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Comment by 908B64B197 | Hacker News Reader

It's basically "Big Tech Bashing" at this point.

She wasn't working for Google, she was working for a contractor. Go to a different datacenter and it will be staffed by a different (local) contractor. Same thing for most of the building's maintenance staff. What makes it news-worthy is that the owner of that particular server-rack was a high-profile company. Had the same thing happened at a datacenter owned by a bank, nobody would have reported on it.

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Google was involved in her employment. The Alphabet Worker's Union filed a complaint against both Google and Modis. There's no reason to assume that only one company was involved, who was responsible can be decided by the NLRB.

You understand that most Google DCs are owned and operated by google, and serve only google, right?

So like even at best this is "Google contracted some dc operations to a company that violated labor relations law."

The more newsworthy part is that she was able to get recourse.

If you get a guy to come replace your roof, it's not really your problem that his employer didn't give him a water bottle, now is it?

being a good client I would still offer them water/soft drink regardless.

Sure, but if I own a house construction company and hire a contractor to do the roofs because I want to keep roof costs down at all costs I am responsible for the low salaries and poor conditions of my roof contractors.

Yeah, it kinda is, unless you're a total shitbag with no empathy.

If the contractor doesn't pay the subcontractor, you as the homeowner are liable.

It wasn't long ago that Google directly employed most of their datacenter techs. I know a couple guys who worked their way up from server monkey to SRE. It's sad to hear that that pathway seems closed off.

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