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Shortly after he learned he no longer had a job with YouTube<\/a> Music, Jack Benedict went back to his office to be met by a cardboard box of some of his stuff that co-workers had thrown together while being ushered out. Most of the team of around 40 employees had already left the building, having learned their contracts had ended and that they\u2019d been given 30 minutes to leave, Benedict tells Fortune<\/em>. Coming from the city hall, Benedict, 25, was unable to enter his workplace to collect the rest of his things, and says he has yet to be able to re-enter.<\/p>\n Last week, Benedict was one of several dozen unionized workers on the YouTube Music Content Operations Team who found out that they were losing their jobs<\/a> while testifying to Austin City Council. They were speaking, ironically, about their work\u2014the refusal of Google<\/a> and Cognizant<\/a>, whom the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had determined to be their joint employers, to negotiate with their union, which the workers claimed was illegal union-busting. While Benedict was testifying, his co-worker Katie Marschener relayed the sudden news: \u201cThey just laid us all off. Our jobs are ended today, effective immediately,\u201d Marschener said. The video of Benedict, obviously surprised, went viral. (Reached for comment, Cognizant spokesperson Jeff DeMarrais said if Benedict \u201cneeds help retrieving his things [left behind], that can be arranged very quickly.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the workers first joined the union, Google has appealed the NLRB\u2019s decision that they are joint employers, which obligates the company to bargain with them, with the board siding with the employees so far.<\/p>\n After a long push to get to the bargaining table, Benedict told Fortune<\/em> that not only were his and his former co-workers\u2019 roles suddenly eliminated, but they\u2019ve now been outsourced to workers in India whom Benedict and his colleagues were instructed to train. Those workers were hired after the Austin worker\u2019s first strike last year over returning to the office, says Benedict. Essentially, in his telling, YouTube Music employees were forced to dig their own grave.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Benedict, the employees were told that the overseas team would cover whenever there was an American holiday or a union strike. But \u201cit appears that they were having us train our own replacements for the job,\u201d he says, adding that it\u2019s \u201cincredibly frustrating\u201d and it suggests that \u201cGoogle and Cognizant really don\u2019t care about their products.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cognizant denied that it fired workers in retaliation, while making its opinions regarding the union drive clear. \u201cWhile we respect the right of our associates to unionize, our philosophy is that we work best together with direct open dialogue and collaboration,\u201d Cognizant spokesperson Jeff DeMarrais said, adding that he\u2019d \u201clike to first challenge you to stop using charged terms like \u2018workers\u2019 and other standard rhetoric in your reporting.\u201d DeMarrais then claimed that Fortune<\/em> has historically used different terms to refer to union and non-union labor.<\/p>\n Both companies challenge certain key parts of the account of the YouTube Music workers. When it comes to who is responsible for negotiating with the union and who terminated them, Google shirks responsibility. Cognizant, on the other hand, challenges the notion that workers were laid off entirely. <\/p>\n A representative from Google told Fortune<\/em> that members of the YouTube Music team weren\u2019t Google employees and that \u201cCognizant is responsible for these workers\u2019 employment terms, including staffing.\u201d The spokesperson added that Google had no objections to the unionization, but said the company plans to appeal NLRB\u2019s joint-employer ruling. <\/p>\n Google added that removal of benefits and outsourcing training process is Cognizant\u2019s sole domain and choice. \u201cWe\u2019ve long had many contracts with unionized suppliers and we expect everyone who we contract with to treat their employees fairly, whether they are unionized or not,\u201d a spokesperson from Google said. \u201cWe do not select or alter contracts based on whether our suppliers have unionized workforces and we do not treat anyone differently if they choose to join a union or not.\u201d<\/p>\n There are currently 11 open unfair labor practice charges filed against Cognizant and Google, a spokesperson from the NLRB tells Fortune<\/em>. When asked for a response to these charges, DeMarrais said that \u201call matters pertaining to the NLRB will be discussed in court, which is the appropriate forum for that conversation.\u201d Google did not answer this question.\u00a0 <\/p>\n In response to last week\u2019s incident, the Alphabet Workers Union-Communications Workers of America (AWU-CWA) is filing another Unfair Labor Practice charge with the NLRB against Google and Cognizant, it said in a statement to Fortune<\/em>. Pressing charges on behalf of the laid off team at YouTube Music, the union alleges that \u201cworkers were unlawfully terminated by Google and Cognizant in retaliation for their union organizing.\u201d<\/p>\n DeMarrais did not address the claim that Austin-based workers were replaced by employees in India, which has also made the rounds on TikTok<\/a>, but said that the workers weren\u2019t laid off. Instead \u201cthey have become part of Cognizant\u2019s deployable talent pool where they are given seven weeks of dedicated, paid time to explore other roles within the organization and build new skills through our training ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n YouTube Music workers have been petitioning to negotiate for about a year now. Looking for better pay, benefits, and more flexible work, the workers struggled to get their employers to the bargaining table. For Benedict, the abrupt end to his job is just the latest development in a yearslong process. \u201cThey\u2019re not done with us yet,\u201d he tells Fortune<\/em>. \u201cWe are absolutely going to keep fighting. We want justice. I think our employers, or former employers, would love it if we just moved on and forgot about it,\u201d he adds. He says that what justice looks like isn\u2019t clear right now, but vows that the union will push back.<\/p>\n \u201cI think everyone\u2019s pretty sick of not being paid for the hard work that they do, losing their jobs while the corporations make record profits,\u201d Benedict asserts. \u201cSomething\u2019s not right. And it really needs to change. I\u2019m hoping that our campaign can help change that.\u201d (Google parent Alphabet reported record net income in the fourth quarter of last year, at $20.7 billion<\/a>, although its peak on an annual basis was $76 billion in 2021<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The unionization effort was already brewing when Benedict first joined YouTube Music in a fully remote role in September 2022, according to his LinkedIn<\/a>. Last April, workers voted 41-1 to be represented by Communications Workers of America. Shortly after the team went public with their efforts, Google and Cognizant announced a new five-days-a-week return to office mandate, according to Benedict. The new policy was \u201cessentially a layoff for the many people on our team who didn\u2019t live in Austin, or even Texas,\u201d he explains, adding that they went on strike in response. Cognizant spokesperson DeMarrais said the company \u201ccommunicated its return to office policy to our Austin-based employees repeatedly since December 2021. Any other depiction of that timeline is mythical and rhetoric.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Both Google and Cognizant say that they didn\u2019t terminate employees but that the contract ended naturally. DeMarrais, the Cognizant spokesperson, told Fortune<\/em> that the contract\u2019s end was pre-planned.<\/p>\n But Benedict says that it was \u201cabsolutely a layoff,\u201d pointing to his shell-shocked demeanor in the City Hall video. \u201cWe had absolutely no idea that this was going to happen,\u201d he tells Fortune<\/em>. Even though it was a contract gig, according to Benedict, the union was led to believe the contract with Google would be renewed. Other Google layoffs typically involve giving months notice, but YouTube Music workers were given 30 minutes to leave the office, according to Benedict.\u00a0<\/p>\n The union backs Benedict\u2019s account. \u201cGoogle and Cognizant have claimed that what happened last Thursday to the YouTube Music Content Operations Team was the planned expiration of a contract in the course of \u2019business as usual. In reality, workers were informed midday that their jobs were gone, effective immediately, and put on a timer to gather their belongings,\u201d Alphabet Workers Union-CWA shares in a statement to Fortune<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the former YouTube Music team is feeling the blow, even if both employers shunt blame to the other party. \u201cIt\u2019s just a very, very obvious example that they are trying to bust our union. And I think it\u2019s made even more obvious by the fact they had us train a team in India to do the same thing and that team did not lose their job\u201d even when the Google contract ended, says Benedict. \u201cOnly the unionized people in Austin lost their job with Google and Cognizant.\u201d<\/p>\n Cognizant maintains that the former YouTube Music team was not laid off, but \u201cwill become part of Cognizant\u2019s deployable talent pool, better known as our \u2018bench.\u2019\u201d DeMarrais said that \u201ctens of thousands of Cognizant employees move between active projects via the bench,\u201d and two members of his own team were hired from the bench.<\/p>\n But Benedict believes this bench is merely a holding pen before an eventual layoff. \u201cWe don\u2019t know of anybody who\u2019s ever been rehired from the bench,\u201d he says. He adds that the bench itself is \u201cbesides the point,\u201d noting that the union members were fighting for their specific jobs for which they were trained for and have expertise in.<\/p>\n And the entire contracting system appears to purposely cloud who is responsible for the worker\u2019s rights, adds Benedict. \u201cIt seems to be their design \u2026 Google and Cognizant can point fingers at one another to avoid responsibility for negotiations.\u201d He explains that it\u2019s been hard to speak to any actual person from either company, and the union has in the past received one-word answers when requesting information. In response, Cognizant said \u201cthere were regular, in-person weekly standup meetings in the Austin office so it \u2018being hard to speak to an actual person\u2019 simply isn\u2019t true.\u201d He added that Benedict \u201cchose not to be in the office on the day that our associates were notified of the contract expiry (during the regular, in-person weekly standup meetings).\u201d Google told Fortune<\/em> that communication was Cognizant\u2019s responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even before a year of challenging layoffs, the tech world wasn\u2019t exactly the dreamy world it was portrayed as, especially for contractors. \u201cThere\u2019s the assumption that because we work for YouTube, or we work in tech that we made six figures, had amazing benefits, [and] work fully remote,\u201d says Benedict. But the stereotype couldn\u2019t be further from the situation at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n Working in-office five days a week, Benedict was paid only a little more than $19 an hour. Navigating an expensive city and a \u201cbrutal\u201d commute, workers were also dealing with a loss of benefits as their 40 hours of paid sick leave were taken away when the CDC declared the pandemic over, and many workers came in sick, according to Benedict. DeMarrais did not respond to a question about the sick leave policy. Google, once again, said this policy regarding benefits was not in their domain but Cognizant\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were struggling to make ends meet,\u201d says Benedict, adding that some employees were single parents and many worked multiple jobs to supplement their income. Even as inflation raged, wages had stayed at the same rate since 2019, when the project began, according to Benedict.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, Benedict and his former co-workers are motivated to keep pushing. He tells other tech workers \u201cthe union fight is absolutely worth it,\u201d and that the \u201cmore people that join the fight, the more likely we are to change the system that is working to underpay us.\u201d<\/p>\n Having previously worked in a warehouse in a small town in Wisconsin that was also unionizing, Benedict believes that this is a movement from working class people across generations. A report from the think tank the Economic Policy Institute<\/a> found that major strike activity skytocked by 280% last year. Taking note from past wins of the UAW as well as WGA and SAG-AFTRA, Benedict explains it\u2019s exciting that YouTube Music workers\u2019 efforts have \u201cla[id] some of the groundwork for the rights of contractors and temps.\u201d<\/p>\n The team at YouTube Music is fairly young and feeling the generational burns of navigating an especially volatile economy and a crumbling social contract between employers and employees. \u201cThe system has been not good for us,\u201d says Benedict, speaking of a ballooning price in college, rent, and affording housing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re coming into a world that\u2019s not set up for us to succeed,\u201d Benedict says of his generation, \u201cas well as just anyone who\u2019s doing some sort of working class job, it\u2019s not working for them either.\u201d Adding that he wants to keep fighting and hopes to do some good in the world, Benedict says \u201cpeople are just fed up, and I think we\u2019re gonna see some positive change coming real soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nThe outsourcing allegation<\/h2>\n
Cognizant and Google point fingers, YouTube Music workers ushered out<\/h2>\n
Contractors challenge corporations\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n