They worked under a contract. The contract ended. They could have gotten another contract with Microsoft. But they could have gotten a contract with any other software company, too. Why didn't Lionbridge find another contract?
> They worked under a contract. The contract ended.
This sort of argument is disingenuous at best. Unless Lionbridge suddenly left the software development business and stopped hiring developers and testers, it is not possible to assume that these employees were fired just because the company went out of business.
Not familiar with Lionbridge, but lots of contract companies pretty much serve one large, local company. It’s often hard to drum up work for a large number of contractors on demand.
It's probably similarly hard for Microsoft, though, isn't it? It's not like their ending of the Windows Phone project opened up a bunch of vacancies in their other QA projects.
I agree. I was responding to your question, "Why didn't LionBridge find them more work?". If LionBridge principally works with Microsoft (as is common among contractors) and Microsoft cut QA work, then LionBridge likely couldn't find work for those contractors.
This may be _especially_ true if those contractors were demanding a certain salary that is infeasible in LionBridge's market.
Why would MS try to find them work if they didn't need them any longer? Other projects were likely already provisioned for. mS doesn't employ these people directly, it's not their problem.
It looks like a duck, smells like a duck, and quacks like a duck being held off at a distance by an intermediate party whose sole purpose is to let Microsoft have all the benefits of full time employees without the protections that we award to full time employees.
Those people could easily be full time employees with benefits---only employed by Lionsbridge, rather than Microsoft.
Heck, before Microsoft, Lionsbridge primarily contracted out to Nokia.
It's an independent company, that worked in an industry that consolidated around two parties---Android and iOS---and LionsBridge didn't have a significant part in either of those.
> Those people could easily be full time employees with benefits---only employed by Lionsbridge, rather than Microsoft.
Not good enough. The quality of benefits from Lionbridge or similar companies is much worse than the benefits offered by Microsoft. Microsoft is getting a tax break (they don't pay FICA on health insurance or certain other benefit-based employee compensation) dependent on making those benefits available to all employees; they need to hold up their end of that deal instead of scamming taxpayers by using subcontracting loopholes.
Not good enough. The quality of benefits from Lionbridge or similar companies is much worse than the benefits offered by Microsoft. Microsoft is getting a tax break (they don't pay FICA on health insurance or certain other benefit-based employee compensation) dependent on making those benefits available to all employees; they need to hold up their end of that deal instead of scamming taxpayers by using subcontracting loopholes.
That’s not how W2 contracting works.
LionsBridge is paying FICA, the contractors are considered LionsBridge employees. LionsBridge is passing the cost on to Microsoft. Microsoft is not saving money on FICA.
Not necessarily in this case, but full time employees overindex on the value of company provided benefits. It’s just another part of your compensation. You can get health insurance on the open market, without depending on your employer. You have to set your hourly rate high enough to compensate.
I’ve done W2 contracting, I made damn sure that my hourly rate was high enough to cover the absence of benefits, the lack of paid time off, etc.
In the case of W2 contracting, you can usually buy insurance through your consulting company - full price, pretax. If you are a 1099 contractor you can buy insurance through the exchange and it’s tax deductible.
Well MS is not hiring. So you're saying that the W2 system shouldn't exist? That means many of these people simply won't have jobs in the field _at all_.
What protections do full time workers have in an at will state? The only protection any worker has is protection against certain types of discrimination - they have that protection regardless.
Exactly. Microsoft and other companies get a tax break by providing some employee compensation in the form of benefits (like health insurance or retirement plans) instead of wages. In exchange for that tax break, they are required to make the benefits available to all of their employees, from the janitor to the software engineer, on the same terms, with certain exceptions (like restricting to full-time workers only). By subcontracting, they can get out of making it available to the janitors or QA testers. The quality of health insurance, for example, offered by any of these outsourcers (not only Lionbridge) is much worse, in premiums, deductibles, and copays, than that of Microsoft or the other tech company actually in charge. And that's if they are offered insurance at all -- if the outsourcer isn't giving them one hour less than the number of hours necessary to qualify for health insurance.
It's a scam. Nothing stops companies from providing different quality levels of insurance to different types of employees; they just have to pay payroll taxes on that compensation. But they've managed to have it both ways -- they're getting the tax break while failing to hold up their end of the deal. The law needs to be retroactively changed to close this loophole and retroactively assess companies FICA tax, interest, and non-payment penalties on the full value of their health insurance, retirement, and other FICA-free benefits if they didn't really make it available to all employees. The result would be a huge tax bill for Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and everyone else.
Also, Microsoft and other companies need to be on the hook as joint employers, like the union was trying to do. The union was almost certain to win on that at the NLRB under a Democratic administration. There was no hope under a Republican NLRB. In addition to joint employment in the collective bargaining context, we need legislation to implement a very broad, unified joint employment standard (ABC test + Browning-Ferris indirect/potential control) across all federal employment laws, including tax, wage and hour, anti-discrimination, and workplace safety laws. Subcontracting should not be a "get out of jail free" card; every employer in a joint employer scenario should be jointly and severally liable for everything, regardless of their knowledge of the wrongdoing. (Otherwise, you get the "what, we're only paying the contractor $5/hour but we had no idea the contractor was paying its employees less than minimum wage!" issue.)
What about the responsibility of the worker? Everytime I have voluntarily done contracting, I’ve known up front the trade offs.
The last time I was looking for a job, I wanted to contract because everytime I do, I make more money all in. The people I know contracting as QAs were making a killing - they get paid every hour they work and made more than enough to take vacations - most of them did - pay insurance out of pocket, etc.
Full time salaried work and “the benefits” for most of corporate America is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Contracting, not subcontracting. If Microsoft was itself a contractor, I guess you could then use subcontractor here.
Microsoft used to employ janitors directly in its early days, many of them eventually became millionaires. Microsoft and most other American companies decided to outsource non-core work in the late 90s.
On-site contractors are subject to many rules in order to maintain their status, including length of employment, choice of tools, and so on. Offsite...well, that is just treated as company to company transactions right?
Do you think there's something special about QA for Windows Mobile that makes them unhireable for other QA jobs?