4 ms·

My understanding is the benefits. You can't discriminate on benefits so anything offered to a group of employees must be offered to all. It doesn't make busines

by mattm 3y ago

My understanding is the benefits. You can't discriminate on benefits so anything offered to a group of employees must be offered to all. It doesn't make business sense for contractors who I've heard can make as low as $15/hour even in the Bay Area (the amount Google pays to the contracting company would obviously be more)

behringer 3y ago
You definitely can discriminate on benefits. Companies do it all the time. To answer parents question, the reason they outsource is to make collective bargaining impossible and to fire easily and without cause.
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
That can’t be true. How do the executives get better health insurance, 401ks, etc than the serfs?
- haneefmubarak 3y ago
  Typically, they don't in literal terms. IANAL, but AIUI they may receive specific supplemental health insurance policies (that work on top of the ones they receive the same as any other employee) based on risk-to-business etc. Some of them choose to deposit a larger portion of their salary into their 401k, matched by the same rule the company uses for all employees (usually a X:Y match up to Z% of your specific salary).
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  That was my experience when I looked into setting up a 401k plan for my company. You can set them as a % of salary but it has to be the same for all employees. If you only want to give it to some, you have to fire the rest and bring them on as contractors.
- dmoy 3y ago
  I can't speak to insurance, but for 401k: They basically don't. In fact if the company fails fairness testing on the 401k plan, executive contributions to 401k can be clawed back (actually the bar is much lower - "highly compensated employee" above like $130k. So if Google directly employed all of its contractors, it would likely fail fairness testing on the 415 contributions to after-tax 401k, and all the Software Engineers pushing $70k or whatever a year into their 401k would have half of that disallowed by the government).
Aurornis 3y ago
There is no federal law that requires all employees to have the same benefits. It’s very common at large companies with different tiers of employees (corporate, warehouse, headquarters) to have different benefits contributions Unless California has a different state law, I don’t think this has anything to do with contracting. Even at Google’s scale, they could create a separate subsidiary company to hire the employees on different plans if they wanted.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  There are a pelethora of federal laws limiting difference in benefits. For example, I have a corporation and have explored 401k plan. I can not set up a 401k plan that includes myself, but not other employees, and there are a plethora of requirements around the allowable differences once everyone is in a plan. If I want to give plans to myself and half my employees, the only way to do so is to fire half and bring them back as contractors. My understanding is it is basically the same for most other benefits (e.g. healthcare)
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > My understanding is it is basically the same for most other benefits (e.g. healthcare) It does not. Quick Google search will show pages and pages of results explaining that it is not illegal to give different health care benefits to different employees.

by mattm 3y ago

behringer 3y ago

You definitely can discriminate on benefits. Companies do it all the time. To answer parents question, the reason they outsource is to make collective bargaining impossible and to fire easily and without cause.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago

That can’t be true. How do the executives get better health insurance, 401ks, etc than the serfs?

haneefmubarak 3y ago
Typically, they don't in literal terms. IANAL, but AIUI they may receive specific supplemental health insurance policies (that work on top of the ones they receive the same as any other employee) based on risk-to-business etc. Some of them choose to deposit a larger portion of their salary into their 401k, matched by the same rule the company uses for all employees (usually a X:Y match up to Z% of your specific salary).
s1artibartfast 3y ago
That was my experience when I looked into setting up a 401k plan for my company. You can set them as a % of salary but it has to be the same for all employees. If you only want to give it to some, you have to fire the rest and bring them on as contractors.
dmoy 3y ago
I can't speak to insurance, but for 401k: They basically don't. In fact if the company fails fairness testing on the 401k plan, executive contributions to 401k can be clawed back (actually the bar is much lower - "highly compensated employee" above like $130k. So if Google directly employed all of its contractors, it would likely fail fairness testing on the 415 contributions to after-tax 401k, and all the Software Engineers pushing $70k or whatever a year into their 401k would have half of that disallowed by the government).

Aurornis 3y ago

There is no federal law that requires all employees to have the same benefits. It’s very common at large companies with different tiers of employees (corporate, warehouse, headquarters) to have different benefits contributions Unless California has a different state law, I don’t think this has anything to do with contracting. Even at Google’s scale, they could create a separate subsidiary company to hire the employees on different plans if they wanted.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
There are a pelethora of federal laws limiting difference in benefits. For example, I have a corporation and have explored 401k plan. I can not set up a 401k plan that includes myself, but not other employees, and there are a plethora of requirements around the allowable differences once everyone is in a plan. If I want to give plans to myself and half my employees, the only way to do so is to fire half and bring them back as contractors. My understanding is it is basically the same for most other benefits (e.g. healthcare)
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > My understanding is it is basically the same for most other benefits (e.g. healthcare) It does not. Quick Google search will show pages and pages of results explaining that it is not illegal to give different health care benefits to different employees.