Tuesday Carney only worked inside a Google data center for nine days before he was fired for being “ungold”.
Temporary employees are now working with their employers, Modis and Alphabet Inc. Google is at the center of a new complaint against Google with the National Labor Relations Board, marking another workplace dispute for the world’s third-largest company by market value.
Carney, 29, worked on equipment maintenance at a Google site in South Carolina. Google fills many of these roles with contracting firms such as Modis, a unit of Adecco Group AG.
In her second week at work, Carney said she attended a regular meeting where managers discussed upcoming events. They were told that employees working in holiday shifts were entitled to double the pay, but only if they had worked there at least six months ago. Carney, who was not aware of this policy, told about it. “I basically said, ‘That’s the bull-,'” she recalled.
Later that evening, according to a copy of the message seen by Bloomberg News, she received an email from a Modi manager who described her behavior at the meeting as “unacceptable and ‘ungoogly’. She was fired.
Carney immediately became involved with a labor advocacy group, the Alphabet Workers Union. In March, Google settled a separate worker complaint from AWU related to the same South Carolina facility and agreed not to silence workers discussing pay. Modi’s employee Shannon White, who was fired from that case, has been reinstated.
In a new complaint to AWU, the labor group said Carney was using legally protected speech during a November meeting.
Representatives for Modi and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. AWU, an affiliate of Communications Workers of America, has focused on the technology giant’s vast contract workforce. Those employees generally earn much less and receive less benefits than direct Google employees. Carney said he was paid $16.50 an hour for Modi’s role, along with a $200 bonus given during the pandemic, when data center workers were asked to come regularly.
Rachel Sawyer, an AWU steward, argued that people like Carney are effectively essential employees of Google. “If something happened to the data center, Google couldn’t work at all,” she said.
In recent weeks, AWU got involved after the staffing agency threatened to pull bonuses for data center employees who meet attendance requirements. Modi ended up keeping the payments.
“I just want my job back,” said Carney, who had recently moved from Michigan to take on the role. “It felt like the wind had let go of my sails.”
In 2020, the Republican majority of the NLRB used a case involving the then-General Motors Company to set a new precedent, making it easier for companies to punish employees who use their rules for opposing working conditions. But the Biden-appointed General Counsel of the Labor Board, Jennifer Abruzzo, has indicated she wants to pursue cases challenging the Trump-era precedent, and that Democrats who now have a majority on the NLRB are looking to overturn it.
Google is facing an additional NLRB case on behalf of active employees fired by the company. On Tuesday, a judge ordered that Google must return documents about efforts to thwart federalization efforts.
Some news: a Google data center employee has filed an NLRB complaint after being dismissed for behavior deemed "unacceptable and 'ungoogley'" https://t.co/lx477ELjYk
— Mark Bergen (@mhbergen) December 1, 2021