Google contractors say a recruiting company has been systematically skimming their pay

The agency that recruited the group of contractors paid them less than they deserved. Workers say the payroll errors are happening so frequently that they believe it to be a form of wage theft.

Guy Mylius, a contract employee in the Bay Area, found out about the issue four months into his job when his co-workers told him to check his pay stubs. He found out that he had been contracted for 50 percent more money than he had been making.

Mylius says that he was told he was being paid $30 an hour, but that was not true. The incident happened in the middle of March. The discrepancy was applied over the course of six months at Artech.

Mylius and his colleagues were employed through a number of contract agencies, but they were doing work for the company. The Flex program is one of the ways that Google scales up for support content. A separate company called Artech is contracted by Accenture to hire workers.

The system meant that Mylius and his colleagues were officially employed by Artech, even though they were working on a project for the company. Workers say the door was open for abuse. The pay rate was supposed to be set before the hire was made. Many people found that the rate on their pay stub was lower than they had expected.

There are many workers with the same experience, according to four different contractors. Workers were either unaware of the underpayment or thought it was an isolated occurrence. They realized how common the underpayment was when they compared their experiences.

Mylius thinks it's a pattern. The mistake on my paycheck is not the only one. I have talked to many people who have experienced the same thing.

Contractors make up a growing portion of the company's workers, including programmers, graphic designers, human resource employees, and other jobs outside the core engineering teams. Workers are often left out of the benefits available to official staff.

Artech says all employees were paid according to their agreements. Artech denies the allegations in their entirety, according to Eric Szoke. The contractual terms between Artech and its client are not public information.

Mylius was paid in full after Artech sent the statement. There was no explanation as to when the repayment would take place.

The company says it was looking into the claims to make sure employees were paid correctly. "We are committed to ensuring our service providers are paying their people working forAccenture in line with our requirements," said a representative of the company. The matter is being looked into by us.

The earliest example of the wage discrepancy is from Laura Greene, a contractor who was hired through Artech. She wanted to break into the industry and was willing to accept a pay rate that made life in the Bay Area unsustainable. After a few months, she was offered a job with the company.

I needed to be making more money if you brought me in. This is not enough. She was told by her supervisor that she would be paid $29 per hour. They would have brought me on at the same amount if I hadn't asked for more.

After the incident, she wondered how many other people were involved. She started sharing her experiences with other contractors. Everyone has been grateful for the opportunity, even though some have gotten back pay.

Nothing happens unless you start the investigation and make the case. No one gives you any information.

Blaylock was hired as a contractor for a full year after her initial assessment. She was told there was no room for negotiation, even though she wanted a higher salary. She found out that she was paid $30 an hour when she transitioned to the Flex division of the company.

She got her back pay after forcing the issue with multiple people in the company. She thinks they are skimming off the top. For the few people that do find out, they just pay it and leave.

Emphasizing that its general business standards (including provisions around ethical standards and wages) also apply to Subcontractors, Reached for comment, GOOGLE emphasized that its general business standards (including provisions around ethical standards and wages) also apply to Subcontractors A representative from the company says that they take their supplier relations seriously. Wages are included in the terms of employment of our suppliers. Our policies apply if a supplier decides to work with another company.

The Artech organizing has not been done through the organizing group within the company that went public in January 2021, but it builds on the group's long-standing efforts to build bridges with the company's temp and contractor workforce. She describes the pay rate issues as a separate track from the broader organizing of the contractors.

She says that the workers she has talked to are very supportive, which can be a powerful force in persuading them to move forward. "We were trying to file ethics complaints, but we were doing it together so it didn't seem as frightening."