Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 19:20:54 EST From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Temp workers' victory at Microsoft; WashTech/ CWA local organizes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, Here's some labor news from the upper-left corner of the map, Seattle, where a CWA local called WashTech has been organizing temp workers at Microsoft. -- cheers & solidarity, Sarah Luthens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ____ Microsoft raises the standard for temp workers' benefits Saturday, April 3, 1999 By DAN RICHMAN SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER Microsoft yesterday told agencies that hire its contract workers they must increase employee benefits or risk losing the Redmond software maker's business. In moves it hopes will quiet controversy over the way it treats the 5,500 to 6,500 workers who make up a third of its 15,392-person Puget Sound work force, the company also laid the groundwork for further benefit increases. At the same time, the software giant moved to eliminate one barrier to the full-time employment of contract workers. Fast-moving high-tech companies like Microsoft say that contract, or contingent, workers are vital because they need to take on, and then let go, large numbers of workers as labor-intensive, short-duration software projects are launched and then completed. But Microsoft has taken heat for treating contract workers like its own employees while denying them benefits that its employees get. Though one contract worker said she was "ecstatic" with the new measures, they don't go far enough to please labor organizers or to address the concerns of unequal treatment that several thousand Microsoft workers raised in two class actions pending in U.S. District Court, spokesmen said. Explaining Microsoft's new policy yesterday, Sharon Decker, Microsoft's director of contingent staffing, said that effective May 3, if an employment agency supplying contract workers wants to do business with Microsoft, it's expected to offer those workers: ïThirteen paid days off a year, whether as sick leave, comp time, paid vacation or some other form. ïMedical and dental insurance, for which the agency pays at least half. ïVocational training worth at least $500 a year. ïA retirement savings program with some matching by the agency. Benefits may be driven even higher than those minimum levels because a competitive system among contractors that's part of Microsoft's new policy will give contract workers a choice of agencies to work for. Formerly, a job-seeker at Microsoft could be told that the company itself wasn't hiring for a position, but would be referred to a contracting agency. Now, every job-seeker will have a choice of agencies with which to contract for a given position. That will likely lead to competition among agencies to provide better benefits, Decker said. In fact, it already is. S&T OnSite of Seattle, which supplies writers, editors and designers to Microsoft, yesterday said it will increase its employer 401(k) contribution to 20 percent from 15 percent starting in July. New employees also will have to work only 30 days, rather than 60, before becoming eligible for medical, dental and vision insurance, for which S&T will pay half the premiums, said Donna Sakson, president. "We hope our benefits package will attract people. We know they have a choice," said Kathleen Holm, S&T's director of marketing. The number of agencies with which Microsoft contracts directly -- now more than 100 -- will be reduced to 15 to more easily ensure that the agencies comply with the benefits requirements, the company said. The numerous agencies that subcontract with those Microsoft-certified primary agencies will be expected to provide the same benefits. Certified primary agencies also will be expected not to enforce one clause of the contracts that temporary agencies frequently require their employees to sign. That clause requires contract employees to promise they will not go to work as full-time employees at the company to which they're sent. Getting rid of that clause will make it easier for Microsoft to hire contract employees. The changes will affect 85 percent of Microsoft's contingent workers within the next few weeks and all of them within a matter of months, said Microsoft spokesman Dan Leach. Lisa Lewis, 39, who has worked as a contract lab engineer at Microsoft for four years, said the newly mandated benefits exceed what she's getting now -- a 401(k) with no matching, insurance with no employer contribution and only six paid holidays a year. "I'd be ecstatic if I could get those benefits," Lewis said. "For my situation, it would be great. This remedies some of the inequities here." Cheers broke out as staff members at WashTech, the Seattle-based labor union that has been organizing Microsoft contingent workers, heard details of the plan yesterday. "Some of those provisions are exactly the ones we've been pushing for," said Andrea de Majewski, an organizer. But she and union co-founder Marcus Courtney hastened to add the changes don't go far enough. "The heart of the issue is equality, and we've barely scratched the surface," Courtney said. If workers act like full-time employees, spending a year or more in a position and working alongside employees as many do, they should have all the benefits of employees, not just some, he said. Those include the right to buy Microsoft stock at discount, to have fully reimbursed insurance coverage and to participate fully in Microsoft company functions, he said. Microsoft's Decker said contingent workers who want full Microsoft benefits need only apply for full-time positions there. Nonsense, responded Courtney. The 2,000 jobs Microsoft says it has available aren't for the positions that contingent workers generally occupy, and even if they are, often the contract workers are turned down. Microsoft refuses to make those positions full time because that saves money and glorifies the programmers who do get full-time jobs, while devaluing the testers, writers and editors who are usually contract workers, Courtney said. More than half the 535 contractors responding to a WashTech survey earlier this month said they'd take a full-time job at Microsoft if they could get one. A third said they'd held their positions at Microsoft for more than two years. Microsoft's Leach disputed Courtney's assertions. "A lot of people turn down permanent positions when they're offered," he said. The invalidation of non-compete clauses will increase contingent workers' odds of being hired, he added. David Stobaugh, a Seattle attorney representing contingent workers in two class actions, also dismissed the measures as insufficient. "It's not hard for Microsoft to do something about this situation -- just treat all employees as employees," he said. "Calling workers 'temporary' makes it easy to justify treating them differently." His clients claim they are Microsoft employees by reason of the length and nature of their employment, despite the fact that their employment contracts are with temporary agencies, not Microsoft. The class actions are on hold pending resolution of the class size by a federal appeals court. Recognizing the difficulty of resolving the issues raised by contingent employment, the state Senate voted yesterday to create a bipartisan task force to study the matter. The Contingent Workforce Study Bill, SR8402, will move to the House, where it has not yet been scheduled for a hearing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ P-I reporter Dan Richman can be reached at 206-448-8032 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] --AEISZKXZGLZJEBTWbGbDLQLXDdIUHR--
