A Tale of Two Googles: Race, Labor, and Hierarchy in the Digital Age

Mar. 17, 2011

By Matthew Newton info

Matthew Newton is a writer, editor, and journalist from Western Pennsylvania. Publisher and editor of the journal ...

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Work life at Google’s Mountain View campus, aka the Googleplex, has become something of a modern myth. The conditions and amenities are envied by the majority of cubicle drones who are left to languish in America’s dimly lit office parks and asbestos-ridden buildings. Free gourmet lunches! Pool tables! Hair salons! Toys! Bicycles for everyone! It all seems too good to be true, a workplace utopia where workers are celebrated. However, according to Andrew Norman Wilson, who shot the short film Workers Leaving the GooglePlex, not all Google employees are given such unbridled access to company resources:

Workers Leaving the GooglePlex investigates a top secret, marginalized class of workers at Google’s international corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley. As Andrew Norman Wilson (MFA 2011) documents the mysterious “yellow badge” Google workers, he simultaneously chronicles the complex events surrounding his own dismissal from the company. Workers Leaving the GooglePlex is a multi-channel, narrative video installation that sparks critical thought around issues of labor, capital and information in a time of global and corporate expansion. (via School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Initially driven by a passing curiosity, Wilson began filming Google’s “yellow badge” workers as they exited work for the day. As he states in the video, these workers were primarily those charged with the arduous task of digitizing content for search services such as Google Books, etc. But as Wilson’s personal project became better known to his managers and beyond, concern grew, and he was eventually dismissed from his post.

What’s interesting about Wilson’s study are the questions it raises about race, the division of labor, and organizational hierarchy in an a significantly influential corporation such as Google. It’s a point that the crew over at Workers Punk Art School highlights through a series of archival video clips that depict workers leaving factories over the last century. The images we see in Wilson’s short film are not cruel or even offensive, but they reveal a curious tale of labor division that differs greatly from the one Google sells to the public. TC mark

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  • Josshhhh

    Google outsources it's Books project to temp. agencies. This is because it is light industrial work and as such it is easy to be fired for not meeting standards. (I worked at the Books facility in MI). Having worked there, this video is sensationalist. Most people who work in scanops don't even have High School diplomas.

    • Wally

      I think what you may be missing is that this video points to more systematic issues of race, labor, and hierarchy in our contemporary conditions of production. If these people aren't receiving high school diplomas and are treated as disposable, perhaps we need to reconsider how certain populations are educated, put to work, and put out of work. I wonder where the “sensationalist” qualities come out for you. Perhaps in your work environment most people who worked in ScanOps do not have high school diplomas and last at the facility for one month, but sweeping generalization (based on your own experiential account) cannot be made about the ScanOps employees at Google in Mountain View, CA (where I have worked in the past). Even if that is the case out in MI, I don't see how that claim is justification for your critique of the video's “sensationalism.”

      Please think through your potentially racist/classist implications and elaborate further on how “sensationalism” functions in the video for you.

      • Josshhhh

        I agree with your points, but my perspective on this is that the people who work in scanops are not Google employees. You're right, I can't speak to the experiences of scanops employees in Mountain View, but around here, you are constantly reminded that you are not a Google employee even though you work with Google employees in a Google facility with a Google badge–as such, you aren't entitled to the same things that Google employees are.

        From the day you start working in scanops, there are no assumptions about what you are entitled to (it isn't much). The sensationalist vibe comes from people believing it is unfair for temp. workers who are not Google employees to not be allowed to ride Google bikes, use Google laundry facilities, eat a free meal, etc etc (all the benefits for Google employees that exist because Google wants their employees to live at work).

        Regarding my comment about education, Google is extremely choosy about who they hire full-time. Someone I knew (who is now a full-time “Googler” on the proj. in Mountain View) was almost not hired simply because he did not go to a prestigious enough university (such as MIT or UOM)–despite doing the work better than anyone on his level, having excellent recommendations and acing the extensive interview process.

        About people not lasting at the facility long, I am friends with one of the HR reps. They blow through people so fast that they have to hire everyone who applies. Maybe the trends at the MI facility are not indicative of the trends at scanops site worldwide, but it does make me wonder, how feasible is it to hire these employees full-time if the turn around rate is so high?

        Could Google hire these employees and give them benefits? They could, but everything about the Books project is temporary, from the employees to the scanops sites (scanops sites are nomadic and go where the books are; when they're done with the books, the sites shut down). It's gained momentum over the past couple years, but it is still a pet project for them and one that could be easily shut down.

        But as you point out, this is just my experience and information I learned through my time working there. I do think there are things that can be done to improve the conditions of production for workers–that part of the video is not sensationalist. It would be amazing if Google offered a program to help educate their temp. workers, but the thing is, in my experience, Google is completely hands-off regarding the temporary employees who work in their facility.

      • Wally

        A crucial line form the movie – “I found this social arrangement interesting, and at a certain point I decided to investigate the rationale behind Google's decision to exclude the yellow badge class from most privileges the company has to offer, despite the fact that their labor takes place in a Google building with a Google sign out front and are being contracted to Google by another company just like my team, and just like other informational laborers, the kitchen staff, the shuttle drivers, the custodians, and more.”

        Google hires a wide variety of temporary labor ranging from high to low skill saturation. Google's contract with Transvideo, which Andrew/Norman was employed under, was canceled abruptly while I was still employed there due to the economic crisis. So the Transvideo team, which was offered a significant amount of privilege, was a temporary contract that not only “could be easily shut down” (as you claim for the Books project) but actually was easily shut down.

        Also, I have met non-Google software engineers who were contracted for no more than a few weeks and were still able to participate in the privileged Googler lifestyle.

        I think what this video opened up for me is not a justification for the capitalist rationalization of exclusion and hierarchy- a sort of “that's just the way it is” attitude – but rather a potential for thinking about how capitalism can feel. By that I mean how certain forms of unquestioned exclusion, which in this case seems inseparable from race and class, can be psychologically damaging for individuals and socially/ideologically unproductive for everyone in general. We're clearly not living in a post-racial and post-class era; and not even Google, understood to be at the vanguard of liberal/multicultural/”don't be evil” corporate globalization, can claim to be righteous in this regard.

      • Barrie

        This may not be the case, but 12 month contractors are quite often flown in from overseas on temp work visas. The reason being is that they are cheaper to employ otherwise why not employ locals. What are these temps at Google being paid compared to the other contractors? And do they have the same rights to medical care and other benefits. Does their employment include accommodation where in many cases with flown in staff they are sequestered from the public so that they can't talk about their situation?

        This sort of thing is common in other industries worldwide, for example – http://www.radioaustralianews….
        Its called exploitation.

        It behoves Google to come clean on this one.

  • scribler

    But doesn't information want to be free???

  • Norman

    Hi Matt – Thanks for writing about this. More info about the site can be found on my website – http://www.andrewnormanwilson…. Also, an upcoming exhibition of the work – http://blogs.saic.edu/sugs/exh…

    Norman

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