter says, alleging that Google, “routinely denies TVCs access to information that is relevant to our jobs and our lives.” 
 
 Following the shooting, Google told CNBC that it provided parallel updates to both full-timers and TVCs, however some of those updates went through their third-party employers, which could explain the clogged flow of information. 
 
 “The exclusion of TVCs from important communications and fair treatment is part of a system of institutional racism, sexism, and discrimination,” the letter asserted. “TVCs are disproportionately people from marginalized groups who are treated as less deserving of compensation, opportunities, workplace protections and respect.” 
 
 Contract workers, who are disproportionately women, people of color, and immigrants, have the most to lose by speaking out – I am *in awe* of their courage today: https://t.co/sLrMeCOVuB — Stephanie Parker (@sparker2) December 5, 2018 
 
 Google declined Fortune‘s request for comment. 
 
 Although TVCs didn’t state what would happen if their demands for equality weren’t met, the letter did come with a warning: “Google cannot function without us.” ||||| Google staff are instructed not to reward certain workers with perks like T-shirts, invite them to all-hands meetings, or allow them to engage in professional development training, an internal training document seen by the Guardian reveals. 
 
 The guide instructs Google employees on the ins and outs of interacting with its tens of thousands of temps, vendors and contractors – a class of worker known at Google as TVCs. 
 
 “Working with TVCs and Googlers is different,” the training documentation, titled the The ABCs of TVCs, explains. “Our policies exist because TVC working arrangements can carry significant risks.” 
 
 The risks Google appears to be most concerned about include standard insider threats, like leaks of proprietary information, but also – and especially – the risk of being found to be a joint employer, a legal designation which could be exceedingly costly for Google in terms of benefits. 
 
 Google’s treatment of TVCs has come under increased scrutiny by the company’s full-time employees (FTEs) amid a nascent labor movement at the company, which has seen workers speak out about both their own working conditions and the morality of the work they perform. 
 
 American companies have long turned to temps and subcontractors to plug holes and perform specialized tasks, but Google achieved a dubious distinction this year when Bloomberg reported that in early 2018, the company did not directly employ a majority of its own workforce. 
 
 google training doc Recreation of part of a Google training document 
 
 According to a current employee with access to the figures, of approximately 170,000 people around the world who now work at Google, 50.05% are FTEs. The rest, 49.95%, are TVCs. 
 
 The two-tier system has complicated labor activism at Google. After 20,000 workers joined a global walkout on 1 November, the company quickly gave in to one of the protesters’ demands by ending forced arbitration in cases of sexual harassment – but only for FTEs. 
 
 On 5 December, the walkout organizers published an anonymous open letter addressed to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, from “TVCs at Google”. The letter detailed some of the material concerns that TVCs face due to Google’s differential treatment, including lower wages and “minimal benefits”. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A letter from walkout organizers to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, condemned the company’s treatment of TVCs. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock 
 
 But beyond financial inequality, the letter focused on disparate access to information. “Google routinely denies TVCs access to information that is relevant to our jobs and our lives,” the letter states. “When the tragic shooting occurred at YouTube in April of this year, the company sent real-time security updates to full-time employees only, leaving TVCs defenseless in the line of fire. TVCs were then excluded from a town hall discussion the following day.” 
 
 Google disputed this account of the shooting, saying that it worked to provide TVCs with security updates during the incident, though some information was sent through a different email account or came from TVCs’ direct employers. The company also said that it invited TVCs to an all-hands meeting at YouTube after the shooting and gave TVCs at the campus where the shooting occurred access to post-shooting resources, including counseling. 
 
 Google said it provided employees with training on many topics, including this material on TVCs, “to adhere to labor laws and policies”. 
 
 “We hire Google employees to work on jobs that are core to our business, and look to temps, vendors and contractors when we either don’t have the expertise or infrastructure ourselves, or when we need temporary help due to employee leaves or short-term projects,” a Google spokeswoman, Jenn Kaiser, said in a statement. “Temps, vendors and contractors are an important part of our extended workforce, but they are employed by other companies, not Google.” 
 
 Red badges v white badges 
 
 Matt was on his way to a “whole team” meeting for a project he was working on when he noticed that one of his co-workers, a test engineer, was still at his desk. “You should come,” Matt, a Google software engineer, recalls saying, only to be told that the meeting was not actually for the whole team: temps, vendors and contractors were not allowed. 
 
 “The guy sits with us,” Matt told the Guardian of his co-worker. (Matt asked not to be identified by his real name because he is not authorized to speak to the media.) “Like literally next to my desk. He’s got better knowledge than me about parts of the project, to be honest … It changes the dynamic a lot.” 
 
 While excluding his co-worker from an important meeting bothered Matt, leaving the TVC out in the cold was the proper procedure, according to The ABCs of TVCs. “When we share strategic or proprietary information with TVCs through meetings or communications, it can create both co-employment and information security risks for Alphabet,” the document states. 
 
 The training instructs Google employees not to invite TVCs to all-hands meetings, team offsites, or the company’s weekly “TGIF” meeting, where employees vote on questions to post to top executives. Indeed, according to two current employees, the company often employs security guards to stand outside all-hands meetings, admitting those whose employee badges are white (FTEs) and keeping TVCs, whose badges are red, outside. The security guards themselves are subcontracted and wear red badges. 
 
 The training document includes a number of other common scenarios that Google employees might encounter when working with TVCs. One slide asks whether “Gary” should reward his vendor team with Google T-shirts after they complete a major task. 
 
 “Gary should not reward them with shirts,” the document explains, because “swag, bonuses, and other gifts are considered taxable income to the individual”. Instead, Gary is advised to send a thank-you email or write a positive comment on G+, the social network used internally at Google. 
 
 google training doc Recreation of part of a Google training document 
 
 Another scenario involves a Googler noticing that a TVC has listed Google as their employer on LinkedIn, illustrated with a LinkedIn profile of “Tom Temp” claiming to be a “Staffing Coordinator – Google”. 
 
 “Since TVCs are not Alphabet employees, they may not represent themselves as such on resumes or external sites (e.g. social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, etc),” the document states. Googlers are encouraged to either “address it with the temp directly”, report the TVC via an anonymous form, or report the TVC to their direct employer. 
 
 Other rules address paying for expenses (“their travel should not, under any circumstances, be paid for using a Gcard”), dealing with medical issues, and handling the ambitions of a TVC who wants to take professional development courses (“training beyond what they need to do their jobs is considered an employee benefit … they may not enroll in or attend soft skill or professional development trainings”). 
 
 ‘It’s all about saving money’ 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, speaks during the Google I/O Developers Conference in Mountain View in May. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images 
 
 Throughout the training document, the “risk” that TVCs pose to Google is raised numerous times. The document names three types of risks: deviation from the “code of conduct”, such as concerns about harassment or discrimination; risks to security and privacy; and the risk of “co-employment”. 
 
 It is this third type of risk that earns the most attention in the document. “Co-employment is a relationship between two or more employers in which each has actual or potential legal rights and duties with respect to the same employee,” the document explains. “If found to be a joint employer of a TVC by an agency or court, then Alphabet could be liable for employer obligations, as well as acts and omissions leading to employment related legal claims.” 
 
 The legal designation of employees is a frequent issue in Silicon Valley, where the multibillion-dollar valuations of startups like Uber and Lyft rely on classifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. 
 
 But while Uber and Lyft have thus far been able to maintain a legal distinction between the software engineers in their corporate headquarters and the armies of drivers working in their own vehicles, there is a major precedent for a tech giant getting in trouble over the TVCs in its own offices. 
 
 Microsoft spent much of the 1990s embroiled in a dispute over its expansive use of “permatemps” who often performed similar work to Microsoft employees, but without the access to employment benefits or stock options. In 2000, Microsoft agreed to pay a $97m settlement over a massive class-action lawsuit brought by permatemps. 
 
 That settlement was estimated to cover an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 individuals, far fewer than the number of TVCs currently on Google’s books. 
 
 To Matt, this is the real reason that he was tasked with learning The ABCs of TVCs. “It’s all about saving money,” he said. “If someone sues them, they want to point at all this fake shit and say, ‘Hey look, there’s such a big difference, see?’ 
 
 “We are legally in the clear to treat people like garbage.” 
 
 • Are you a tech industry TVC? Do you have experience working with TVCs? Contact the author julia.wong@theguardian.com ||||| People walk past Google’s U.K. headquarters in London on Nov. 1, 2018. Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 On Tuesday, April 3, an intruder walked through one of the garages on YouTube’s campus in San Bruno, California, entered an outdoor courtyard where employees were eating lunch, and shot three people before killing herself. In the days after the shooting, YouTube parent Google extended employees extra time off and allowed them to work from home so that they could process what had happened, and promised to beef up security worldwide. Google also gathered employees that week for an all-hands meeting so they could discuss what had happened—but it did not invite any of the contractors working as YouTube’s security guards, nor any other contractors or temporary employees, even though many were there when the shooting occurred, several people at the company told me. 
 
 Every day, tens of thousands of TVCs—internal lingo for temporary staffers, independent vendors, and contractors—show up for work at Google. As with so many organizations, Google’s workforce is composed of both full-time employees with benefits and workers with different arrangements, many of whom come by way of other employers. But the non-employee staff at Google is notable for its large size: Contract workers make up more than half of the company’s headcount, according to a summer report from Bloomberg. TVCs can be found at nearly every strata—in the cafeterias, on cybersecurity teams finding bugs in code, on the marketing teams for new hardware products, and in the trenches of YouTube content moderation. TVCs can be seen designing, testing, and developing new products; guarding buildings; translating; and working as policy experts. 
 
 These staffers are typically on their own for health care or use higher-cost plans through their staffing agencies, if they have health care at all. They usually have no retirement benefits and no long-term job security with Google. TVCs also appear to be a much more diverse group than Google’s full-time hires, Google workers told me, though the company said it could not confirm this and that it didn’t have the data. “Sometimes when I come into my office the only black women I see the entire day are doing service work, cleaning snack kitchens, serving food, and are security guards who stay on their feet all day,” said Meredith Whittaker, founder of Google’s Open Research Group and an organizer of the companywide worker walkout last month. “It’s so messed up. This is what structural racism looks like in practice.” 
 
 Right now, Google is being forced to reckon with employees’ discontent like it has never had to before. Yet when more than 20,000 Google workers across 50 offices walked out last month to protest how their employer handles accusations of sexual assault and harassment, some contractors weren’t sure if they would be able to join the demonstration. On an internal email list Google employees used to organize the demonstration, one full-time Google staffer noted that several TVCs at her office were told that if they joined the walkout, they’d be fired. Even some Google contractors who did participate in the walkout with permission from managers have paid a price for doing so, since, according to one contractor at Google I spoke to, “TVCs are generally paid hourly, so walking out wouldn’t have been paid.” 
 
 Many contractors did ultimately join in the protest, which worked to an extent. The day after the walkout, Google agreed to stop mandating forced arbitration in cases involving accusations of sexual harassment or assault, a policy that prevented employees from taking their grievances to court. Google also committed to allowing employees to bring a representative into meetings with human resources when reporting sexual harassment, which will likely result in more transparency and accountability for how Google addresses such issues. But these changes don’t apply to contractors. TVCs are beholden to the policies of the companies they actually work for, which have names like Randstad, Adecco Group, Securitas, and Cognizant Technology Solutions. 
 
 Organized labor is unusual in the technology industry, but Googlers’ efforts to make demands on specific issues are even further complicated by the fact that half their colleagues are not technically on staff and might not be able to enjoy the same gains. On Wednesday, the organizers of the walkout posted a letter from “Google’s shadow workforce” addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai. It’s a clear sign that two movements that up until now have been distinct—the trend in recent months of tech employees challenging the policies and practices of their employers, and a years-old effort by Silicon Valley contractors to receive fairer treatment—are starting to converge. 
 
 In the letter, the workers argue that TVCs deserve a larger chunk of the company’s massive profits. “Even when we’re doing the same work as full-time employees, these jobs routinely fail to provide living wages and often offer minimal benefits. This affects not only us, but also our families and communities,” the letter reads. 
 
 The Google walkout’s demands were crafted with input from TVCs from the start, according to Stephanie Parker, who works at YouTube and was one of the demonstration’s organizers. 
 
 One of the demands includes “a commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity” at Google, which the organizers wrote in a Medium post means information on pay gaps across gender and racial lines, as well as information on opportunities to advance at Google; they want that data to include contractor pay. Google has not agreed to this demand. 
 
 That would seem to deepen a gulf both TVCs and Google employees say is palpable at the company. If you’re a contractor, you wear a red badge around campus. “It’s definitely a caste system,” one contractor, who works on global business strategy at Google, told me, adding that there’s a sense that “if you’re good, why aren’t you just hired full-time? Like something must be wrong because you’re a TVC.” (The employee asked to be quoted anonymously for fear of reprisal.) For many, contracting at Google is a way to get a foot in the door of the company. Parker, one of the walkout organizers, is a full-time employee at YouTube with years of prior experience in the tech industry and two degrees from Stanford, but the recruiter who initially contacted her tried to pitch her on a temporary position on the recruitment team, an area where she has no experience or expertise. 
 
 At the time, Parker said, she got the impression that she would be able to one day jump to another department and should “be grateful for the opportunity” and not “expect more, ask for more, or speak up.” Parker says such sentiments make TVCs at Google reticent to voice any concerns about the workplace. “The fact is that she saw my educational and professional background and thought that I would be best suited for an entry-level contract role shows that she did not have my best interests at heart and did not take my qualifications seriously,” Parker said. “And I think it’s no coincidence that this happens to me as a black woman.” 
 
 “Sometimes when I come into my office the only black women I see the entire day are doing service work, cleaning snack kitchens, serving food, and are security guards who stay on their feet all day.” — Meredith Whittaker, an organizer of the Google walkout 
 
 Diversity has long been a problem at Google, where only 2.5 percent of the workforce identifies as black, a number that dwindles even more when isolating for the technical and leadership roles. But when it comes to contract workers, the company has been much better at recruiting diverse talent, according to multiple sources who work on a range of projects at Alphabet, from policy to marketing, product testing, and content moderation. “So why are they able to achieve higher levels of underrepresented minorities distribution in the contract roles and not in the full-time roles when they say the problem is the pipeline?” Parker asked. “That doesn’t sound right, does it?” The “pipeline problem” refers to the argument often made by tech leaders that their companies lack diverse staffs because there are too few underrepresented minorities and women with computer science backgrounds coming out of the education system. Yet, numerous reports have shown that more underrepresented minorities with computer science degrees are entering the workforce than are actually being hired at U.S. tech companies. 
 
 The high number of contractors at Google may well have to do with restrictions that are put on hiring companywide, “but that isn’t necessarily representative of the work that each team is expected to get done,” one vendor told me. “So if the team has to do more work than they have headcount to do, then either they either need to do some horse-trading with another team or hire a temp or a vendor, and then of course you totally avoid the whole interview procedure, which is notoriously long and laborious on all sides.” When the goal is to get work done quickly and cheaply, Google turns to contract labor, resulting in a system in which workers who might not make it through Google’s interview process for whatever reason are deemed good enough to work right alongside full-time employees, often in identical positions, but for less pay and fewer benefits. 
 
 Some blue-collar workers at tech companies—like security guards, janitors, and food-service workers—have organized and even unionized in recent years. Security guards started organizing across Silicon Valley in 2010, according to Huerta, and just got their contract with major tech companies, including Google, ratified this year. “The central theme of our Silicon Valley campaign is the disparity between the rich and the poor, and the amount of wealth that’s concentrated in these companies. But that wealth doesn’t come down to the service workers,” Huerta told me. “A lot of the tech workers are now finding themselves in the same situation, and I think it’s good that we find solidarity among the tech workers and the service workers, because at the end of the day, the common denominator here is the title of ‘worker.’” 
 
 So what does this mean at Google, where thus far policy changes have not applied to contractors? A spokesperson for the company stressed that TVCs should take up any issues they have with their staffing agencies or employers. But Google does have a supplier code of conduct to which all suppliers of contracted labor are “expected” to adhere. That code of conduct does not bar them from forcing employees who report sexual harassment on the job to resolve the issue through arbitration, though full-time Google employees now can forgo arbitration and take their issues to court. Nor does the code ask suppliers to provide similar benefits to the ones that Google’s full-time employees receive, as the TVC letter on Wednesday demands. What the code does show, however, is that Google could ask anything it wants of its suppliers. And it only wants so much. ||||| Invisible no longer: Google’s shadow workforce speaks up 
 
 TVCs make up more than half of Google’s workforce, and we demand fair treatment. 
 
 Google Walkout For Real Change Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 5, 2018 
 
 #GoogleWalkout in San Francisco, California on November 1, 2018 
 
 Dear Sundar, 
 
 As you know, 20,000 full-time and temporary, vendor, and contract workers (TVCs), recently walked out to protest “discrimination, racism, sexual harassment and a workplace culture that only works for some.” As TVCs who took equal part in the walkout, your silence has been deafening. 
 
 Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.” But the company fails to meet this standard within its own workplace. Google routinely denies TVCs access to information that is relevant to our jobs and our lives. When the tragic shooting occurred at YouTube in April of this year, the company sent real-time security updates to full-time employees only, leaving TVCs defenseless in the line of fire. TVCs were then excluded from a town hall discussion the following day. And when 20,000 full-time and TVC Google employees walked out to demand equal treatment for all workers, TVCs were again excluded from the company-wide discussion held a week later. 
 
 The exclusion of TVCs from important communications and fair treatment is part of a system of institutional racism, sexism, and discrimination. TVCs are disproportionately people from marginalized groups who are treated as less deserving of compensation, opportunities, workplace protections, and respect. We wear different badges from full-time employees, which reinforces this arbitrary and discriminatory separation. Even when we’re doing the same work as full-time employees, these jobs routinely fail to provide living wages and often offer minimal benefits. This affects not only us, but also our families and communities. 
 
 Google has been taking in record profits every quarter, with $9.2 billion in the last quarter alone. This money comes from the hard work of every single one of us, TVC and full-time alike. Google has been increasingly hiring TVCs rather than full-time employees for all types of roles, resulting in a majority TVC workforce. We do essential work, from marketing, to running engineering teams, to feeding you and the rest of the Google staff — all without fair benefits or recognition. Google cannot function without us. 
 
 The excessive and unclear rules surrounding TVCs, in addition to the constant fear of our contracts not being renewed, makes it difficult for us to speak out. However, it is clear that we will continue to be mistreated and ignored if we stay silent. Google has the power — and the money — to ensure that we are treated equitably, with respect and dignity. 
 
 As we stated during the walkout, we need transparency, accountability, and structural change to ensure equity for all Google workers. We reiterate the demands of the walkout, and make it clear that meeting these demands for all of us requires: 
 
 An end to pay and opportunity inequity for TVCs. We demand better pay and access to benefits that meet the full-time employee standard, including high-quality healthcare, paid vacations, paid sick days, holiday pay, family leave, and bonuses. This must also include a consistent and transparent conversion process to full-time employment, as well as adoption of a single badge color for all workers. Access to company-wide information on the same terms as full-time employees. We want access to town hall discussions; all communications about safety, discrimination, and sexual misconduct; and a reinstatement of our access to internal forums like Google Groups. This must also include career growth, classes, and counseling opportunities like those offered to full-time workers. 
 
 Signed, 
 
 TVCs at Google
– Google's "shadow workforce" has been making waves recently: The tech giant's thousands of temporary employees, vendors, and contractors, known internally as TVCs, made headlines this month when they published an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding equal benefits and higher wages, plus access to the same information full-time employees get. Now, an internal training document obtained by the Guardian sheds more light on how Google treats its TVCs, a group of workers that makes up half of the company's workforce. "The ABCs of TVCs," a guide for full-time employees on how to interact with TVCs, notes that "TVC working arrangements can carry significant risks," and therefore working with such employees "is different." What types of risks? In addition to being concerned about TVCs leaking proprietary information, Google is also concerned about being found to be a joint employer, a legal designation that could cost the company a lot when it comes to benefits. So how is working with TVCs different? The document outlines issues both big (TVCs aren't allowed to represent themselves as Google employees on social media, resumes, or business cards) and small (Google employees are not allowed to reward TVCs with "swag" such as T-shirts, but can instead "send them a note on G+" expressing thanks for good work). It reveals that TVCs can't be invited to all-hands meetings or professional development training, which some full-time employees say changes the dynamic on teams including both types of employees. Read the Guardian's full report here. (So long, Google Plus.)