The Other Microsoft: Second edition [2 ed.]

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The Other



Microsoft

Second Edition



Philippe Boucher

© 2016 by Philippe Boucher. The book author retains sole copyright to his contributions to this book. Cover design by Sophie Erskine. Thank you a million Sophie :) This book is part of a concerted activity about a joint concern for the improvement of our common working conditions as employees for Lionbridge Technologies and Microsoft.

The Blurb-provided layout designs and graphic elements are copyright Blurb Inc., 2010. This book was created using the Blurb creative publishing service. The book author retains sole copyright to his or her contributions to this book.

THE OTHER MICROSOFT

The first part of this is book is dedicated to Marilyse, who was immediately fired on August 2nd 2013, after asking for benefits for all of us. Eight months later, on March 21 2014, Eric and I, and a few other co-workers started to sign authorization cards towards the creation of a union to represent us, and collectively bargain for benefits that are in fact essential rights: paid sick leave, paid family leave, paid vacation and health insurance. On September 11, 2014 a majority of employees voted in favor of the union, affirming the creation of Temporary Workers of America. The second part of this book is dedicated to Maria Klawe, Brad Smith and Satya Nadella: after taking a first step for paid leave, Microsoft should take a second step forward, emulating Pierre Dreyfus in promoting paid parental leave and paid holidays for all supplier's employees. It is also dedicated to the thousands of unknown, anonymous, ignored, unorganized Microsoft's temps: get organized, reclaim your rights, start a New Deal revolution for this twenty first 3

THE OTHER MICROSOFT

century. Nobody else is going to do it for you but you. It's not complicated. It has to be done if you want decent working and living conditions for you and your families.

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CONTENTS

Foreword to the second edition 9 Part 1: Birth of a union No benefits and reduced expectations 17 Microsoft’s responsibility 25 The supplier’s responsibility 49 How many days of paid vacation should we have per year? 55 How much would paid vacation cost? 61 Being part of the other Microsoft 67 Marilyse story 73 Election time 81 Propaganda sessions 85 Time to vote 99 What's next? 107



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CONTENTS Part 2: Baby steps of a baby union October 2014 - July 2016 What took so long? 116 Creating a union 118 LOCAL = Lionbridge Technologies 119 Collective bargaining 121 NLRB 127 Reaching out 129 Design for social change 134 Microsoft and human rights 140 About paid public holidays 143 Benefits thefts? 145 Trying to get rid of the union 147 The need for monitoring 151 What is missing 153 What's next? 155

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CONTENTS ANNEXES Paid Time Off Matters, by Brad Smith 03/26/2015 162 The employee experience at Microsoft Aligning benefits to our culture by Kathleen Hogan, 08/05/2015 167 How Microsoft spoiled my Fourth of July 07/02/2013 171 Paid vacation in France and in the US 176 Pierre Dreyfus - CEO of Renault 179 TWA Timeline 180 Very short bibliography 194 Paid Vacation Act of 2013 198 About the cover 204 Thank yous 205

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT





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FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

I have worked for Microsoft/Lionbridge for 4.5 years. I started on December 5, 2011 and I resigned a few days ago, on July 5, 2016. I started putting together the update of the first edition that was published in October 2014 after I resigned. I did not change anything to the content of the first 107 pages of the 2014 edition, except fixing spelling mistakes. I added 14 vignettes that cover what happened from October 2014 until now. I modified the content of the annexes by suppressing/adding a few documents. On Thursday March 26, 2015, Brad Smith, then Vice President Executive of Microsoft published on Microsoft's official blog a post entitled 'Paid time off matters: Ensuring minimum standards for the people at our suppliers'.

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FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

It required Microsoft’s suppliers to provide ‘at least 15 days of paid time off’ to their employees. While it generated a lot of kudos for Microsoft this new policy was not immediately implemented. In fact most suppliers waited one full year before starting to offer the new benefit in April 2016. This was not the enormous change all media applauded without any reservation. Everyone had apparently forgotten that Microsoft had introduced in 1998 a 13 days paid time off policy for its suppliers employees. This 1998 requirement obviously 'disappeared' sometimes before its rebirth as ‘at least 15 days’, 18 years later. I mentioned this first minimal standard in the chapter devoted to Microsoft’s responsibility but I have yet to see it mentioned by anyone else. That explains, why, although grateful for the progress it represented I did not join the unanimous applause about the 'at least 15 days of PTO requirement.' 10

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

I found this minimal standard a bit late coming and also too low: shockingly it does not include any specific paid parental leave (contrary to what Facebook announced a few weeks later) and it maintains a complete and very offensive paid public holidays discrimination (Facebook kept a similar paid holiday discrimination). Both discriminating gaps in paid parental leave and paid company holidays were aggravated 4 months later on August 5, when Microsoft increased both paid leave benefits for its own ‘direct’ employees. One of the new paid company holiday was Martin Luther King Day Jr: nobody at Microsoft or elsewhere saw any contradiction in pretending to celebrate MLK while aggravating a flagrant paid leave discrimination. I guess it shows how indifferent (ignorant?) the top decision makers are about the people working for them at the bottom.

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FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION As far as Lionbridge Technologies is concerned they did not go one iota further than what Microsoft required. The gap between the haves and the have nots remains huge. 'Direct employees' of Microsoft have the following paid leaves, compared to what the minimal requirement is for the suppliers: 10 days of paid sick leave vs 5 (out of the 15 days of PTO) 15 days of paid vacation vs 10 (out of the 15 days of PTO) 12 days of paid company holidays (10 days of paid holidays and 2 'personal' days) vs zero 12 weeks of paid parental leave (plus 8 weeks for moms) vs zero While the minimal 15 days is a first step we can be and are grateful about, it's only a first step in the right direction. What is needed now, is a second step and more steps forward to reduce the remaining gap. This is a challenge for a company that in 1997 adopted Bob Herbold's ideology of eliminating "useless fixed assets'. This

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FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

policy resulted in the 'permatemps' system and all the paid leave discriminatory consequences. Satya Nadella told that Marvin Zonis, his professor at Chicago Booth School of Business ' stressed that EQ trumps IQ in the long run - the E is for empathy'. He added: 'When I've had my failures -when I have been impatient or not listened to someone- it was because I did not enlist my sense of empathy.' Microsoft has to improve upon its minimal standard, embrace and implement empathy, be fair to the lowest paid workers that as Brad smith noted are disproportionately impacted by the lack of paid leave. Can extremely wealthy and profitable high tech corporations adopt fair and family friendly paid leave policies for all their US employees, including the whole US supply chain? Can Microsoft go further than this 'minimal' standard? I worked full time for 4.5 years for Microsoft/Lionbridge. When I resigned 13

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

I was still misclassified as 'temporary' and I had only been able to accrue about ten days of paid time off. Both companies saved thousands of dollars they should have paid me, millions of dollars they should have paid the thousands of workers they keep depriving of basic human rights. In its defense against the charge of joint employment filed against Microsoft in October 2015, their attorney invokes their exceptional sense of corporate social responsibility and generous philanthropy. It's time now for Microsoft to take a second step forward to require its suppliers to provide all their employees with paid public holidays and paid parental leave. Bainbridge Island, July 2016 You can visit the following blogs for the most recent updates: http://lionbridgeunion.blogspot.com http://paidtimeoffmatters.com

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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No benefits and reduced expectations

No benefits and reduced expectations Once upon a time there was a country where many people could not find work. While they kept looking and sending resumes that most often remained unanswered they slowly lost hope and felt useless, ashamed, desperate. I had been in this situation for almost three years when I read on Craigslist about a job that required one of my strong skills: my native non-English language. I immediately applied and was stunned to get a quick positive answer: I was to start within a month to work on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. While I would work ‘for’ Microsoft I would not be directly employed ‘by’ Microsoft as this position was offered by a ‘staffing agency’ contracting with Microsoft to provide the employees. This job came without any ‘benefits’ and if the pay was much less than what I used to make (but it was a much simpler job) it was infinitely better

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No benefits and reduced expectations than nothing at all so I felt very happy and blessed to have this job instead of none. I still do. The feelings I just described are a key element of the situation as most if not all the people who are my co-workers were previously unemployed although some were employed in similar jobs with other companies with lesser pay and a worse environment. Many were also overqualified and are eager to find another better job than the one they just got and feel so blessed about. How strange this combination is: relief and gratitude for being out of unemployment, frustration for feeling underpaid and taken advantage of, constant latent fear of risking to be out of work again. Therefore the frustrations are constantly repressed and silenced for the sake of not risking to lose the job. That’s why the lack of ‘benefits’ is never -if everchallenged. I was much too happy to get a job to look at and

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No benefits and reduced expectations discuss the lack of benefits while millions are unemployed and would jump at this opportunity. But as months go by, as we start experiencing the lack of benefits, as we can see the profits made by our employers, we start thinking about why does this job come without any benefit? After 2 years of working full time without any benefit, that’s what I am experiencing and I would like to share what I found out when I started researching the reasons of this absence of benefits. In fact my purpose is at first narrower as I shall only look at the absence of paid vacation. I am writing paid vacation, meaning paid holidays, annual paid leave or paid time off. Paid time off also covers sick leave but my prime concern here is really about the fact that people can be employed for a long period of time (often more than a year) without any paid vacation. I should immediately amend what I said as I think the required time to obtain paid vacation should be much less than a year: as soon as you have worked one month, you should be entitled to

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No benefits and reduced expectations some paid vacation. I can already see the smirk on the face of potential conservative readers at the sight of the word ‘entitled’. Of course that’s exactly why I chose to use it ☺ Only in the US and a few very underdeveloped (overexploited) countries isn’t paid vacation mandatory. But let us not jump this gun. There will be time later for looking at this US exception. I have established that people are happy to get a job, even without paid vacation, as it’s better than no job and while they can be frustrated by this absence of paid vacation they have very little incentive of trying to do anything about it (like complaining) for fear of losing this very same without paid vacation job that plenty of unemployed or underemployed people would be more than happy to grab in a blink. I realize I am sort of repeating myself here but it is on purpose. I want to insist on this frustrating state where you are faced with a serious inconvenience/injustice without feeling able to do

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No benefits and reduced expectations anything significant about it. My conservative reader would leash at me the obvious ‘love it or leave it’ mantra, ‘find yourself a better job lazy and quit whining’ but I do want trying to go to the roots of this problem. Instead of focusing only about finding an escape for myself by getting out of this job I want to dream about what could be done to make it a better job, a good job, with adequate ‘benefits’. I use brackets for ‘benefits’ because I am intellectually uncomfortable with the word and the concept of ‘benefits’. Benefits are not rights. There lies a fundamental difference with deep psychological, cultural, economic consequences. Why does the job I so gratefully accepted (still do) does not come with any paid vacation?The historical and legal explanation would be because there is no legal obligation in the US for any employer to provide paid vacation.How come many corporations and organizations do provide paid vacation?

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No benefits and reduced expectations

Paid vacation is brought to you initially by the same people who brought you the 8 hour working day and the week-end: the unions. Who remembers May 1st 1886, the Haymarket demonstration that turned tragic and is so purposefully erased from the US psyche? Better forget the time when workers protested too long working days and police killed them for that. Paid vacation is a combined result of the pressure inflicted on employers by the employees organized in unions and the understanding by the most enlightened and sometimes (very rarely) progressive employers that such paid vacation is a sound investment. It makes the workers healthier, happier, more productive and it costs but a dime. Paid vacation also reflects the need for corporations wishing to attract the best qualified workers to extend their benefits as an additional incentive. But such a need does not exist for workers that are not in such high demand, quite the opposite,

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No benefits and reduced expectations because so many of them are looking for a job and willing to accept a no paid vacation position. Today, in the US, according to the American Time Use Survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 75% of the workers get some sort of paid vacation. That leaves a significant chunk of workers without any paid vacation: 25% of the workers without any paid vacation means 55 million people without any paid vacation. I am one of them, having now worked for Microsoft on their Redmond’s campus for two years while my employer, although generously paid by Microsoft (probably twice or more what I am paid), does not offer me any paid vacation Why? The first reason is that Microsoft looks the other way and despite its claim for good corporate citizenship has chosen to ignore this situation it largely instigated when deciding to outsource to staffing agencies large segments of its operations (see Naomi Klein’s book No Logo, Chapter 10, Threats and temps, page 251 about ‘useless fixed assets’).

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No benefits and reduced expectations The second reason is that the contractor is taking advantage of the high unemployment rate for exploiting its employees and maximizing its profits at their expense. The third reason is that the contractor can do so because in the US there is no legal obligation to provide paid vacation: the same multinational employer operating in Germany or Poland or anywhere in the European Union is forced to give all its workers 5 weeks paid vacation plus all the national holidays, plus health insurance, plus etc… and the miracle is: Microsoft is still making a profit and wants to operate in Germany, Poland, etc. Talk about doing even a little bit of the same in the US and you are accused of wanting to ruin your generous employer and the whole society. In this context it is strange that numerous opinion surveys made in the US show a very large majority of the US people are in favor of having a law that would make some amount of paid vacation mandatory. Unfortunately there is a huge gap between what a large majority of the US people want and what the present democratic system delivers.

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Microsoft's responsibility Microsoft’s responsibility

I was hired in early December 2011 to work on Microsoft's Redmond campus. I am not going to give any precise details about my type of work or the company that hired me as they made us sign strict confidentiality agreements (part of it is probably abusive and illegal) and I think this anonymity will not negatively impact the storytelling. Let us call the company LOCAL and say my job was related to program localization Being fluent in a language other than English I was to check the content produced in this language as well as content in English. All this content is produced for a Microsoft product that I am not going to identify either. Take your pick between any you can imagine, from Office, X-Box, Windows or else The workplace was/is located in one of the 150+ buildings on the Microsoft's campus in Redmond.

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Microsoft's responsibility

One of the first things I was told to do was to go to the ‘registration office’ to have my picture taken so that I could obtain the magic badge that would allow me to enter the building and the lab itself Without the magic badge you cannot enter any building. Since the color of your badge is orange, this magic badge is also a constant reminder of your lower status within the Microsoft organization or more precisely a reminder that you are not part of the Microsoft’s class, although you work at the same place and under the strict control of Microsoft. It’s a constant reminder of your second class status.If you are a direct employee of Microsoft, the color of your badge is blue. If you are employed by a ‘vendor’ company, you are labelled a v-, a v- dash, and the color of your badge is orange.

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Microsoft's responsibility Looks innocuous but it’s not. It’s a very clear sign of discrimination and for all the arguments that would claim that some vmuch prefer this situation, enjoy better compensation and benefits, it’s plain untrue for the huge majority of the people wearing the orange badge. I recently discovered a March 3, 2009 Seattle Times article by Benjamin Romano that gave some statistics about the number of people indirectly employed that way by Microsoft. Microsoft does not share willingly any data on this issue. In the Puget Sound region there was about 41K such people in 2009, and 73K worldwide. This number fluctuates in time but it still gives an idea of the size. The article claims that those workers, those ‘temporary workers’ represent almost half of Microsoft workforce I had no idea there were so many of us.

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Microsoft's responsibility Maybe that’s because there is very little if any information about the ‘temporary’ workers and we don’t exist as any type of organized entity. Each ‘Vendor’, each ‘staffing agency’, each corporation providing Microsoft with such employees is keen to incite the workers not to discuss between themselves their personal status, what their compensation is, what their benefits or lack of is, stipulations and recommendations that are plainly in violation of the employee’s rights to organize according to Section 7 of the 1935 National labor Relations Act but we’ll get to that later. All the contracts are also eager to insist that you are employed by this vendor and not by any other entity, even and especially if the reality could give you the impression such an entity could exist and could be named Microsoft. All those precautions to distance and differentiate the people employed by the vendors from the people directly employed by Microsoft derive from the class action lawsuit that was introduced by 10.000 workers against Microsoft in 1996 and settled in 2001 for $97 million.

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Microsoft's responsibility

Google Vizcaino vs Microsoft 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision, May 12,1999, or look for ‘permatemp’ on wikipedia or visit the site of the Seattle law firm of Bendich, Stobaugh and Strong that initiated and managed the class action. At the root of the problem (as I understand it and present it in a very simplistic way) was the fact that Microsoft employed people classified as ‘temporary’ workers and independent contractors while they worked for longer than one year and were fairly integrated within the Microsoft’s operation. This classification allowed Microsoft to dodge taxes and avoid paying benefits that were ‘reserved’ for ‘real’ Microsoft’s employees. The court decided that you could not be considered a ‘temporary’ worker if you worked more than 5 months although it seems that the standard later adopted by Microsoft was no more than one year. But I am not sure of this interpretation and there does not seem to be any legal time limit for a ‘temporary’ position.

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Microsoft's responsibility

As my manager answered when I asked him how long was ‘temporary’: it can be for ever. It seems that at one point Microsoft was very picky about not having anybody classified as a temporary worker working longer than one year, be they employed directly by them or by a vendor. That is not the case today: I have met many people who are classified as ‘temporary’ but have been working for more than the initial period mentioned on their contract and longer than one year. Of course since they remain officially ‘temporary’ they are not awarded any benefit given to the ‘regular’ employees, including zero paid vacation. Interestingly it seems that at one point, in the late 1990's, when Microsoft was embroiled in the Vizcaino litigation they tried to force their vendors to provide some level of benefits to their employees. In his article The permatemps contretemps, published in the August 2000 issue of Fast

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Microsoft's responsibility Company, Ron Lieber writes "In other areas, Decker (HR Microsoft’s person at the time) has had more leeway to improve the standing of temporary workers at the company. In 1998, for example, she instituted a platform of changes that requires every temp agency that works with Microsoft to pay for at least half of a temporary worker's medical and dental insurance, to give workers at least 13 paid days off each year, to grant them at least $500 worth of training annually, and to establish a retirement-savings plan with at least some matching contribution from the agency. And, for the first time, all temps in every job category have a choice between at least two agencies that they can sign up with. "If you're going to use a contingent workforce, then you need to make sure that there's a safety net in place for those workers, and you need to underwrite the costs associated with that net," Decker says, noting that Microsoft now pays 20% more per worker to agencies than it did just a year ago.You have read right: give workers at least 13 paid days off each year, plus at least half of

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Microsoft's responsibility medical and dental insurance, at least $500 worth of training and some retirement saving. Was that implemented?For how long? If implemented, when and why did it disappear as it is clearly not the rule now? Those questions remain unanswered as I write these lines. In his 2008 book The big squeeze, Steven Greenhouse, labor reporter for the New York Times devotes his chapter 7 to the situation of the "temps', temporary workers who very often are "permatemps", meaning they are not really temporary workers but are classified as such to be deprived of any benefit. Greenhouse mentions Microsoft several times. Here is the end of this chapter (page 134): "Microsoft overhauled its policies as a result of the dispute. But even when Microsoft ordered its temp agencies to improve their health and vacation benefits and 401(k) offerings, the benefits they offered remained far worse than what Microsoft offered its regular employees"

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Microsoft's responsibility That’s a confirmation that at one point, Microsoft did ‘order’ its vendors to provide some paid time off and other benefits Could Microsoft do it again? One incentive to do so would be that on November 22, 2006 Microsoft announced its participation in the UN Global Compact and you are about to understand why I have been mentioning article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN Global Compact is an initiative of the United Nations aiming at inciting global corporations to implement basic human rights and a set of best practices for themselves and their suppliers. The first document the corporations commit to respect is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 24 affirms: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

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Microsoft's responsibility Periodic holidays with pay is a human right. According to the Declaration, paid vacation is a human right, not an optional benefit. My argument is that since Microsoft has signed into the UN Global Compact it should be committed to make sure that all its employees, including its suppliers employees enjoy such a right. Microsoft seems to agree in many of its documents that explicitly refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without making any exclusion about article 24: ‘Our commitment to respect the fundamental human rights of our employees, people working for our suppliers, and our customers reflects Microsoft’s company mission to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential’. In July 2012 Microsoft published its Global Human Rights Statement: As a signatory to the UN Global Compact, Microsoft is committed to respecting all of the human rights described in the Universal

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Microsoft's responsibility Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work This statement is clearly all encompassing and does not exclude article 24 from Microsoft’s commitment. On December 10, 2012 when Dan Bross, Senior Director of Microsoft's Corporate Citizenship and Public Affairs published a post in the official Microsoft's blog to celebrate the 64th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human rights he did not set aside article 24. After reading Dan Bross I decided to contact him to ask him about Microsoft’s commitment to the implementation of article 24. Here is the text of my December 12, 2012 e-mail Dear Dan Bross, I have read with interest your recent postings about how Microsoft implements it commitment to human rights. I recently discovered the content of article 24 of

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Microsoft's responsibility the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and I wonder if it is part of Microsoft's commitment and if so, how it is implemented as far as Microsoft's contractors are concerned. Microsoft's Global Human Rights statement (as of July 2012) seems rather broad: "As a signatory to the UN Global Compact, Microsoft is committed to all of the human rights described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." In the part devoted on your site to the "Key areas of impact" it is stated that "our human rights commitment extends to our 60.000+ contractors, suppliers and vendors" In that context I wonder how Microsoft would eventually deal with a US contractor working with Microsoft in the US, that does not provide any paid holidays to its employees? As you know in the US there is no legal mandate for corporations to provide paid holidays while article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. How do you reconcile this contradiction? From my (naïve?) point of view and my (limited?)

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Microsoft's responsibility experience I think Microsoft could require its vendors to offer paid holidays to their employees, maybe you do? Do you think employees of a Microsoft's vendor who don't have paid vacation would have an interest to ask Microsoft for support in their efforts to get their rights recognized? How do you think they should proceed? As a Europe born US resident I must admit I am sad to see so many very rich US corporations (including Microsoft's vendors) deny any paid vacation to their employees while this right has been implemented for so many years in other countries (for instance since 1936 in France) and is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948. I do think corporations like Microsoft can contribute to make positive changes happen. It would be great if it was the case for paid holidays for all employees. Thank you very much in advance for your concern After sending him a reminder on January 20, 2013 I received this short apology on January 21

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Microsoft's responsibility My apologies for not responding sooner I am currently on a 2.5 week business trip in Europe but will do my best to respond within the next few days. Thank you On March 18 after I had sent several short reminders without getting an answer I sent him this e-mail: From: Philippe Boucher Sent: 4/18/2013 To: Dan (mail to:[email protected]) Bross (LCA) Subject: Microsoft and article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Dear Dan Bross, I am still trying to figure out the extent of Microsoft's commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and especially article 24 and the right to 'periodic holidays with pay'. As I explained in my previous e-mails, Microsoft's Global Human Rights statement (as of July 2012)

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Microsoft's responsibility seems rather broad: "As a signatory to the UN Global Compact, Microsoft is committed to all the human rights described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." In the part devoted on your site to the 'Key areas of impact" it is stated that 'our human rights commitment extends to our 60.000+ contractors, suppliers and vendors". In that context, I wonder how Microsoft would eventually deal with a US contractor working with Microsoft in the US, that does not provide any paid holidays to its employees? I hope you can clarify this point. and if you cannot, can you forward my request to someone who could. I am sorry to be so persistent but this is a joint concern for many employees working for Microsoft via contractors that do not provide any paid time off. Sincerely yours Philippe On May 14, I finally received this short e-mail : Philippe, Thanks for your earlier mail. While Microsoft expects its suppliers to comply

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Microsoft's responsibility with federal and state laws, we do not have a policy or practice to monitor how our suppliers deal with personal time off related issues. BestDan Notice that Dan does not mention the only text I have been questioning him and he has been pontificating about: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So much for truly caring about promoting the implementation of the UDHR by Microsoft's US suppliers! While I was still waiting for an answer from Dan Bross I decided on March 30 to try another Microsoft's venue. I filed a report to Microsoft’s Business Integrity Line. It is a Microsoft’s internet based service that states: ‘Your concerns are important to us. If you have questions or would like to obtain guidance regarding a business practice or compliance issue or report a concern or questionable behavior and a possible violation you may do so by clicking on the "Submit a New Report" link below". Here is the report I filed: Microsoft has published a 'Global Human Rights Statement'.

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Microsoft's responsibility It refers in several other documents to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its intention to implement its principles, for itself and for its suppliers: 'Our human rights commitment extends to our contractors, suppliers and vendors' Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that every employee has a right to 'periodic holidays with pay'. I have been employed full time for more than a year on the Redmond campus by a Microsoft's vendor but there is no 'paid holiday', no paid sick leave, no paid time off whatsoever. How does such a situation compare with Microsoft's 'Global Human Rights Statement'? If Microsoft is committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should' nt you insist/require, as a matter of principle, that your vendors award 'periodic paid holidays' to their employees? As far as article 24 is concerned it seems most of your Redmond's vendors don't respect it while

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Microsoft's responsibility they are extremely profitable corporations, thanks in part to Microsoft that pays them an hourly rate that is much higher than what the employees are getting. A Microsoft's commitment to the implementation of article 24 by its Redmond's vendors (of course without having the employees pay for it with a reduction of their present compensation) would be consistent with its 'Global Human Rights Statement' and it's concern for the respect and well being of all its partners Thank you for clarifying for me this issue. The Business Integrity site mentions that one usually gets an answer within two weeks. Five weeks later there had been no answer. I have e-mailed the business integrity to ask them if they had any time limit to provide an answer but they have remained silent. From my previous life as a tobacco control advocate I know about the usual strategy used by corporations when confronted with problematic questions: ignore the request in the hope it will simply disappear, if not delay and eventually

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Microsoft's responsibility deny. I still hope Microsoft will make the right decision, abide by its global commitment to human rights, including article 24 and engage in a positive conversation and actions to implement article 24 as they had started to do 15 years ago, in the late 90's. But I am fully aware this could be wishful thinking without any chance to happen soon. One way to ‘invite’ Microsoft to address this question would be to raise the visibility of the issue, i.e. having the media interrogate Microsoft about it. Unfortunately there are not many journalists interested. I did contact a few who had written articles related to the lack of paid leave in the US, without success except for Michael Grabell who covers economic and labor issues for Pro Publica. I contacted him after reading the series he wrote in June 2013 about blue collar temps with headlines like ‘The Expendables: How The Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting

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Microsoft's responsibility Crushed’. Of course compared with them, we, the white collar temps look like hyper-privileged but most of us still live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford what seems normal to all the people employed with standard ‘benefits’: take a day off without being concerned about the impact on our budget, get seriously sick. When I talked with Michael he told me he was interested in reporting about the white collar temps, especially people who had been in such a situation for several years. We know there are millions of them/us but who wants to speak openly for the record? And risk losing one’s precarious (but precious) job. Six months after our first exchange of e-mails Michael recontacted me for an interview and I agreed to do it. He quoted me in the article he published on February 2014 with the title US Lags Behind World in Temp Worker Protections, using“Temporary is Forever” as a headline I was disappointed that he did not refer to the

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Microsoft's responsibility Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nor mentioned Microsoft's responsibility and breach of commitment. As he says, this work is an ongoing investigation in Temp Land, I hope he'll return to ask those questions. Meanwhile I'll keep asking them and invite other journalists to contact Microsoft for clarification. The present little book can also be considered an answer to Microsoft's call for feedback after they published their 2013 Citizenship report. On October 7 2013, Lori Forte Harnick, Microsoft's General Manager for Citizenship and Public Affairs, wrote in the official Microsoft blog: “We recognize there is always more that we can do, and we welcome ongoing feedback from our many stakeholders around the world. Please let us know your thoughts… we look forward to hearing from you. You can e-mail your comments to [email protected]". My previous experiences with Dan Bross and the Business integrity Line did not incite me to email mcitizen. Maybe they'll read The Other Microsoft?

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Microsoft's responsibility In celebration of Martin Luther King Day (why is it not an observed holiday for Microsoft?) our church reproduced in 2014 MLK’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ of April 16 1963. I have underlined so many passages of this extraordinary text because they resonated with how I felt about our own working conditions at Microsoft. I am not in jail and the potential repression is nothing compared to what MLK and his friends endured but this is also about injustice, about trying to obtain that ‘a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue... It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored… we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure... Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily…All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.

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Microsoft's responsibility It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority… We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with… injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured… Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever…" I know comparing our situation as temporary employees of a Microsoft’s supplier to the Birmingham’s black sanitary workers can appear shocking or even ridiculous but I see nothing ridiculous in still being denied in 2014 the right to periodic holidays with pay as it was asserted in 1948 by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I find extremely shocking and outrageous that one of the richest and most profitable corporation in the world claims its commitment to implement this Declaration but does nothing to insure its respect by its suppliers in the US.

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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The supplier's responsibility

The supplier’s responsibility As I mentioned at the very start of this story, the supplying company is in a very dominant position because of the still high level of unemployment that makes most jobless people or at least a big number of them ready to accept much reduced conditions, low salary and no benefits, including no paid vacation as there is no legal obligation in the US for the employer to provide any benefit. The supplier tries to camouflage this brutal assessment by implying that the lack of benefits is linked to the fact that the position is classified as ‘temporary’ as if the fact that the worker’s assignment is limited in time justifies his non participation in any type of ‘benefit’ One could accept this interpretation if the jobs classified as ‘temporary’ really were ‘temporary’, i.e. limited to a specified fixed period Sometimes they are: some contracts will clearly indicate the assignment will last 5 months or 6 or a year.

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The supplier's responsibility More often the supplier offering a ‘temporary’ position will want to have it both ways: he’ll classify the position as ‘temporary’ but will not give any precise duration to the assignment or state one period only to add that it can be extended indefinitely, as long as the ‘project’ requires. That’s the ‘permatemp’ concept that is obviously a contradiction in terms except for expressing the tough reality that there is no limit to a ‘temporary’ status, it can go on forever, as long as the employer wishes and as long the employee can bear this second class status. In the case of the temporary workers employed by Microsoft’s suppliers the injustice of this situation is made much worse by the fact that the ‘markup’, the difference between what the temp is paid and what Microsoft pays the supplier is very high. When a temps is paid $20 per hour, Microsoft probably pays $40 to $60+ per hour to the supplier.Can Microsoft ignore the size of the mark up? It’s hard to imagine.

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The supplier's responsibility

As for the supplier’s motivation, greed is the most obvious and a look at the profitability of the company that employs us shows that it is indeed quite profitable. While the CEO boasts in one of his recent quarterly reports to investors that the company has never been so profitable, people who have been employed for more than a year remain classified as ‘temp’, without any paid vacation and keep quiet for fear of being laid off. Maybe not all suppliers operate that way and we heard that some are providing better compensation and benefits although I have not seen any tangible proof of it. From what we heard they are the exception and the rule is no benefit for the ‘temps’ without regard for how long they have been employed Considering the lack of legal obligation to provide benefits the only possible argument would be that if the employment goes beyond the initial duration, the temporary classification has to be abandoned and benefits awarded.

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The supplier's responsibility One could imagine many employers would then rather terminate the contract, eventually rehiring the same people one month later or just hiring someone else and adapting to a higher turnover, except that maybe Microsoft would not be too pleased with a higher turnover as that would translate in less experienced workers for a certain amount of time. All this is hush hush: no temp is supposed to ask a Microsoft employee what he/she thinks about the fact there is no paid vacation while listening to them recounting their own paid holidays. Meanwhile, the longer the ‘temps’ keep working, the tougher the no paid vacation policy is to endure: couples have babies but there is no paid family/maternal/paternal leave, kids are sick or are part of events (graduation?) but there is no money to skip a few days and attend, people get married, people get tired but with the limited amount of money available no unpaid vacation is possibleWhile Microsoft trumpets its commitment to communities, its laisser faire as far as its supplier’s no benefits strategy is concerned is very detrimental to the communities.

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The supplier's responsibility As for the suppliers, they don’t care, plain and simple: there is nothing for the new baby, the new couple, the sick or the tired: just tell us in advance when you would like to take some unpaid time off because we want to make sure the work is done so maybe we’ll not accept your wish to take unpaid time off when it could be a bit inconvenient for us (and Microsoft). The only way we imagine this could change is if the situation became more visible, if there was a raising awareness about this issue and a growing public disapproval of the corporations engaged in no paid vacation policies. This little book is but one small part in our concerted effort to raise the awareness and the visibility.

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

54

How many days of paid vacation?

How many days of paid vacation should we have per year? The policy of LOCAL is to provide paid time off, not paid vacation as such but to simplify things I’ll use it as if it was equivalent PTO is reserved to ‘regular’ employees and the people classified as ‘temporary and flex’ are not eligible: the ‘temps’ who represent about two thirds of the people in our lab can work full time for years under this classification and get nothing in terms of paid vacation. Meanwhile ‘regular’ employees are eligible for 14 days up to one year, 16 days for 1-2 years, 20 days for 2-5 years, 25 days for 5+ years. This does not include the national holidays (about 10 days) that are also paid for while they are not for the permatemps: when you are a permatemp, you are paid by the hour and if you don’t work, you don’t get paid, so each holiday that takes place during the week constitutes a loss of income. 55

How many days of paid vacation? This loss can be substantial as you can see from the faces of ‘temp’ employees who are struggling financially and don’t look that happy about a coming holiday while the ‘regulars’ openly rejoice about their vacation plans: not very sensitive or conducive to better morale but who cares about the second class workers? I am not sure what Microsoft offers its new blue badge employees but I think it is about the same as LOCAL in terms of vacation days, 3 weeks and the national holidays. Of course their pay is much higher than the pay at LOCAL, at least probably twice as high and they get plenty of additional benefits including some paid parental, maternity leave etc. that don’t exist at LOCAL Here is how Microsoft introduces its approach to benefits for its blue badge employees: We work hard to make sure our benefits reflect the changing needs and wants of our people, and it’s why we provide many industry-leading benefits to our employees who rely on them. Our goal is to empower you with the resources,

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How many days of paid vacation? incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success on the job and to live a healthy, balanced life. The headline for this paragraph is ‘A culture of wellness and balance’ but that does not apply to the permatemps that are deprived of any paid vacation or other benefit. But let’s return to our initial question: How many days of paid vacation should the ‘permatemps’ have per year? We think they definitely should get all the national holidays plus at least two weeks, 10 days. Notice how the reduced expectation syndrome insidiously infects the permatemp so that we don’t even ask for what we deserve, that is exactly the same treatment as the other full ‘regular' employees: 14 days + the national holidays. As Microsoft refers to the UN Guidelines, is there an international standard for paid vacation? The International Labor Organization adopted 44

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How many days of paid vacation? years ago (in 1970), the Holidays with pay Convention (Convention 132) amending the previous convention that had been adopted in 1936. Its article 3 states that the paid holidays should ‘in no case be less than 3 working weeks for one year of service.’ Meanwhile, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) has proposed his Paid Vacation Act of 2013 (see annex for the full text), knowing full well that with the present Republican majority his amendment has no chance to pass. He very modestly suggests one week of mandatory paid vacation per year for companies with more than 100 employees, to be extended to 2 weeks 3 years later. Does it look very little? It is but it would be better than nothing as nothing is what about 55 millions of American workers have to presently condone with. In August 2012 the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the findings of a supplementary set of questions that had been asked as part of the

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How many days of paid vacation? traditional 2011 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). This survey provides estimates on how people spend their time. The additional leave module was sponsored by the Labor Women's Bureau: it computed data about wages and access to paid leave. It showed a significant number of workers don't have paid leave. On average, in 2011, 59 percent of wage and salary workers had access to paid leave, so 41% did not. That’s how reporter Frank Bass in Bloomberg News, tells it: About 40 percent of U.S. workers, or more than 55 million Americans, don’t get paid when they take vacation or sick days. By occupation, workers in management, business, and financial operations jobs were the most likely to have access to paid leave (77 percent).

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How many days of paid vacation? leave than the low paid workers: 83 percent of full-time wage and salary workers in the highest earnings range had access to paid leave, compared with 50 percent of full-time workers in the lowest earnings ranges. When I compared those numbers with the numbers quoted by John de Graaf for the year 2007 at 29% with no paid vacation it confirmed that the situation is quickly getting worse (p.113, The Great Vacation Squeeze, in What’s the Economy For Anyway?) In such a context it is imperative to raise the issue and push for change.

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WHAT COST?

How much would paid vacations cost? It’s fairly easy to calculate what would paid vacations cost. Let us imagine an hourly rate of $20, that's $160 per day. The 'cost' of paying for ten national holidays is $1600 plus another $1600 for 10 more days = $3200 per year. That's $266 per month, $66.5 per week, a raise of about $1.67 per hour. At $22 per hour it would represent $294 per month, $3528 per year, $1.84 per hour. At $17 per hour it would represent $227 per month, $2724 per year, $1.42 per hour. Take your hourly rate, multiply by 8 to get your daily pay. Multiply by 20 for the 20 paid vacation days. Divide the total by 12 to get the monthly raise per

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WHAT COST? month, divide by 4 (weeks) and then by 40

(hours) to obtain the raise in your hourly rate. While I was wondering about the accuracy of those estimates I found about the Employer Cost for Employee Compensation (ECEC) survey, a product of the National Compensation Survey established by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.ht Their average numbers are very close to our calculation although they can vary significantly from one company and one person as they depend on the compensation level. Here are some of their numbers for December 2012 (released on March 2013). ‘In December 2012, vacation costs averaged $1.03 per hour while holiday costs were 61 cents per hour and sick leave costs were 25 cents per hour . Paid leave costs varied widely by full-time and part-time status and bargaining unit status Paid leave costs for all full-time workers in private industry were $2.52 per hour worked, significantly higher than part-time workers at just 42 cents (2.8 percent).

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WHAT COST? Paid leave costs for union workers were $2.82 per hour worked, versus $1.90 for nonunion workers At $1.84 per hour for someone paid $22 per hour this is on target for the average $1.90 for nonunion worker." So it’s clearly not unheard of except that for now we have nothing. Could LOCAL afford a $1.84 per hour raise to offer paid vacation to all? Reading the recent declarations of LOCAL’s CEO to investors that should not be too difficult as he basically says the company has never been so profitable. The best way to evaluate the magnitude of their financial effort would be to compare it with the hourly rate paid to LOCAL by Microsoft. As we mentioned earlier we have heard of an average hourly rate of $40+ but it could be significantly higher (like $60+).

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WHAT COST? In any case, a $1.84 raise seems easily feasible. I thought interesting to make a guesstimate extrapolation based on an approximate number of 40K permatemps working for Microsoft via various agencies. Of course all are not paid $22 per hour, we are not sure what the present number of permatemps but it gives an idea of the potential amount of money involved for the permatemps working for Microsoft in the Puget Sound area: $141.120.000 per year. A little more than $141 millions. That’s significant but how does that compare to, for instance, Microsoft’s profit. Let us look at Earnings Release FY13. REDMOND, Wash. — Apr. 18, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced quarterly revenue of $20.49 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2013. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $7.61 billion, $6.06 billion, and $0.72 per share.

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WHAT COST?

That’s for one quarter. In 2012, Microsoft’s net income was $16.9billion. One per cent would be $169 million. So providing paid vacation to people who presently don’t have any would probably represent less than 1% of Microsoft’s yearly profits Not that I think this cost should be added to what Microsoft now pays since I believe what they pay is already largely enough for the suppliers to support the required extra 2$ (or less) per hour. Why does Microsoft that trumpets its concern for Human Rights allows its US suppliers exploit their employees? Is it a legacy of the Vizcaino vs Microsoft trauma? Is it because they have fully embraced the concept of two different classes of employees?



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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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BEING PART OF THE OTHER MICROSOFT

Being part of TOM, The Other Microsoft When you say to people you work for Microsoft they immediately assume you derive a good salary and excellent benefits. Of course as a temp’ you should not say you work for Microsoft but for LOCAL that is a Microsoft’s supplier: don’t take into account the fact that you do work for a Microsoft’s project, in a Microsoft’s building within the Microsoft’s campus, under the supervision of Microsoft’s employees who tell you very precisely what you are supposed to do. You are just part of the other Microsoft, the Microsoft’s temps that for most of them are deprived of benefits. In the process of collecting information for this little opus I looked at many books that I thought were related with this situation. One of them is The Other America, Poverty in the United States, published in 1962 by Michael Harrington.

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BEING PART OF THE OTHER MICROSOFT While it was written 50 years ago I found many of the analyses very pertinent to the present days, starting with the very first chapter entitled The Invisible Land: ‘There is a familiar America. It is celebrated in speeches and advertised on television and in the magazines. It has the highest standard of living the world has ever known… but there is another America. In it dwells somewhere between 40 to 50 million citizens of this land. They are poor and invisible, and silent". At least for now.. Of course our conservative pundits will make fun of so called ‘poor’ people who have TVs, smartphones, laptops but that’s ignoring they live from paycheck to paycheck, don’t have any benefit and can be crushed anytime by any health problem that would prevent them to go work day after day. There is no respite for them: holidays are not paid for and become moments to be very concerned about and not at all enjoyed as they are negatively

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BEING PART OF THE OTHER MICROSOFT impacting the tight budget that has to be strictly respected. Visits to the dentist or physician's appointments are to be limited or completely avoided as they are too expensive and cost time/money. There is not time for family events that would require missing work. Forget about attending a graduation that would require a trip too far away, forget about taking an unpaid vacation, forget about taking any unpaid time off and jump at any opportunity to work overtime (for an increased pay) even if it turns out to be detrimental for your health. Are we still privileged? We are compared to the people who remain unemployed but is that a valid argument to ignore the fact that those are not ‘good jobs’, that is jobs that allow you to have a decent family life, a decent social life, a decent personal life outside of the sacrosanct job. Is that a valid argument to ignore the fact that the corporations that impose those working

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BEING PART OF THE OTHER MICROSOFT conditions are making billions in profits that they don’t share with the very people who do the work? I think it is an argument for the workers to get organized and start a revolution to change these working conditions. Beyond the employees that are deprived of their rights, all the employees and companies that do provide such rights should bring their support via a National Campaign pushing for the necessary changes, so that essential benefits are provided to all. Strangely enough, I believe that as far as the Microsoft’s permatemps are concerned the fastest relief should/could come from Microsoft itself. Why? Because I think the present situation of the permatemps constitutes a potential risk to Microsoft’s image, an image that needs to be good to keep its present customers and attract new ones. Of course as long as the problem remains invisible there is no real incentive for Microsoft to act, except that preventive action would be much more effective and productive than waiting

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BEING PART OF THE OTHER MICROSOFT to react in a damage control mode. We have seen that in 1998 Microsoft required its suppliers to treat their employees better and provide them with paid vacation and other benefits but it did not last. Why not try it again 16 years later? (of course without reducing their present compensation). Microsoft could also take a very small part of its profits to contribute to the improvement of their lot as it already does, for example, by paying for their public transportation costs, offering them an ORCA card: free pass for bus and ferry rides can represent up to $160 per month, that is the payequivalent of one day per month at the $22 per hour level. Here ended, on this wishful, hopeful, idealistic, unrealistic (?), tone, the first part of this story. Written in January 2013 it remained incomplete and unpublished until I decided more than one year later, in August 2014 to resume writing.

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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MARILYSE'S STORY

MARILYSE'S STORY

ASKING FOR BENEFITS GETS YOU FIRED What happened to bring me back to the keyboard? For 6 months nothing happened but the day to day long commute and dull work with lively conversations with co-workers and especially in French with Marilyse. Marilyse needed a stand up desk because her arms and hands hurt and her physician thought it would help. Several Microsoft’s employees used a stand up desk, a very cool version with electrical lift, nothing like my do it yourself version of a cardboard installed on my desk on top of which I put the laptop. She was told Microsoft would gladly install such a standup desk if she provided a request by her physician. She did but our LOCAL manager refused to pass the information to the Microsoft manager until

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MARILYSE'S STORY Marilyse to his great anger bypassed him and emailed directly the Microsoft manager who immediately proceeded to have a desk installed for her. The installation itself was delayed once because our LOCAL manager prevented the installers to enter the lab under a false pretense (we are too busy now) but proved to be a very simple affair, obviously very frequently achieved by a 2 persons crew that made it happen in less than 30 minutes without any disruption. Obviously Microsoft is used to provide stand up desks as more and more people are concerned about sitting all the time and the claim that sitting is the new smoking In any case, if she won a stand up desk she also won bad points with the LOCAL manager. Sometime later we were advised by LOCAL not to ask any questions relevant to our working conditions during a ‘town hall meeting’ organized by Microsoft since our eventual concerns would be addressed later in small team meetings organized by LOCAL. As those meetings were not happening, Marilyse reminded LOCAL of their ‘promise’ and such a metting was scheduled

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MARILYSE'S STORY for her team. 'Speak freely’ was in essence the LOCAL manager’s recommendation. Marilyse believed him and spelled out her longing for benefits, paid time off etc. and obviously her co-workers approved and supported this request. The next morning Marilyse told me how happy she was about the meeting: the LOCAL manager had really listened and she was confident we would obtain something. That very same Friday evening he told her her position was immediately terminated and she had 30 minutes to pack her things When she told me her story, still shaken and crying, I told her I thought this could be considered retaliation for what she had said during the meeting and since that was a ‘protected activity’ she should file a complaint with the NLRB. Marilyse had no idea what the NLRB was about and felt -at first- a bit uncomfortable about the legalese language and procedure. I persisted and she agreed to go to the NLRB

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MARILYSE'S STORY office in downtown Seattle where she filed a complaint against LOCAL. Six months later, in January 2014, NLRB had concluded its investigation and found LOCAL guilty of retaliation against her. As the system works today it was in Marilyse’s best interest to settle and nobody would have gained anything in a lengthy and much less productive lawsuit as in Washington State retaliation apparently does not allow for punitive damages After some negotiation about the amount Marilyse did agree to settle and drop her complaint against LOCAL. An ex-co-worker friend commented she wished to had known about NLRB when she had been fired from Nintendo. I wonder to this day how many employees know about NLRB. During the investigation NLRB also looked at LOCAL’s guidebook that all employees have to respect and estimated their confidentiality policies were too extensive, infringing on rights to organize as they seemed to prevent employees to talk about their respective compensation. Consequently LOCAL had to send an e-mail to

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MARILYSE'S STORY all its present and past employees (in our lab) to remind them of their rights to organize and of LOCAL’s commitment not to interfere:

NOTICE TO EMPLOYEES Posted pursuant to a settlement agreement approved by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, an Agency of the United States Government. FEDERAL LAW GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO:Form, join or assist a union; . Choose representatives to bargain with us on your behalf; . Act together with other employees for your benefit and protection; . Choose not to engage in any of these protected activities. WE WILL NOT do anything to prevent you from exercising the above rights YOU HAVE THE RIGHT to discuss wages, benefits, or other compensation with other employees WE WILL NOT do anything to interfere with your exercise of that right. WE WILL NOT stop you from disclosing wages, benefits or other compensation and WE WILL repeal the rule(s) in our handbook that prohibit this. WE WILL NOT in any like or related manner interfere with your rights under Section 7 of the Act.

This was happening in June 2014 and at that time Microsoft wanted less people working in the lab

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MARILYSE'S STORY so a significant lay off took place. Starting in January 2014 a few of us had started seriously considering creating a union, starting with collecting ‘authorization cards’ leading to the organizing of a vote for/against a union. “Authorization cards” are just a piece of paper with the short headline Yes We want a Union, followed by I am an employee of LOCAL and I hereby designate the Temporary Workers of America as my collective bargaining representative followed by name, signature, address, phone, e-mail, date. The model for the authorization card had been graciously provided by WashTech. To obtain the right to organize a vote you have to collect at least as many signatures as 30% of the eligible voters. In our lab the threshold was 18 names when we were 60 and dropped to 12 when we downsized to 36. We had contacted several unions but found no interest on their part to help us except for WashTech. The problem with WashTech was that they required a monthly equivalent of 2,5 hours i.e. about $50 per month, still $600 per year,

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MARILYSE'S STORY per person. Of course nothing would have to be paid until the Union existed and a contract that would provide for this fee would be signed. Still $50 per month seemed too steep (although it seems to be the average rate for any existing union) and we decided we would go independently, eventually starting our own union. If we ever won the vote we would register Temporary Workers of America and we will only ask for a yearly fee of $24, $2 per month, a bit less expensive than the yearly normal membership to the Sierra Club ($25). We would continue to rely extensively on volunteering. The lay off meant the loss of a significant chunk of the signed cards we had already collected and it took us a little time to recoup but we finally regained enough signatures to pass the 30% threshold needed to file a petition. The petition was filed with the Seattle's NLRB office on August 2014, one year after Marilyse's dismissal.

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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ELECTION TIME

ELECTION TIME

August 1st 2014 was a Friday. When I was discreetly handed this friday morning the precious signed card that put us above the 30% of employees threshold I decided I would go to the NLRB’s office at 2.30, right at the end of my shift as I had all the signed cards in my pack It was a gloriously sunny day. The NLRB's office is on Second Avenue in downtown Seattle, an easy walk from the 545 bus stop on Fifth, on the way to the ferry terminal, with a magnificent view of the glistening waters of Puget Sound. As this is a Federal Building, security is tight: take off your belt, your watch, anything in your pockets, show your ID, pick up everything that went through the checking tunnel and take the elevator to the 29th floor, room 2948. I had been there before when I accompanied Marilyse to file her retaliation complaint. I knew the place and the routine. Still it's not everyday you file a petition to vote for a union. It's just filing and signing a sheet of paper and starting an official process with consequences you are not very sure of but are determined to

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ELECTION TIME

complete. Alea Jacta Est is what I thought after having deposited our signed cards and all the necessary paperwork was done. The friendly French speaking NLRB clerk added 'bonne chance' and I started thinking about the e-mail I would send to inform everybody. Here it is Dear All, I filed the petition with the NLRB in their downtown Seattle office Friday afternoon after work. LOCAL will be informed next week that at least 30% of the Tier1s have asked for a vote about the creation of a union to represent them. Then there are several possibilities depending if they agree with the 30% determination of if they contest it. The whole thing is detailed and maybe made more complicated than it is on the NLRB site (http://www.nlrb.gov/resources/nlrb-process) . We'll see. Remember that this is a perfectly legal and protected activity BUT avoid discussing the issue within the lab. Get outside and use time during pauses if you want to talk about it. Better err on

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ELECTION TIME the caution side.You can e-mail me as you like. Let us not use the internal Lync and emails (Microsoft or LOCAL). Take care and have a good week-end

Ph While I could use e-mail to communicate with the people who had signed the authorization cards I could not do the same for the rest of our colleagues. Therefore the creation of a blog, whose url I cannot share here with you as it would divulge the real name of LOCAL. The first posts of the blog explained the NLRB process, why we had decided to file a petition, how we intended to organize as Temporary Workers of America, such a grand name for such a small group of people but as margaret mead said: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. By Tuesday August 5th our petition was officially registered and by Tuesday August 12th all LOCAL Tier1 lab employees received this e-mail from a LOCAL's Vice-President we had never heard of before (I edited the names to protect LOCAL's identity).

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ELECTION TIME

Subject: Important message to the LOCAL's Tier One Team Dear LOCAL's team Member, As most of you know, on August 1st, 2014, Temporary Workers of America filed a petition for an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an agency of the United States government. The NLRB will process the petition and decide when and if an election is to be held. If an election is held, LOCAL will work with the NLRB to ensure that all of you get the opportunity to vote in a secret ballot election. Over the next several weeks, your manager and I will communicate with you so that you have truthful and factual information before you vote. I will be visiting the Redmond operations in the coming weeks. I hope to have an opportunity to visit with each of you and to respond to any questions or listen to any statements you feel comfortable sharing. LOCAL does not believe that you need a union. We prefer to communicate and resolve matters directly with our employees. In the coming days, we ask that you have an open mind and listen to what we have to say before you make this important decision. Regards, Rich

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS LOCAL's message was clear and not surprising: "LOCAL does not believe that you need a union". And they were planning one meeting per week until the vote to expand on this opinion. PROPAGANDA SESSIONS What I labeled 'propaganda sessions' started on Thursday August 14 and continued every Thursday except for the very last one that took place on a Tuesday, two days before the 9/11 vote. They were half hour (or a bit more) meetings that took place in a conference room within the lab. All Tier1s employees were to attend and listen to VP Rich, an HR person and our lab manager explain in a very repetitive way why a union was a bad idea and why we should not vote for it. After each of those sessions I wrote an e-mail to our members and posted a slightly edited version of it on the blog. As could be expected the internal buzz functioned very quickly within the lab and soon everyone knew about the blog. What Rich did not say, was the title of my first e-mail after the first 'propaganda session', on August 14.

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS Dear All, The first thing LOCAL did not say is how we came to that election and what this union is. Some of you know those basic but inconvenient truths but let us be clear again. At the beginning is Marilyse's illegal dismissal (says NLRB) because she had trusted Brent that she could candidly ask for benefits: that got her fired right away. So much for the nice and cozy atmosphere at LOCAL. I helped file the complaint for retaliatory dismissal and also gave to NLRB the guidebook that contained illegal confidentiality clauses. Those clauses led to the notice LOCAL was forced to e-mail us. By January 2014, a few of us started thinking about having a union or a bargaining unit, meaning we thought that since we were not getting anything on an individual, one on one basis, maybe we should try to do it together, joining our forces and that's the meaning of union: we are united to negotiate with LOCAL. Who is we? It's all of us/you who signed the cards. Listening to Rich you had the feeling the union was aliens coming from another planet to wreck

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS and forcefully enter your home!! The union was in force in the room but I think it was better (at least this time) to remain silent. It's only because thirty per cent of 38 people signed the cards that an election is planned. Of course LOCAL did not want to even mention that and I felt a bit sorry for the people who did not know: we will have some explaining and eventually apologizing to do but again I think we were right not to engage LOCAL today on their turf. We have 4 weeks to convince our coworkers to join us and vote for themselves, for our union. The other magic word that was not mentioned is benefits and that's most of what we want and LOCAL has refused to consider. Our hope is that collective bargaining will change that. Although there are no guarantee: but we tried the other way and got nothing. Gotta try the union way. At first I was concerned that Microsoft had allowed LOCAL to use a conference room within the lab because I thought (still do) that it was an endorsement of anti-union propaganda but I came to believe that the meetings were in fact very counterproductive for LOCAL: the more they tried to brainwash people, the more they alienated

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS them, the more people distrusted them and hopefully the more would vote in favor of the union. So we stoically endured the sessions, remaining mostly silent while LOCAL kept repeating the same non sense, trying to convince people LOCAL was providing benefits when what was provided was only a legal obligation LOCAL could not avoid, making veiled threats about the future and proposing nothing positive, conceding nothing could be done to increase wages (not even cost of living raises) as this was a very competitive market and profit margins had to be maintained. Here are my comments on the propaganda sessions that followed: August 21st Dear All, For their second propaganda session LOCAL stuck to it's favorite strategy: fear. The main red cape to frighten us is the strike that the union could impose on us, bringing ruin to all. The only problem with this scenario, as Eric pointed in his FAQ post on the blog, is that if ever a strike was considered (very unlikely), you would have to vote for it as you will have to approve an eventual contract.

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS LOCAL claimed that a union makes promises but in fact can guarantee nothing: we have made no promises and we know that winning the elections would only be one step toward a negotiating table where LOCAL could concede nothing. We only believe we have a better chance to obtain something by collective bargaining than by one on one discussions with Brent. While LOCAL trumpets the family like climate we have seen how difficult he tried to make it recently for one of us who needed to go take care of his dad. This unpaid leave is supposedly one of the 'benefits' we have now? It's just the law in Washington State and LOCAL is not that willing to implement it: so much for empathy and compassion. Today a co-worker asked to leave one hour before time because his wife needed him to take care of their infant daughter. The Tier2 reaction was mostly about how he would be able to compensate or not for this one hour absence: so much for flexibility and empathy. All what LOCAL listed as 'benefits' are legal obligations they cannot avoid. You know (and they know) very well we have zero benefits but for the meager 401K.

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS The generosity of LOCAL has consisted of not reducing our hours while they tell us they considered it Do you seriously believe they could have done it? No way and of course it puts them in the driver's seat when they are not: the real driver is Microsoft. LOCAL told us that Microsoft had been informed of the petition and did not want to get involved (as we assumed they would react at this stage). We were assured we were doing an excellent job, that the client was satisfied but did we hear anything about a raise and some real benefits? No, we only heard about their concern for their profitability. The only way for us to get some bigger share of the profits is to vote for the union and bargain collectively. There is no guarantee but it's the only chance we have and it's our right to do it as they themselves emphasized in the notice they were forced to send us. Who can you trust to defend your interests? Yourself and your pals within your union or Brent and co? Of course you know that.

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS Thanks in advance for your eventual feedback and for keeping talking with our co-workers. Have a good evening Philippe August 27: Third propaganda session: more of the same. Dear All, Today we learned where the vote will take place and that we'll get paid for the half hour it will take. That goes with LOCAL's desire to have as many people as possible voting: we certainly agree on that. Remember the vote is anonymous and secret. We completely disagree with LOCAL's assertion that a union is a business and their other claims about what is needed and how costly it's going to be. In Washington State a union is incorporated under Chapter 24.06 RCW, the non profit miscellaneous and mutual corporations act. There is no need to incorporate before a positive vote takes place as you can check with the NLRB (as we did). Our union, if we vote to create one, is going to operate on a voluntary basis as it has until now and because of our small size we don't anticipate any complex reporting, nor any need for high fees, that will be decided later.

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS We had mentioned $2 per month as a possibility. Even when already existing unions ask for a fee, their members only pay once the contract has been approved with a pay increase that covers the fee. In any case that's not how we plan to operate but it was interesting to see how LOCAL wanted to paint such a dark and negative picture of a union that will be formed by the very people who were in the room and are doing such a good job but cannot obtain any raise or real benefits (not legal obligations) because that would put LOCAL's competitiveness in danger. Of course they cannot tell us anything about how much they are paid by Microsoft. We should mostly be thankful they did not reduce our hours to 30 per week. They continue hammering the union could not promise or guarantee anything as if we had done any of that while LOCAL itself did not promise or guarantee anything either. You can reread the answers to the FAQ posted on the blog as they provide more information on those issues. It was interesting to hear that Microsoft does not tell them how much to pay their employees because in the late 90's when the class action was taking place Microsoft did require it's contractors to provide benefits, some health insurance and up to $500 worth of training

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS per year. Who is to say they could not do it again while the WA legislature has considered mandatory paid sick leave (like in Seattle) and some paid time off. Nothing passed because of the Republican control of the Senate but this could change in the next elections. In any case we can ask for those changes that are supported by many very active organizations like Momsrising.org. But we are not there yet. I realize i forgot to mention the lie about the annual performance reviews but we all know there was none. I hope all this propaganda did not impact you negatively while we prepare ourselves for an unpaid Labor Day. Take care and see you tomorrow. September 4th: Fourth propaganda session: same as before. Dear All, I think today's meeting provided the same anti-union content and the same focus on eventual risks. Of course, despite their dire predictions, they cannot be sure of anything we, -as Tier1s are going to be the union if we vote for it- are going to do: we'll decide together everything we want to try to achieve. We can simply decide to focus on a few key

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS issues we would like to see improved, like wages, paid time off and not deal with the seniority. It's up to us: why would we reduce flexibility if it's useful for us? Yes, the money for improvements in our situation will have to come from somewhere: LOCAL's profits, LOCAL's share of the pie will have to be reduced. Obviously not something they want to consider. Why would we try to hurt ourselves, hurt the people who are in the very same boat we are on? Classic use of the fear and arguing that one can get more individually than via a collective effort. This was all very repetitive and it's difficult to assess who can be convinced by those assertions but for the insidious fear factor and the impact of repetition. Brace yourself for a final session next Tuesday. Take good care Philippe September 9th, the fifth and last propaganda session: the more sessions we have, the more they stay the same. You are smart: you have patiently and politely listened to the repetitive arguments trying to make you believe not trying to change anything is the best choice. I should not worry or doubt one second your

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS capacity to see through this attempt and in fact I don't. It's more my own frustration of having been forced to listen silently because I know better than wasting energy in useless debates Therefore I'll resist the temptation to go on and on when our daily reality is the best antidote. Please excuse the few remarks I cannot prevent myself to make: at least you are not obliged to read them and thank you if you do with all my apologies for not being the best advocate I'd like to be for our own common interests. As I think about what we heard today and what I am trying to summarize now I feel like it's like closing arguments in a trial. During those five sessions LOCAL has tried to convince us they are on our side and that our best interests are better taken care of by dealing with them on an one on one basis. They have to convince us of that so that we decide to vote against our own interests: our best interest is not aligned with LOCAL's best interest, at least the way LOCAL is presently managed. LOCAL only wants to maximize it's profits by giving us as little as possible. This situation is best defended by preventing us to organize and present a united front. They have to convince us a union is a bad idea that is against our own interests while of course

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS the exact opposite is true. If they have been able to make you believe the present balance of power is the most favorable to your interests they'll win. I am always amazed when people vote against their own interests but it happens very often. Such is the power of the dominant ideology: the ideas that are the most frequently expressed, that represent the dominant interests, dominate. In our case, LOCAL's dominant self interest is to keep paying us as little as possible, as they have managed to do and as they kept telling us they would continue to do. Bottom line: whom do you trust as having your best interests at heart? A few points they made: LOCAL seemed concerned about union dues. As mentioned earlier our proposed goal is $2 per month, $10 this year if yo agree about this rate. Is it excessive? You are not obliged to join the union even at this rate. It was ironic to hear again Obama Care trumpeted as a benefit to come thanks to LOCAL's generosity when it's a legal obligation and it's not even clear their proposal will be more interesting than what you eventually already have (through your spouse/partner for instance) nor how much we would have to pay anyway. Is having a union going to be very time consuming?

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS To the point where you don't have time for your kids or for any leisure? You could almost cry at this argument if it was not coming from a company that does not provide any paid time off, no paid family time, nothing.It was a bit much but how revealing of how out of touch they are, while they (of course) do have paid time off for themselves. On our side, this whole election process did not require one big meeting: almost everything happened during short conversations during breaks and lunches with an extensive use of e-mail and the blog.Who would remain focused on physical meetings when one can use the net? Of course we remained completely available when someone wanted to talk. We are a small group of people who have been in the same boat for quite a while and we can relate on a different level than what can be shared with management. Asking for benefits is not rocket science and who is not for it? It's true that we have been through many changes except for remaining classified as temps and not gaining any raise or real benefit like paid time off of any kind for 2,5 years: no paid sick leave, no paid family leave, not one cent, not one day. Can you believe you have any chance to get anything

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PROPAGANDA SESSIONS of this kind by yourself and only for yourself? The 12+ people who signed the cards asking for an election did it because they believed it was the right thing to do to defend the interests we all share that LOCAL has been refusing to address with the one on one individual system they want to maintain. You have already been subjected to too many propaganda sessions, just remember the text of the notice LOCAL was forced to e-mail to each of us: we have the right to organize. Why not exercise this right? Thank you for your patience, take good care. Ph PS: yes, I did not comment on the lack of unions in the high tech industry. It would take too long but as v-dashes at the bottom of the lab scale we know all about the discrimination and the huge inequalities created by the high tech industry that would like the public to believe all the employees are treated by royalty.You know better. It's true that creating a union in such an environment would be quite a change. A good change.

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TIME TO VOTE TIME TO VOTE

The NLRB rule is that one day before the election's day all 'electioneering', that is any type of communication by the employer and by the union about the election has to stop. Therefore, the e-mail you just read was the last one I published (in a slightly different version) on our blog. LOCAL did not respect the rule. They had already flirted with the yellow line by distributing to us during the last meeting a sheet with the map to the voting place that had under the map in big characters: REMEMBER TO VOTE NO Once again I think their exaggeration did not serve them well: many people did not even bother to pick up the sheet as the location had been largely discussed and was easy to find, a few expressed their feelings that putting such a slogan on a document supposed to be neutral was offensive. More problematic was the fact that on Wednesday evening VP Rich e-mailed everybody with answers to questions he supposedly did not have the time to address earlier: never mind it was too late, past the deadline for such a move. Dear Tier 1 Team, I wanted to follow up with you after yesterday's

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TIME TO VOTE meeting to answer a couple of questions. First, at one of the meetings we were asked whether, if the union won the election, would a Tier1 reviewer who was promoted to a Tier2 would still be in the union?The quick answer is that we don't think so. The unit is described as Tier1 reviewer. What we can't tell you is the degree to which a union contract might complicate the process for a Tier1 reviewer to be promoted to a Tier2. That is certainly something the union might want to cover in a contract, so we can't tell you whether it would be easier or more difficult for everyone who might want such a promotion. Second, we heard afterwards that some people thought we were exaggerating the time and energy needed to form a union, prepare for bargaining, and then bargain a labor contract -- people suggested that this could be done on line, and it would not be hard to bargain a contract covering only benefits and a few other topics. We just want to get back to you about this, because it is wrong on many levels.(1) Certainly it is true that union members can communicate with each other any way they choose; I leave it to you to decide how much attention you think is going to be given to your input on matters that are important to you, when it's done only by e-mail. But it is just wrong

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TIME TO VOTE to think that you can engage in collective bargaining that way. The federal labor law requires both sides to bargain in good faith -- and the most basic requirement is that the two sides meet, face to face, at reasonable times in a reasonable place. (2) Someone who suggests that bargaining a new collective bargaining agreement would be simple, has never gone through the process. LOCAL would bargain in good faith, but bargaining can still take many meetings. For example, in one case before the National labor relations Board, the Stone Container Company met for 17 meetings, for almost 100 hours of bargaining, and the Board nonetheless agreed the employer was bargaining in good faith; they reached the same conclusion involving People Care, Inc and that involved 18 meetings. You can't assume bargaining would be quick. Someone might end up having to spend a great deal of their own time bargaining. (3) Lastly, someone who thinks bargaining medical insurance benefits is easy, really does not know what he or he is talking about. Medical insurance benefits can be complicated: which plans, involving what coverages, with what caps and what premiums shared in what proportion between the employer and employee, with what co-pays -- all of

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TIME TO VOTE these are complicated questions, before you ever get to questions about trade-offs for these benefits. In conclusion, I want to thank you for all the time and attention you've paid to our discussions. We know these are tough questions, and we hope you've kept an open mind. Regardless of how you intend to vote, please do go vote. Everyone's opinion counts. Best regards, Rich Then, on election day, when the vote had already started, the lab manager sent the e-mail below to all Tier1 employees: Subject: Update on the Vote Hello Everyone, We just learned that the union intends to challenge some of the Tier1 reviewers, claiming that their votes should not count. The challenge will be made as those voters go up to vote. We think every eligible voter should have a say on whether to bring a union here. So, even if you are challenged, please vote. The NLRB has procedures to ensure that the secrecy of everyone's ballot is maintained, even if your vote is challenged. Thanks again for your attention and careful consideration of these important issues.

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TIME TO VOTE Reading this you can have the impression that "The Union" intends to prevent people to vote by some sort of illegal intimidation. What this manager forgets to say is that 'challenging' a voter is a completely legal right of any of the observers, LOCAL's or the union's. Nobody is prevented to vote and the NLRB people are there to make sure it does not happen, it's just that the challenged votes are set in a special envelope and eventually counted later, if needed. What our manager also forgets to say is that we had told from the very beginning, when we first saw the list of eligible voters sent by LOCAL that we disagreed with the presence on the list of four employees who had been Tier2s, were now given Tier1s tasks because of the lay offs that took place, but remained Tier2s as far as their wages and benefits were concerned. Our organizing's primary goal was to obtain for all real Tier1s the very benefits those 'exTier2' employees already had: how could they be considered part of the same group of people that did not have them? The distinctive classification for Tier1 was that they were labeled as 'Temporary/flexible', not 'Full time Regular" and consequently did not have any paid time off.

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TIME TO VOTE We therefore felt we had every right to contest the presence of those Tier2 employees on the list of eligible voters. Of course, sending such an e-mail while the vote was already under way was in complete breach of the time limit imposed on electioneering. It did cause some trouble with one of the challenged voters who had had a bad experience with a union in a previous job (or so he said) and felt very vindictive and combative about his right to vote, that had in fact never been questioned or in jeopardy. He was mollified by the NLRB's agents explanations, got to vote and the voting continued without any trouble. The voting took place in a room in a motel close to the Microsoft's campus as Microsoft had refused to provide a room within its buildings. We felt it somehow inconsistent with the fact they had allowed LOCAL to organize five propaganda sessions in the lab's conference room but we did not raise this issue: if Microsoft wanted to be perceived as facilitating propaganda sessions against unionizing... As LOCAL gave one paid hour to every Tier1 employee to go vote, , people came as they wish, from 11 to 1.30 and from 2.30 to 4.30. Marilyse later told me it had been very quiet and convivial,

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TIME TO VOTE observers and NLRB's agents talking about food (especially before lunch), and trips. All went well without any disturbance By 4.30 the vote was declared over and the procedure to count the ballots started. I had returned as had LOCAL's attorney and four LOCAL's managers, including our lab manager. It was very simple, short but tense as the NLRB agent took and read each ballot: NO, NO, NO, YES, YES, YES... When all were counted, there were 18 YES for the union, 13 NO against and 3 challenged ballots, set aside: even if all those 3 challenged ballots were NO, the YES had won. The LOCAL's attorney and I co-signed the tally of the ballots, thanked the NLRB agents for their help and went our separate ways. There were no smiles in the LOCAL's party but Marilyse thought I did not seem very excited by our victory: I guess I was still stressed by the slow counting of the votes, plain tired after months, weeks of planning this event that was just over in a quiet, anticlimactic way. I also knew it was just one step in a journey that was far from over. LOCAL had clearly stated and repeated they would not concede anything and that collective bargaining could be a very long process. Still it felt good to have 18 votes vs 13.

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TIME TO VOTE Of course it felt great :). The day after, on Friday, the lab was the same as before: a few hands up and discreet congrats here and there but no victory banner, no big celebration as we had no space nor time for any of that. LOCAL's attorney had claimed he would challenge the presence of Marilyse as an observer and the fact that we challenged three ballots. LOCAL had one week to file a complaint. While we waited, the results could not be considered final: we were in this sort of limbo, accentuated by the fact there had been no common celebration, everything remained the same despite our 'win'. One week passed and LOCAL did not file any challenge: it had been a bluff as they knew such a complaint would have gone nowhere. We had won fair and square. The NLRB mailed me an official 'certification of representative': Temporary Workers of America was the 'exclusive collective-bargaining representative of all full-time and part-time Tier1 employees' of our lab A new chapter could begin.

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WHAT'S NEXT? WHAT'S NEXT?

That's the question everyone is asking. Before going there I want to reflect a bit about the changes that took place even if they are still fragile.The main one is that a small group of people were able to join forces instead of remaining isolated in the strictly individualistic stance that the dominant ideology wants the employees to adopt. While organizing is a right, one has to do it in hiding as if it was something shameful and dangerous: why should exercising a right be secretive and considered dangerous? There is something inherently wrong about the present situation where trying to unionize makes most people afraid, uncomfortable. The very name of union has for many people a very negative connotation. This is the result of years of putting down the right to organize and the concept of union. We were lucky that a majority of people in our small group was willing to stand up for the right to organize and willing to support a union when the management painted such a dire image of what was going to happen if we were making this choice. Is there hope that more people outside of this small lab

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WHAT'S NEXT? could make the same choice? The replicability of our story is difficult to predict. I think we were in a special combination of people, events, structures that maybe made things easier for us to achieve. Many of us were immigrants from countries where unions are a normal part of life, where basic 'benefits' are legally recognized rights, where nobody would seriously try to object to paid vacation or paid parental leave or paid sick leave or health insurance for all. For other people, other groups to be eventually inspired to try organizing by our story, they first would have to hear about it: will all the media, will any media, traditional and digital/social be interested in telling this story, in spreading seeds of organizing, in raising the awareness about those issues and what can be done to bring changes? We can hope so and do our best to share the information with as many people as possible in as many formats as possible, including this imperfect little book. Contrary to what LOCAL's management seemed to think, the debate is not only between them and Temporary Workers of America, it is not only

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WHAT'S NEXT? about what collective bargaining meetings between them and our newly born union can eventually achieve. There is a huge elephant in the room, an elephant named Microsoft, whose responsibility we have analyzed while it has been -for now- kept out of the debate. Microsoft is largely (completely?) responsible for the present exploitation of the permatemps by its vendors/contractors and it can as easily decide to intervene to fix it in a positive way or choose to keep ignoring it or even decide on a more negative, destructive approach: after all they can cancel their contract with LOCAL at any time. My guess is it will all depends on the assessment they'll make of what the are the costs/benefits of each way. If a 'positive' attitude brings significant rewards to Microsoft , like very good PR points for its corporate image, maybe they'll choose it. If they only perceive a threat to a business as usual system they are too used to, to even consider any change, they'll choose the confrontation. I'd much rather see them choose the positive way but that would be a significant cultural revolution for them as it is for the US society at large to change it's present image of the paid vacation, of the absence of benefits considered as normal, of the distrust of unions

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WHAT'S NEXT? and organizing. I see our little story as the potential premise of such a significant cultural revolution or shift if you are afraid of the word revolution.Denormalizing the lack of paid time off, making paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, the dominant norm, denormalizing union bashing and making union organizing the new hip, the new norm. I have been involved in similar cultural changes before, when I was advocating in France for paper recycling (try ask the French to sort their garbage), and later when I was a tobacco control advocate: who would have thought it would be possible to prevent smokers to smoke wherever, whenever they wanted? It took twenty years to denormalize smoking but it did happen. A fair number of the strategies the tobacco control advocates used can be applied to normalize union organizing and enjoying paid vacation and other basic 'benefits'. Those strategies are different from the ones usually adopted by traditional unions but new unions can promote them and if they succeed, traditional unions will support them with all their heart and might.

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WHAT'S NEXT? The unions brought us the week-end and the 8 hour day. When I started thinking of paid vacation and discovered Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I skipped the previous articles, focusing only on number 24. When we realized that only a collective approach, i.e. a union, could eventually put enough pressure on LOCAL (and Microsoft?) to obtain paid vacation, I discovered article 23-4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that is the one just before article 24: Article 23-4: Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his/her interests. Interestingly those articles were promoted by the US delegation that worked on the writing of the Declaration and especially by Eleanor Roosevelt. This is a sign that they are very much part of the US DNA, even if the last thirty years arch-conservative forces have been working hard at making people think the opposite and forget about their own history. Googling about Eleanor Roosevelt I found several instances where she delivered vibrant speeches supporting the right to organize and explaining how the unions improved everybody's situation by bringing more earned rest and leisure

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WHAT'S NEXT? time. Reading about the National Labor Relations Act that was enacted in 1935 and established the right of workers to organize I discovered that corporations argued it was unconstitutional and took their case up to the Supreme Court which upheld the law in 1937. Here is from this decision: 'Long ago we stated the reason for labor organizations. We said that they were organized out of the necessities of the situation: that a single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer; that he was dependent ordinarily on his daily wage for the maintenance of himself and his family; that if the employer refused to pay him the wages that he thought fair, he was nevertheless unable to leave the employ and resist arbitrary and unfair treatment; that union was essential to give laborers opportunity to deal on an equality with their employer.' Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps, one sparrow does not bring springtime, still our little union can be a small sign of larger good changes to come. That's what I hope when closing this chapter and sending this text (with its annexes) for publication as an e-book on Amazon and a print on demand format by Blurb.

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WHAT'S NEXT?

If you are interested to know about what happened next, you can go to www.lionbridgeunion.blogspot.com www.temporaryworkersofamerica.org where updates will be posted. Eventually I'll publish a follow up: e-publishing makes it so easy. I'll probably also try other media like audio (with podcasts) and video (on YouTube?). Thank you for reading this book that far, thank you for your interest and I hope you'll help us spread the seeds of paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid family leave, for all.

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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PART 2: BABY STEPS FOR A BABY UNION Part 2: Baby steps of a baby union October 2014 - July 2016 What took so long? 116 Creating a union 118 LOCAL = Lionbridge Technologies 119 Collective bargaining 101 121 NLRB 127 Reaching out 129 Design for social change 134 Microsoft and human rights 140 About paid public holidays 143 Benefits thefts 145 Trying to get rid of the union 147 The need for monitoring 151 What is missing 153 What's next? 155 Epilogue? 159 Annexes 161

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WHAT TOOK SO LONG? What took me so long to write an update? What blocked me to tell what happened after 9/11/2014, when we voted in favor of our union? I most often invoke being tired. I used to get up at 4 AM and be ready for a five minutes bike down to take the first 4.45 ferry. After a 35 minute sail, I biked five minutes and wait for the first 554 bus at 5.31 that drops me at the Bellevue Community College Park and Ride stop around 5.55. From where I bike 10 minutes to be in the office around 6.05. I leave the office around 1.45 for the same commute the other way around. I am back home around 4PM. I could, I should have been be able to use the rest of the afternoon to get going and write this update. The long commute (one hour and a half each way: bike + ferry + bus + bike again) and the early rising take a toll: when I get home I don't have the energy to face again a screen and a keyboard. I am not sure where to start, what to tell. 116

WHAT TOOK SO LONG? I also procrastinated because I was hoping for a significant win that has not come -yet-. Maybe I also wanted to follow a well thought out plan, develop a logical argumentation. Forget about this sophistication: you'll have to satisfy yourselves with a bunch of vignettes. Furthermore, I am not a native English writer and unlike so many talented immigrant writers, I still struggle with this language. Please bear with me and thank you for your presence.

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CREATING A UNION After we won the vote on September 11, 2014, I had to deal with the paperwork required to officially create Temporary Workers of America. It meant filing a few forms to register the organization with the Secretary of State, including drafting bylaws, copied from existing documents from similar entities and a model provided by a lawyer friend. I enlisted Marilyse and Eric to join me to constitute the original board of directors and paid the $35 fee. I got a few books and brochures from my union contacts at the time, AFL-CIO Marcus Courtney and CWA Al Kogler : union 101 stuff that helped me send my first request for information to our employer in preparation for our first collective bargaining meeting.

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LOCAL = LIONBRIDGE While I gave our employer a pseudo (LOCAL) in the first edition and first part of this book I see no reason to continue now: Lionbridge Technologies (NASDAQ: LIOX) is a company based in Massachusetts that specializes in providing translating, localization services. They have worked for Microsoft for quite some time and Microsoft, still their main customer, represented in February 2016 about 15% of their income, our lab being a small component of that. They publish quarterly financial reports so it's easy to follow how they are doing. They are doing well, always posting sizable profits and buying back portions of their stock. Fidelity Investments is the main stockholder (about 10%) and in October 2015 Lionbridge attracted the interest of the New York hedge fund billionaire Lee Cooperman who invested $23 million, (about 7%).

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LOCAL = LIONBRIDGE In our collective bargaining meetings with Lionbridge we only met with the attorney they had chosen to represent them and 1 or 2 employees: one vice-president and one HR person. In all our meetings, their attorney, Tim O' Connell, did all/most of the talking for them. Tim is a partner in the Seattle based law firm Stoel Rives. He has 30+ years of experience in labor law on the employer side. His bio lists his many accomplishments denying union's claims. As we expected he diligently defended his client's interests and respected their intangible decision to give us nothing.

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COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 101 As complete beginner I relied on information provided by union organizers to require the list and compensation of all the lab employees before the first meeting. I asked co-workers to join me and three agreed. Each came from a different country of origin, all outside the US: Taiwan, Czech Republic, Irak and France. This diversity was representative of the lab. Not much was achieved during this first meeting as we did not have any proposal to submit and Lionbridge did not offer anything: "it's up to the union to make a proposal". From a model that was not really adequate as it was a contract for a school district I drafted a proposal for the second meeting. Tim O'Connell just asked question after question: what do you mean by that, and that, etc. I took notes and said we would return with answers and changes for the third session. Where did we meet? The first time Lionbridge had found an empty office we 121

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 101 used for free. The second time they had rented a room for $100 and we split the cost. Finding the price a bit high I searched for a cheaper solution: the East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue offered to rent us a room for $50 and that's where our meetings have since taken place. The union did not have any money so I started asking for voluntary contributions. I felt a bit like a drug dealer when people came to my cubicle with $5 or 10 or, exceptionally 20 to give me cash and get a receipt. As we were, still are paid from $17 to $22 per hour everybody is tight with money. Our first year budget was a little bit more than $300... I doubt it has been more than $100 for the first six months of 2016. Of course I was not compensated for any of the enormous amount of time I spent for the union and people were not paid when they attended the collective bargaining meetings. As we realized that Lionbridge would give us nothing and 122

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 101 there was nothing to expect I found it more difficult to find people willing to accompany me. In July 2015, nobody but me was available: we chose to cancel the meeting at the last minute to the great ire of Lionbridge. They immediately filed a charge against us with NLRB for not bargaining in good faith: their HR person was smiling wildly when she delivered me at work the letter informing me of their move. This did not perturb me for one second as I knew it was a completely useless threat: they would have to resume the bargaining to implement Microsoft's new requirement to provide at least 15 days of PTO that was included in their new contract. The sad and frustrating thing about the collective bargaining meetings is that they were completely useless. The system is such that the parties, especially the employer, only have to go through the motion: that is meet each other at regular intervals, even if nothing of substance comes out of it.

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COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 101 As Lionbridge did not intend to give us anything and as we had no leverage, the sessions were completely useless. Once Microsoft announced it was going to require its suppliers to provide 'at least 15 days of paid time off', on March 25, 2015, we thought that maybe that would incite Lionbridge to open up. Not at all: Tim O'Connell poopoohed the announcement as a journalistic rumor that did not apply to Lionbridge and indeed we had to wait until after June 30, when their annual contract with Microsoft was renewed, including a clause about the paid time of requirement. Don't hold your breath, it took them until the end of November to start implementing it and it was without any retroactivity: we started accruing a bit more than one day of PTO per month in December 2015. Lionbridge had successfully waited 7 more months before starting to provide paid time off. It looks like most of the suppliers waited longer, until April 2016. 124

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 101 Once Lionbridge agreed to insert the requirement in a contract proposal, the union accepted to have it submitted for approval by the employees. Tim O'Connell was furious that I explained on our blog that I still considered this proposal not good enough and we would prefer that it was rejected as it was indeed. The fact that we wanted to stop holding useless meetings and thought it was time for people to say yes or no to Lionbridge's proposal did not in any way imply that we were endorsing it. That was total wishful thinking on Tim O'Connell's part. From the very beginning I also explained that the minimalist standard required by Microsoft, "at least 15 days of paid time off' was much too low and insufficient as it did not include any specific paid parental leave, nor provide any paid public holiday contrary to the dispositions of the International Labor Organization conventions Microsoft is supposedly committed to implement. 125

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 101 I'll explain this later. While the cost of living had significantly increased since 2012 (especially for housing), Lionbridge also refused any pay raise and any cost of living indexation. That tells you the type of company it is. Microsoft does not fare much better as their new requirement that brought them so many kudos was hardly more than what they had offered 18 years earlier and was -as I just mentionedextremely weak. For that reason, before our last bargaining session I invited Microsoft to join us as I considered them a joint employer. As expected they declined and I filed a charge against them with NLRB that -as I write- is still pending and being investigated: it's up to NLRB to determine if Microsoft is a joint employer. If yes, we could claim we are eligible to the same benefits they are providing their 'direct' employees. We'll see.

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NLRB The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) played a significant role all along, as it had before and during the election. I was the first to file a charge with them against Lionbridge after I had been 'disciplined' on November 7 2014 for publishing The Other Microsoft. They issued me a warning because 'you caused a significant strain on Lionbridge's relation with our customer, Microsoft. You authored a book named "The Other Microsoft" which unacceptably disparaged Microsoft and Lionbridge. As an employee you have a duty of loyalty which you violated repeatedly in your book.'. I considered that the book was a protected activity and they were trying to prevent us to organize and communicate about our working conditions. I still wonder if they even read the book as the name Lionbridge did not appear anywhere in the first edition as I used the LOCAL pseudo. Maybe Microsoft complained to them. Maybe it was just an intimidation move. 127

NLRB I certainly was not the least intimidated, quite the opposite. On November 20 2015, as Lionbridge had offered to rescind and erase the warning from my file I accepted to withdraw the complaint. Much ado about nothing but maybe someone less willing to fight would have been intimidated. I wonder how many hours Lionbridge attorneys charged them for this lengthy and useless procedure. We filed many charges against Lionbridge for bargaining in bad faith, the most recent ones, still investigated, about their attempt to decertify the union after making what we consider implicit promises to the employees: if there was no union there would be pay raises and more benefits. All the NLRB attorneys I encountered were extremely professional and helpful. All my most grateful thanks to all of them.

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REACHING OUT I was convinced there was nothing to expect from Lionbridge and the traditional collective bargaining process, so I started to reach out to people I thought could be influential in bringing changes via Microsoft. I started by looking at Microsoft Board of Directors where I discovered Maria Klawe. Maria is an exceptional person, mathematician and computer scientist, PhD, President of Harvey Mudd College in California. She had joined the board in 2009. While collecting information about her because I was interested by her profile, I discovered we had several things in common: she is an ardent feminist and promoter of women in science and leadership positions, she comes from Canada, is bilingual and has been exposed to a different paid leave culture, she dislikes negotiating her compensation. I started emailing her (still do occasionally) infos that I thought could be of interest to her: often they are stories about women's achievements I find in French or US media. 129

REACHING OUT After Lionbridge 'disciplined' me for publishing The Other Microsoft I sent her a short email explaining the lack of any paid leave and how shocking I thought this was for a company like Microsoft. She immediately answered asking if she could share my email with other members of the board. I agreed. One month later, on December 10th 2014, Human Rights Day, I emailed her to know if there was anything new. She told me to be patient because it was not easy to quickly change policies in a big company like Microsoft but she assured me that there were people willing to make changes happen. That was encouraging. Beside Maria I had also reached out to journalists that I thought could be interested by our story. I had a long interview in Seattle with Brigid Schulte of the Washington Post and author of the best-seller "Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time". 130

REACHING OUT She was very supportive but did not know when an eventual article would be published. Other contacts did not result in any article. I was a bit surprised by the lack of interest from 'progressive' media like The Nation or In These Times: they still have not published anything about us. I kept looking. I noticed that the Seattle Times had a new person covering Microsoft and I decided on December 31 to shoot an email to Matt Day. He very quickly responded he would like to meet and we set up an appointment. Before this meeting took place, while I was researching Rory Cowan, Lionbridge CEO, I found an interview of him published in the Boston Globe. I checked out the journalist who had done the interview and discovered that "Katie Johnston covers workplace and income inequality for the Globe Business section". I emailed her right away: she called me back and decided to write a story: "As temp sector grew, so did appeal of union: Microsoft campus labmates bargain for benefits". 131

REACHING OUT This was published on January 13, 2015. In the meantime I had met with Matt and told him the Boston Globe was planning an article. His own article appeared in the Seattle Times two days later, on January 15: "Labor issues at Microsoft prompt talk of policy changes". Matt had contacted people at Microsoft and was confirming what Maria Klawe had told me: changes were in the air. It is worth noting that on January 14, Valeric Jarrett, Senior Adviser to President Obama had posted on LinkedIn a text titled "Why we think paid leave is a worker right, not a privilege", launching a campaign by the Department Of Labor promoting paid leave. Anybody monitoring the news about this issue could see it is a growing trend. If you visit the 'in the news' section on our blog paidtimeoffmatters, you can see many of the articles that were published at the time and keep being published. None of this media attention translated into any positive move by Lionbridge, quite the opposite.

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REACHING OUT On February 27, our 5th collective bargaining meeting, they delivered us a proposal that contained zero paid leave and zero raise. One month later, on March 26, Microsoft announced on their blog that they would require their suppliers to provide at least 15 days of paid time off to their employees. That decision prompted a flurry of articles, including Brigid Schulte's article that was at last published in the Washington Post and another article by Matt Day in the Seattle Times. As I told earlier, Lionbridge did not budge. We resigned ourselves to wait until the requirement became part of their new contract with Microsoft, at the end of June 2015. Since then we got zero media coverage, zero visibility, zero leverage to incite Microsoft to improve its policy. They apparently are frozen by the joint employment charge that seems to prevent them to move forward and require their suppliers to provide paid parental leave and paid holidays. Time for Satya to listen to his EQ as well to his IQ. 133

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL CHANGE Design for Social Change was a class taught by Natalia Ilyin at the Cornish College for the Arts, in Seattle. Natalia happens to live on downtown Winslow, on Bainbridge Island, not far from where I live, so we knew each other. As I explain below in the short introduction I gave to her students, I always considered that images were essential to advocacy. In my previous jobs in France I had been fortunate to work with immensely talented and generous graphic artists like Jean Michel Folon, Jean-Claude Marol, Gérard Paris-Clavel, Alain Le Quernec. After Temporary Workers of America was founded I looked for images that could carry the messages we cared about, especially about various paid leaves: I could not find any. I thought maybe Natalia could help since she was teaching design in an art school. Miracle of synchronicity, when I contacted her in February 2015, she was looking for an organization her class could work on, producing pro bono posters and 134

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL CHANGE other images and videos. The students accepted to work for TWA and produced a series of images I posted on a dedicated blog: Images for paid leave. Below is the text I shared with the students before they started working on this project. Dear All, Yesterday I had a long talk with Natalia at the Blackbird Café (she had tea) and I told her about our story. Today I thought it would be appropriate for me to tell you a bit about us, Temporary Workers of America, before you start brainstorming. First I want to thank you for your concern and your upcoming contribution: it is much appreciated. In my previous advocacy jobs (about recycling paper and about tobacco control), art always had a very important place. It's the same for us now: good art is inspiring, it nourishes your spirit and your determination, it makes you smile and it tells in one vivid image all or a lot of what you are trying to achieve and why, or it 135

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL CHANGE associate what you are doing with beauty. I think it's very important. Not everybody does but as design students I hope you do. I told our story in a short book, The Other Microsoft. The cover is a copycat of the cover of Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st century , because I think our story is very much about inequality and it is also a reference to a classic book by Michael Harrington, The Other America, about how invisible poor people are and how prevalent poverty is. Natalia told me some of you are temporary workers so you probably know, unfortunately, about precarious jobs with low wages and no benefits: that's what we want to change. For our small lab (about forty people) but also for all the people impacted: two co-workers recently became dads but they had zero paid parental leave, could not afford to take unpaid time off and had to work overtime to compensate for the time they eventually still decided to spend with

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DESIGN FOR SOCIAL CHANGE their newborn and their spouse. If they had been with a different employer - like Facebook- they could have had four weeks of paid parental leave at full pay. We think it's possible for corporations, especially corporations that are highly profitable, to provide their employees, even the ones at the bottom, with higher wages and full benefits: paid sick leave (we are not based in Seattle so it's not mandatory), paid parental leave, paid vacation. This is already that way in most/ all industrialized countries but the US. I just told you the four main themes we are looking for inspiring images about. We are also looking for images that could serve as big format identity cards for us. How can you imagine such images? Feel completely free to try to seduce prospective audiences with a beautiful image. That's what we'd like to have. Images people (anybody really) would like to have because they enjoy looking at it, with somewhere our TWA signature, in a very unobtrusive way 137

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL CHANGE or whatever way you want to insert it. Maybe you wonder what type of union we are. We are a baby union, a start up union: none of us had ever been in a union before, none of us has any experience about what a union is supposed to be like. We don't care for and don't carry all the bad images that have eventually been affixed to existing established unions. All we know is that we think that joining together we stand a better chance to obtain something from our employer for all of us than by trying alone and only for ourself. We were just tired and fed up of the way we are treated and wanted to try out something to change it. We have tried the going alone way and it did not work. Not that we got anything yet and maybe at the end we'll get nothing but at least we'll have tried and we'll have invited you to create art in the process, art that could contribute to bring social change. I hope all I wrote is not too abstract and vague.

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DESIGN FOR SOCIAL CHANGE There are more details in The Other Microsoft and on our blogs. Feel free to send me questions and I'll try to answer them as promptly as possible. Thank you for your time and work. Within a month, the students created forty + images and a few videos but their use was limited as we have been unable yet?- to raise the funds needed for printing them or organizing an exhibition. You can have a look at the images by visiting imagesforpaidleave.org. I hope that the experience we had with Cornish will be replicated with other schools so that other images can be created and hopefully gain wider dissemination.

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MICROSOFT AND HUMAN RIGHTS

In 2006 Microsoft signed into the UN Global Compact and committed itself that way in its Global Human Rights Statement: 'Microsoft is committed to respecting all the human rights described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.' This last Covenant includes provisions about paid public holidays (7d) and paid maternity leave (10.2). Article 7 (d ) guarantees: 'Rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays' Article 10.2 states: 'Special protection should be accorded to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth. During such period working mothers should be accorded paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits.' The 'at least 15 days of paid time off'

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requirement does not meet those demands as it does not provide for paid public holidays nor for paid maternity leave. It is worth remembering that this Covenant was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 16 1966 and entered into force January 3rd 1976. Of course it was never ratified by the United States Senate but that does not exonerate Microsoft from its proclaimed voluntary commitment of 2006 (30 years later). We are now 10 years after Microsoft's signature in the UN Global Compact but the suppliers employees working via Lionbridge Technologies are still without any paid public holidays and any maternity or other parental leave. Microsoft has not publicly reneged on its commitment to the UN Global Compact. It still refers to it to demonstrate how much a good corporate citizen they are. But they are NOT. Paid public holidays are not optional: they are an integral part of the conventions Microsoft agreed to implement. So is paid maternity leave.

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I want to spend some more time about this qualification of paid holidays and paid maternity leave as human rights to emphasize how much the US has set itself apart of the rest of the world. I wish that you take a few minutes to consider how shocking the present situation is and how even more shocking is the fact that a company like Microsoft can deny its suppliers employees such basic rights without any public outcry, without any stain -yet- on its image of a great and most ethical company! Where is the integrity? Where is the empathy?

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ABOUT PAID PUBLIC HOLIDAYS

In 2016 Microsoft offers to its 'direct' employees ten paid public holidays and two 'floating' personal days. Those come on top of 15 days of paid vacation and 10 days of paid sick leave. The 10 paid public holidays are: New Year's Day, MLK Jr Day, President's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day +1, Christmas Day +1 That's a significant number of days that are provided by most employers: 72% according to the last report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics ('Beyond the numbers, Paid leave in private industry over the past 20 years', August 2013). Why didn't Microsoft add those ten days in their paid time off requirement? How do you think moral is impacted when the Microsofties and the workers classified as 'regular" get those paid holidays and the ones misclassified as 'temporary' don't? The financial loss is of course important, even more so since the compensation is lower for the 'temps'.

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As the lower paid 'temps' need the money, they'll be tempted to work if they are 'offered' to do so during a holiday. They will do so to avoid the loss of income. Too bad for their families and tough for their own health. As they cannot afford to lose their job, they'll keep silent and quiet about it, keep accepting this stinking injustice, this stinking double standard, that slaps their faces each public holiday. When required to provide 15 days of PTO Manpower subsidiary Experis decided to quit paying for the public holidays they used to provide! They also waited until the last minute to start implementing this requirement, postponing the start of the accruing process that did not take into account any presence before April 1st 2016. On their website they trumpet how ethical they are. Orwellian doubletalk.

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BENEFITS THEFT?

How much did Microsoft and Lionbridge save/take from their employees by not providing them paid leave nor paid public holidays they were eligible for but for their misclassification as 'temporary'? It's easy to calculate how much they kept in their pockets. If you worked 4 years at $22 per hour (as I did), $176 per day, you would have accumulated 100 days (4 times 10 days of paid public holidays and 4 times 15 days of PTO) for a total of $17.600. The total for 3 years is 75 days, $13.200, 2 years, 50 days, $8.800, 1 year, 25 days, $4.400. Instead of that, Lionbridge paid a bit more than one day for 2015, about $200. If you were making $17 per hour (people at the bottom of the scale in the lab) and worked for 3 years, you were deprived (stolen?) of $10.200, $6.800 for 2 years and $3.400 for one year. People go to jail for less than that. Not corporations. Is there a way we could try to get this money? At the root of our so called ineligibility for those benefits is our misclassification as 'temporary'

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employees. Could we argue that this misclassification was fraudulent and equivalent to wage theft? Probably not. I could not find an attorney willing to consider such a case.

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TRYING TO GET RID OF THE UNION

Trying to get rid of the union is a classic move for any corporation that is antiunion. The way to go is to have a majority of employees sign a petition to decertify the union, expressing their wish not to be represented any more by the union. That's what happened for us. In April 2016, during a 'questions and answers' meeting with a few employees, Lionbridge's HR Director explained that no pay raise could be awarded because of the ongoing collective bargaining. She also mentioned that since January 2015 Lionbridge had decided that workers could not remain as 'temporary' for longer than 9 months: if they continued to work after nine months they were 'converted' into 'regulars', with the benefits attached to this classification. As being misclassified as temporary was key to our protest you would think Lionbridge would have told us as soon as possible about this very significant policy change. They did not. Why? I have no clue. When the union asked for more details we were told that each employee 147

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had received an email from HR in March 2015 about the 2015 US Employee Handbook. Within this handbook, almost at the very end, on page 84 , exhibit G, was a small note within a table about the eligibility for paid time off. The column titled 'classification' stated: 'All temporary EE's -9 month maximum employment period; Converted or terminated after 9 months'. That's how Lionbridge communicated within the 2015 handbook about this key policy change. Interestingly the page 16, explaining the two categories of employees at Lionbridge, Regular and Temporary/Flex did not say anything about the new conversion policy. As we just looked at the lack of paid company holidays it seems worth noting that on the same page 84 one could read: 'Lionbridge observes Company holidays each year. All regular employees are eligible per the chart above.' All employees, except if they were part of the only unit represented by a union. 148

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As the HR Director explained: this benefit could not be awarded while there was still a collective bargaining pending. Translate: get rid of the union and you'll get the benefits and pay raises. After this meeting it did not take long before a petition asking for the decertification of the union gathered signatures of employees eager to get rid of the only obstacle supposedly preventing additional benefits and pay raises. Unfortunately for Lionbridge the employer is not allowed to make any such promises to support a decertification drive. Lionbridge denies they made any promise, only stated facts and answered questions. The union disagrees and asked NLRB to investigate and block the decertification process until this issue is clarified. NLRB is investigating and the process is -for now- blocked. I forgot to mention that when we asked employees if they had ever received the March 2015 email announcing and sharing the 2015 US Employee Handbook, we could not find any who

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did: contrary to Lionbridge's assertion, we could not find anybody among the Tier1 employees represented by the union who had received this email and the attached handbook. If the union had known in March 2015 about this new classification policy it would have immediately asked that it be implemented right away and be included in the contract proposal. We were not told and this sneaky move was used one year later to try to get rid of the union. One can only hope it will not work and truth will come out about the whole episode.

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THE NEED FOR MONITORING

History teaches us that without public monitoring the implementation of paid leave policies 'disappears'. Microsoft had 'enacted' 13 days of PTO in 1999 but 17 years later this requirement was not implemented until it was revived. We passed the first year anniversary of Brad Smith's announcement of the 'at least 15 days of PTO' requirement by Microsoft for its suppliers. Microsoft did not provide a detailed evaluation of the implementation of this new policy. Such an evaluation should include a detailed survey of the most concerned people, the supplier's employees, including rating their satisfaction or dissatisfaction, what they are wishing for? Producing such data would be very easy for Microsoft and would serve to evaluate the effectiveness of such paid leave policies. One could imagine the creation of a 'scorecard/index' listing and rating family friendly policies. A failing rating would carry the shameful FU (for Family Unfriendly) label. One could imagine.

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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WHAT IS MISSING

There are many things missing in the few above vignettes. The most important 'thing' is people. I told the story of Marilyse in the first part and that's about it. Why? Employees want to remain anonymous, They don't want to be identified for fear of being fired, denied any promotion once labeled as a potential trouble maker, putting at risk applying for other jobs or positions. I was recently contacted by a Seattle Times journalist who wanted to write about temporary workers:it was not easy for her to find people willing to talk 'on the record', giving their name etc. It takes courage just to attend collective bargaining meetings! Especially once you realize they lead nowhere. Who are the people of The Other Microsoft? In our lab, that is very international because of the need for native speakers of foreign languages, people come from all over the world. Some were born in the US, some have become American citizen, some have not (yet). People are of different ages, maybe

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a majority under 40, with children or not. Lionbridge and Microsoft don't care for temps children: they offer zero paid family leave. The young father to be, whose wife expects her first child for the end of July will get zero paid parental leave, except if this family unfriendly policy changes before then. Beyond the small lab I left on July 5th are hundreds or maybe thousands of units working for Microsoft via suppliers, thousands of people without representation, without a voice, invisible, forgotten. The main goal of this book is to make them visible, to expose the other Microsoft, to advocate for the policy changes that would make their lives and the lives of their families so much better. Now. If the decision makers at Microsoft, at Lionbridge, at Fidelity Investments and elsewhere can be convinced to adopt and implement the family friendly policies we described.

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WHAT'S NEXT?

At this point of our organizing journey I believe only shareholder activism can incite Microsoft and Lionbridge to improve upon the minimalist 'at least 15 days of paid time off' policy. That or NLRB deciding Microsoft is a joint employer. I am still looking for the first people and institutions holding shares of Microsoft and/or of Fidelity Investments that would be willing to stick their neck out to get in touch with their respective board of directors. Why Fidelity Investments? Because they are the main shareholder of Lionbridge. Like Microsoft they have generous paid leave policies for their own employees but they don't seem to care how Lionbridge treats its employees: it's so much easier to only pocket the profits. So, if you own shares of Microsoft and/or Fidelity Investments, consider shareholder activism to promote paid parental leave and paid company holidays!

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WHAT'S NEXT?

When I approached the Faith Action Network to support our shareholder activism initiative I realized they were mostly involved in legislative advocacy. While legislative advocacy is badly needed considering the lack of any substantial laws mandating paid leaves at any level (local, state or federal), it often looks like an uphill and long battle. It has to be fought but that should not prevent the development of shareholder activism engaging the companies that can obviously and right away afford to provide paid leaves to their employees. There are many of those but there has been very little if any shareholder activism about paid leaves or other labor rights themes. My assessment is that shareholder activism initiatives to promote paid leaves would also raise the awareness about the need for legislation and demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of paid leaves. I am concerned that a strategy only relying on legislative advocacy will be 156

WHAT'S NEXT? very slow and limited in the number of paid days requested/mandated. I understand how people get excited to obtain 5 days of paid sick leave instead of none but that remains a very low standard. Many very profitable and wealthy companies can adopt right away more ambitious paid leave policies that will contribute to change the norms and help pass stronger legislation. Can shareholders be convinced to mobilize effectively for paid leaves and other labor rights within the US? I hope so. At the same time, I hope the temps will wake up and get organized. They are the masses without any voice, without any representation, without any say in how they are treated. Wake up, bring a New Deal for the 21st century revolution to a high tech industry that prospers on discrimination. Your life and the life of your families depends on it.

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EPILOGUE?

On July 26, as I was finishing the formatting of this second edition I received a request from Lionbridge that we meet urgently for collective bargaining as they were anticipating layoffs. We agreed to meet on Saturday July 30 in the morning. Five of us listened to Lionbridge's offer: they were offering to transform the temporary status to regular (with all the corresponding benefits) after 9 months, they were offering a severance package and the possibility of pay increases, they were considering paid parental leave (but without any firm offer). It took us five hours to agree: the severance package and the pay increases were a bit better and we found that was a deal we could live with. Of course a key part was that the union would withdraw its charges against Microsoft (for joint employment) and against Lionbridge. We submitted the tentative agreement to the Tier1 employees on August 3: it was ratified with 30 Yes versus 1 No. On August 4, the union withdrew all its NLRB charges. 159

EPILOGUE?

As I write those lines, on August 5, no lay off has yet been officially announced. We'll see. Many issues remain unresolved: we have sort of a promise from Lionbridge they'll offer paid parental leave but nothing yet. It's probable A will not have any paid leave to take care of his new born, due any time now and I really feel bad about that. We don't know how the eventual layoffs will proceed. Outside of our lab, the situation of thousands of 'temporary' workers employed by Microsoft's suppliers remains obscure and precarious. Is it up to a baby union like ours to keep up this fight on their behalf? Is there any chance that we find allies in this fight? We'll see.

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ANNEXES Paid Time Off Matters, by Brad Smith 03/26/2015 162 The employee experience at Microsoft Aligning benefits to our culture by Kathleen Hogan, 08/05/2015 167 How Microsoft spoiled my Fourth of July 07/02/2013 171 Paid vacation in France and in the US 176 Pierre Dreyfus - CEO of Renault 179 TWA Timeline 180 Very short bibliography 194 Paid Vacation Act of 2013 198 About the cover 205 Thank yous 206 Also by Philippe Boucher 207

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PAID TIME OFF MATTERS Paid time off matters: Ensuring minimum standards for the people at our suppliers (c) Microsoft Posted March 26, 2015 by Brad Smith on Microsoft Corporate Blog (Note that the graphics have been taken out of this version) We believe paid time off is an important benefit for workers in our economy. Today we’re announcing that over the next year we will make changes to ensure that a wide variety of suppliers that do business with Microsoft in the U.S. provide their employees who handle our work with at least 15 days of paid leave each year. We’re publishing this blog today to share information both on what we’re doing and why we’ve decided to take this step. What We’re Doing. Let me share the most significant aspects of what we’ve decided to do: * First, we’re focusing on ensuring a minimum of 15 days of annual paid time off for the eligible employees at our suppliers, either through 10 days of paid vacation and five days of paid sick leave or through 15 days of unrestricted paid time off. * Second, this new benefits minimum will apply to suppliers with 50 or more employees in the United States. It will apply to their U.S.

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PAID TIME OFF MATTERS employees who have worked for them for more than nine months (1500 hours) and who perform substantial work for Microsoft. We recognize that this approach will not reach all employees at all of our suppliers, but it will apply to a great many. * Third, because we recognize that this approach may increase the costs for some of our suppliers, our plan is to work with them to implement these changes over the next twelve months. We appreciate that this may ultimately result in increased costs for Microsoft, and we’ll put a process in place for addressing these issues with our suppliers. We want to be clear. Many of our suppliers already offer strong benefits packages for their employees, including paid time off. We don’t currently have data on how many do and how many do not provide paid time off, but our new policy will ensure that every supplier with 50 or more employees will do so for employees doing substantial work for Microsoft. We’re committed to working with our suppliers to understand the impact of this change on them and pursue the best approach to implement this well. We’re not aware of any large company that has taken the approach that we’re launching today, so we want to be thoughtful and well-informed about our implementation of this step. We don’t want to make changes that undermine the breadth and diversity of our suppliers. For

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PAID TIME OFF MATTERS example women/minority owned businesses account for over $2 billion of our supplier services in the U.S. We also want to be sensitive to the needs of small businesses. For these reasons, we are going to launch a broad consultation process with our suppliers so we can solicit feedback and learn from them about the best way to phase in the specific details. We’re committed to the direction that we’ve set, but focused on learning as much as we can about how to implement this effectively. Why We’re Doing This. Over the past year there has been increasing debate about income inequality and the challenges facing working people and families. While this is often discussed as a general topic, at times individuals have raised pertinent questions for companies in the tech sector, including Microsoft. This has led us to step back and think anew about the types of benefits policies we want to have with our suppliers. As we’ve studied the issue, we’ve reached a couple of conclusions: * First, paid time off benefits both employers and employees by contributing to a happier and more productive workforce. Research shows paid time off contributes to the health and well-being of workers and their families, strengthens

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PAID TIME OFF MATTERS family ties, increases productivity, improves retention, and lowers health-care costs. In addition, as a University of Pittsburgh study recently concluded, paid sick leave contributes to the health of one’s colleagues. As the study found, one flu day reduced on-the-job transmission by 25 percent, while two flu days reduced such transmissions by 39 percent. * Second, the lack of paid time off disproportionately impacts low-wage earners. While estimates vary, the overall trend is clear. As one study found, only 49 percent of those in the bottom fourth of earners get paid time off, compared with almost 90 percent among the top quarter of earners. Lack of paid time off also has a disproportionate impact on minorities at a time when the tech sector needs to do a better job of promoting diversity. As we considered these conclusions, we also thought about them in the context of the benefits policies we have for Microsoft’s full-time employees. We’ve long recognized that the health, well-being, and diversity of our employees helps Microsoft succeed. Our commitment to them extends beyond the workplace. That’s why we have long provided industry-leading benefits for our employees, including comprehensive health and wellness programs for families, child care support, paid annual leave, paid sick leave, and paid times off

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PAID TIME OFF MATTERS for new moms and dads. We then thought about this in the context of the broader supplier relationships on which we rely. Like many companies in many industries in the United States, we rely on a wide variety of other companies that supply us with goods and services that reflect their core competencies. From building maintenance to management consulting and campus security to software localization, we rely on a large group of outside companies to do what they do best. The people who work for our suppliers are critical to our success and we want them to have the benefit of paid time off. By taking this new step, we will focus our resources on doing business with companies that share a commitment to providing these types of strong benefits for employees. In sum, we concluded that this is the right step for our business. We also hope that our experience – and especially the feedback we receive from our suppliers – will be valuable to others considering similar changes. Our goal is to make this change in a thoughtful way and to share our experiences with those who are interested.

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The employee experience at Microsoft The employee experience at Microsoft: Aligning benefits to our culture Posted August 5, 2015 by Kathleen Hogan - Executive Vice President, Human Resources (C) Microsoft When I look at how rapidly the traditional workplace is changing, not just at Microsoft, but throughout business in general, I see a tremendous opportunity for companies to put a stake in the ground around what they believe in and what kind of culture they want to build together with employees. This is certainly the case with Microsoft, as we evolve our culture to one that embodies a growth mindset and that embraces diversity and inclusion. As we ask our employees to bring their “A” game to work every day to achieve our mission, we believe it’s our responsibility to create an environment where people can do their best work. A key component of this is supporting our employees with benefits that matter most to them. This is why today we’re announcing enhancements to our U.S. corporate employee benefits in three areas that employees consistently rank among the most important: having time to renew; saving for the future; and flexibility needed to spend time with new children. Enhanced Parental Leave for mothers and fathers

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The employee experience at Microsoft Today we provide eight weeks of fully paid maternity disability leave for new mothers, plus 12 weeks of Parental Leave for all parents of new children, of which four are paid and eight unpaid. For these parents to bring their best every day, they need time to take care of themselves and their family. In recognition of this, we are making some significant enhancements to our Parental Leave practices, effective Nov. 1, 2015. Specifically, we’re enhancing our paid Parental Leave to 12 weeks, paid at 100 percent, for all mothers and fathers of new children. For birth mothers, this is in addition to the eight weeks of maternity disability leave they currently receive, paid at 100 percent, enabling them to now take a total of 20 weeks of fully paid leave if they choose. Additionally, we’ll offer birth mothers an expanded opportunity to use Short-Term Disability Leave during the two weeks prior to their scheduled due date to manage the physical impact that often comes with late pregnancy and to prepare for the upcoming birth. We will also offer flexibility for when eligible parents can take leave. Eligible parents will now have the option to take their Parental Leave either in one continuous 12-week period or split into two periods. These parents will also have

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The employee experience at Microsoft the option to phase back into work on a half-time basis. Holidays & 401(k) changes Beyond our new Parental Leave policy, we’re responding to additional employee feedback by making enhancements in two key areas, effective Jan. 1, 2016: * Additional paid holidays: Beginning in 2016, we’ll add Martin Luther King Day and Presidents Day to our list of Microsoft holidays in the U.S. This creates two new company-wide breaks that align to the federal calendar and create time for us to pause in the lengthy period between New Year’s Day and Memorial Day. We now offer 12 paid holidays (which includes two floating holidays), in addition to paid vacation time that employees accrue. We believe this will provide employees with more opportunity to take time to recharge and invest that time in ways that are meaningful to them, while honoring Dr. King and U.S. presidents. * Increased 401(k) match: Retirement readiness is an important part of overall financial wellness, so beginning Jan. 1, 2016, we’ll increase the company’s 401(k) match from 50 percent of the first 6 percent that employees defer, to 50 percent of all regular deferrals. With the current IRS regular deferral limit of $18,000,

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The employee experience at Microsoft this means employees will have the opportunity for Microsoft to match their contributions up to $9,000 per year. This will allow employees to save more through this tax-advantaged savings vehicle and grow their retirement savings faster. As we make changes in the U.S., we will continue to review what’s offered in each country and work to align to our global benefits philosophy and the local regulations and dynamics in each market. Our U.S. retail employees will also see enhanced benefits, similar to those announced today, based on existing retail pay and benefit structures. The people of Microsoft truly are what make our company great. These changes are in direct support of the culture we aspire to have — one that allows people to build meaningful careers. We will continue to listen to employee feedback to establish benefits and build an overall employee experience that raises the bar in our industry, creates a more inclusive environment, and recognizes the importance of our people to the continued success of Microsoft. Kathleen

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How Microsoft spoiled my 4th of July

I work for Microsoft as a 'permatemp'. I am still (mis)classified as a temporary employee although I have worked full time continuously for more than one year. I work 'for' Microsoft though I am not directly employed by Microsoft. Rather I am paid by a 'vendor', one of the many companies that has a contract with Microsoft and employ 40.000+ people in the Puget Sound area. As a 'vendor' I wear an orange badge while the 'real' Microsoft's employees carry a blue badge. The badge allows me to roam the Microsoft's campus in Redmond, but unlike the 'real' Microsoft employees I don't enjoy the blue badge status of benefits, including paid holidays. Microsoft closes its Redmond campus for the 4th of July allowing its blue badge employees to enjoy a paid vacation. To me, an orange badge, it means one day without pay. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and all other public holidays that happen to fall during the week become another day

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How Microsoft spoiled my 4th of July

without pay. Forget about the 4th of July fireworks: they would force me to get to bed too late while I have to leave at dawn the next day without even thinking about taking Friday off. I can already hear the get yourself a better job lazy, be happy you have one, love it or leave it compassionate comments. I'll persist protesting because this is a serious issue when you live from pay check to pay check and need to work as much as you can to pay the bills. Double Standard What irks me even more is Microsoft's hypocrisy in this matter. In 2006, Microsoft signed the UN 'Global Compact' initiative, inciting mega corporations to implement human rights. Since then, Microsoft trumpets its commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, most recently in its Global Human Rights Statement on April 2012, and swears it is doing its best to be a good corporate citizen, requiring all of its suppliers to do the same.

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How Microsoft spoiled my 4th of July

Unfortunately Microsoft chooses to ignore its vendor's lack of fulfilling Article 24 of the Universal Declaration: 'Everyone has the right to periodic holidays with pay.' Why all the fuss for one day without pay? Because this July 4th has a significant price tag in the millions of dollars in lost income for the 40.000+ so called temporary workers working for Microsoft's suppliers who are denied this very basic human right. A human right adopted in December 1948, but still not implemented here 65 years later. If Microsoft chose to be consistent with its own proclaimed commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it would require all of its US suppliers to provide 'periodic holidays with pay', without reducing employees' present wages. Such a move to implement paid holidays would represent less than 1% of the profits made by Microsoft last year and I

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How Microsoft spoiled my 4th of July

could at last enjoy the 4th of July and the other official holidays. This text was written on July 2d 2013, sent to various newspapers but not published by any of them. The frustration expressed in this text of 2013 was repeated each year for each unpaid holiday and eventually put into articles that like this one were never published anywhere. How to emphasize without being taxed of whining, the deep recurring feeling of discrimination experienced by so many 'temps'? Satya Nadella now evokes the importance of the EQ, the empathy factor. Each unpaid holiday the temps feel the impact of the complete lack of empathy toward them. The text that precedes, by Kathleen Hogan is a similarly shocking example of the non-existence of the temps in her mind. Of course I have no personal quarrel with Kathleen Hogan: I assume she expresses the dominant ideology among Microsoft's decision makers.

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How Microsoft spoiled my 4th of July

The temps, thousands of people working alongside the alpha microsofties simply don't exist, despite the fact they have been identified 4 months earlier by Brad Smith. They already are out of the radar screen, invisible. Is this double standard only unacceptable for me? Is such an unequal treatment perfectly acceptable and indeed a key component of the geek culture? I think it is. How long will it take for the cyber-slaves to reconquer the rights they are presently denied?

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PAID VACATION IN FRANCE & THE US

Compared to France, there is very little paid vacation in the US. In the US people seem to be proud of not taking vacation. I think they are rationalizing their exploitation. Why wouldn’t you enjoy 6 weeks paid vacation per year if it was the standard for everybody? You would have to be nuts to prefer a meager ten days if there is even that. But many people stick to this workaholic ideology. I researched the issue with my daughter Anne when she chose to make a presentation in high school on this topic. The explanation of the difference between France and the US is simple: unions. Remember the sticker about unions: the people who brought you the weekend, the 8-hour day? French unions brought mandatory paid vacations: during the great general strike of 1936 (le front populaire) they obtained two weeks.

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PAID VACATION IN FRANCE & THE US

Black and white pictures of workers biking to the ocean or taking the train for the first time, snubbed by the bourgeoisie as congés payés (paid vacation!). Then, every ten or twenty years apart unions obtained -for everybody- one more week. It is a very interesting story, very rarely told: 1956: 3 weeks (twenty years to get one extra week) 1969: 4 weeks (13 years to get one extra week) 1982: 5 weeks (13 years to get one extra week) 1998: 35-hour week, instead of 39 and that translated in a few additional extra days (16 years to get that) Of course each time the managers and the capitalists claimed the world would come to an end, the companies would be ruined, society would crumble. Guess what? Nothing of this sort happened: quite the opposite as paid vacations created a whole new set of activities and new jobs and corporations

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only shared with the workers a little bit of the huge productivity gains. Inequalities have crept back in France and many workers now don’t go away for their paid vacation: they cannot afford to. Still they fare better than most of their US counterparts that remain stuck with 10 days of paid vacation or even less: less than what the unions obtained in France in 1936, 80 years ago.

For additional resources and references to other countries, look at the bibliography.

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PIERRE DREYFUS - CEO OF RENAULT I forgot to mention someone, who played

a key role in promoting paid vacation in France: Pierre Dreyfus (1907-1994) who was CEO of Renault from 1955 to 1975 and later Industry Minister in 1981/82. As CEO he initiated in 1955 the third week of paid vacation, ahead of the 1956 legislative change as he did for the fourth week in 1962, well ahead of the 1969 legislative change. As Industry Minister he pushed for the 5th week that was established in 1981. The unions were not alone in promoting more paid vacation: Pierre Dreyfus, played a key role. Likewise in the US, intelligent and empathy oriented executives have promoted more generous paid leaves in the companies they manage. Models to emulate... while the need for legislative action remains as necessary but as elusive as ever.

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TWA - TIMELINE December 5, 2011: Start of the Microsoft's lab to certify apps for the Windows Store (10 Tier 1 employees) in the building 87 of the Redmond campus. December 12, 2012: Email to Dan Bross (Microsoft Corporate Citizenship and Public Affairs) about Microsoft's commitment to Human Rights via the UN Global Compact. August 2nd 2013: Marilyse is fired by Lionbridge after having asked for benefits for the Tier 1 employees. Soon later she files a charge with NLRB against Lionbridge for retaliation. January 2014: NLRB finds in favor of Marilyse. She settles with Lionbridge and the charge is abandoned. March 2014: Beginning of the organizing drive for TWA with the creation and collection of authorizing cards. August 1st 2014: TWA files with NLRB the petition to organize a vote for the union. September 11, 2014: vote in favor of TWA as union representing Tier1 Lionbridge

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TWA - TIMELINE Technologies employees in the Windows Store App Certification lab in Redmond (at the time). October 11, 2014: Publication of The Other Microsoft by Philippe Boucher (Blurb.com and Kindle versions) November 7, 2014: Philippe Boucher is disciplined by Lionbridge with a 'written warning' for The Other Microsoft because it 'unacceptably disparaged Microsoft and Lionbridge'. November 8, 2014: Philippe Boucher emails to Maria Klawe, member of Microsoft's Board of Directors about the situation of permatemps with Microsoft's suppliers and the book The Other Microsoft. November 14, 2014: collective bargaining first meeting December 11: Philippe Boucher files a discrimination charge against Lionbridge for the 'written warning' about The Other Microsoft. December 18, 2014: collective bargaining 181

TWA - TIMELINE second meeting January 7, 2015: collective bargaining 3rd meeting January 13, 2015: Article in the Boston Globe 'Microsoft labmates bargain for benefits', by Katie Johnston January 14,2015: Valerie Jarrett launches the administration campaign to promote paid leave: 'Why we think paid leave is a worker's right, not a privilege" January 15, 2015: Article in the Seattle Times 'Labor issues at Microsoft prompt talks of policy changes' by Matt Day February 10, 2015: collective bargaining 4th meeting in the presence of Dmitri Iglitzin to advise TWA February 27, 2015: collective bargaining 5th meeting: Lionbridge initial proposal with zero paid leave of any kind (in the presence of Danielle Franco-Malone to advise TWA) March 10, 2015: Publication of L'Autre Moitié de Microsoft (French version of The Other

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TWA - TIMELINE Microsoft) on Amazon-Kindle. March 24,2015: Presentation of TWA for the students of the Design for Social Change class at Seattle's Cornish School of the Arts: they are going to produce images and video clips pro bono for TWA March 24, 2015: Article about Lionbridge CEO 2014 compensation March 2, 2015: Charge for bargaining in bad faith filed by TWA with NLRB against Lionbridge (for refusing to provide the contract with Microsoft and the amount Microsoft pays for each employee). Charge withdrawn on May 19. March 26, 2015: Brad Smith's Announcement about Microsoft new requirement that suppliers provide at least 15 days of paid time off to their employees March 27, 2015: articles about TWA in the Seattle Times, the Washington Post April 16, 2015: Microsoft CEO invited to the White House as a 'champion of change' because of their new paid leave requirement 183

TWA - TIMELINE for their suppliers May 1, 2015: Article in Business Week Bloomberg News: 'Microsoft's contract workers are organizing' May 10, 2015: For Mother's Day, John Oliver talks about the lack of paid family leave in the USA on HBO (5 million+ views by January 2015) May 12, 2015: Facebook announcement about their new policy requiring paid time off and providing $4000 of paid parental leave for their suppliers employees May 16, 2015: Article in the Seattle Times, "Image says it all for Microsoft temps', about the images produced by the Cornish Students. May 22, 2015: TWA posts a petition to Microsoft on coworking.org (http://coworking.org/) : Memorial Day should be a paid holiday for all 40.000 Microsoft temporary workers May 29, 2015: collective bargaining 6th meeting; cancelled at the last minute on the advice of our attorneys because there was only one union representative available

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TWA - TIMELINE May 29, 2015: Lionbridge files with NLRB a charge for bargaining in bad faith against TWA June 8, 2015: A study by the Department of Labor (http://blog.dol.gov/2015/06/08/lack-ofpaid-leave-compounds-challenges-for-low-wageworkers/) explains how the lack of paid leave disproportionally impacts low wage workers June 9, 2015: Disengagement letter from attorneys Dmitri Iglitzin and Danielle FrancoMalone, ending their legal advice for TWA. June 30, 2015: Lionbridge contract with Microsoft is renewed. TWA is informed it contains a clause requiring Lionbridge to provide at least 15 days of paid time off. July17, 2015: collective bargaining 7th meeting: Lionbridge now includes 15 days of paid time off in its proposal July 23, 2015: Philippe discovers articles 7d and 10.2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that Microsoft is supposedly committed to implement as part of the UN Global Compact: it affirms the worker's rights to "remuneration for public holidays" (on top of periodic holidays with pay) and "paid leave

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TWA - TIMELINE for a reasonable period for mothers before and after childbirth". August 5, 2015: Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft Executive Vice President for HR, announces new benefits (https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/08/05/theemployee-experience-at-microsoft-aligning-benefitsto-our-culture/) (2 new paid holidays and extended paid parental leave, up to 20 weeks) to Microsoft 'direct' employees August 13, 2015: Microsoft Chief Procurement Officer Mike Simms (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ procurement/default.aspx) writes about policy changes for US suppliers (including the 15 days of PTO requirement) August 20, 2015: collective bargaining 8th meeting: TWA accepts Lionbridge contract proposal. August 21: Post by Melinda Gates in the Huffington Post in favor of parental leave. On October 7, The Gates Foundation announces it is offering its employees up to one year of paid parental leave. August 26, 2015: TWA petition to Microsoft 'Stop paid leave discrimination' launched on coworker.org (http://coworker.org/)

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TWA - TIMELINE August 27, 2015: NLRB decision in BrowningFerris Industries (Joint Employment criteria) September 3, 2015: Testimony in support of Marilyse in front of the Washington State Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals about her occupational injury claim (for incapacitating repetitive stress syndrom) October 17, 2015: TWA invites Microsoft to attend the next collective bargaining meeting as a joint employer. October 23, 2015: Microsoft declines the invitation to the bargaining table for the ninth collective bargaining meeting taking place that very day October 28: TWA files a charge against Microsoft with NLRB for refusing to bargain as a joint employer - Case 19-CA-162985 November 3r 2015: Confidential Witness Affidavit given to NLRB November 9, 2015: Lionbridge attracts hedge fund billionaire Lee Cooperman for a 7% stake of $23 million (Boston Business Journal). Lionbridge announces a $50 million share

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TWA - TIMELINE

repurchase program November 12, 2015: Employees refuse to ratify the tentative bargaining agreement (20 NO and 5 YES) November 19, 2015: Lionbridge decides to implement the 15 days of paid time off provision despite the rejection of the bargaining agreement. TWA does not object. November 21, 2015: Thanksgiving @ Microsoft: the stinging bitterness of an unpaid holiday. December 10, 2015: Human Rights Day. TWA explains again why Microsoft is in violation of its commitment to respect human rights as stated in the Universal Declaration and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (articles 7d and 10.2) December 22, 2015: How much did Microsoft and Lionbridge save/take from their employees by not providing paid leave nor paid public holidays? Up to $17.600 for 4 year employee. January 3, 2016: Results of the 20 question survey about working conditions of Tier1 employees in the Windows App Certification Lab January 4, 2016: Microsoft's temporary workers

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TWA - TIMELINE

3 wishes for 2016 January 18, 2016: Martin Luther King Jr. Day @ Microsoft: help end paid leave discrimination. January 19, 2016: Letter to Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity Investments that holds 10% of Lionbridge Technologies January 19, 2016: Email to Sandi Peterson, new member of Microsoft Board of Directors (followed by letter) January 25, 2016: SS-8 request to the IRS for Determination of Worker Status for Microsoft and Lionbridge January 28, 2016: Comparing Microsoft's parental leave benefits with Lionbridge: 20 weeks to zero. Launch of a Corporate Social Responsibility campaign targeting FU companies (Family Unfriendly) February 12, 2016: letter to Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation February 13, 2016: email to John Stanton, new member of Microsoft Board of Directors March 6, 2016: Email to Bishop Greg Rickel of

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TWA - TIMELINE

the Diocese of Olympia (Episcopal Church) about a shareholder activism initiative toward Microsoft March 8, 2016: Email contact with Paul Benz, CoExecutive Director of Fait Action Network about a shareholder activism initiative March 12, 2016: Attending FAN meeting in Port Townsend March 20, 2016: Email to Sister Judy Byron, Coordinator of the NorthWest Coalition for Responsible Investment (reminder on March 30) emails sent via IPJC (Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center) then directly on April 28 March 21, 2016: Meeting with George Robertson, Chair, Board of Directors of the Diocesan Investment Fund for the Diocese of Olympia March 23, 2016: Email to Josh Zinner, ED of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (reminder on March 30 and end of April) March 24, 2016: Email from NLRB: they are still waiting for Microsoft answer to the joint employer charge. Expect it by the end of March, with their decision possibly by the end of April.

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TWA - TIMELINE

March 31, 2016: Panel member at the University of Washington screening of 'A day's work", documentary film about temp workers April 5, 2016: Meeting with Karen Eaton, Deacon, Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island April 6, 2016: Email to Jeff Johnson, President Washington State Labor Council April 12, 2016: Lionbridge HR Susan Gillespie has 'questions and answers' meeting with a few Tier1 employees where she informs them of a change in the temporary workers classification: after 9 months they become 'regular' employees, except in our unit because of the ongoing collective bargaining process. The same impossibility, according to her, applies to eventual pay raises. April 13, 2016: Brief for the Board of Directors of the Diocesan Investment Fund for the Diocese of Olympia April 22, 2016: Answer from the Board of Directors of the Diocesan Investment Fund for the Diocese of Olympia asking for FAN's decision, expressing preference for legislative action.

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TWA - TIMELINE April 27, 2016: Paul Benz co-executive director of FAN refers us to Sister Judy Byron, Program Coordinator of the NorthWest Coalition for Responsible Investment (see March 20, 2016) April 28, 2016: Email to Sister Judy Byron and Father Mike Crosby including link to Jessica Northall Ted presentation (Mike Crosby is with the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility that organizes shareholder activism) May 2, 2016: Second Q&A meeting by Susan Gillespie where she confirms what she said on April 12. A Tier1 employee shares an email she sent to him about those issues. May 2, 2016: Request for information about when and how the change of policy was decided and how employees were informed (or not). May 26, 2016: Tenth collective bargaining meeting. Lionbridge announces the existence of a petition to decertify the union (in the context of Lionbridge's argument that no raises nor change in classification could happen because of the union and the bargaining process). Lionbridge conditions signing any contract agreement to the union dropping the charge of joint employment against Microsoft, the union agreeing to stop

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TWA - TIMELINE disparaging Microsoft and Lionbridge. May 30, 2016: The union files charges against Lionbridge for bargaining in bad faith and a request to block the decertification petition process. June 13, 2016: Work starts in the new location, on Factoria blvd in Bellevue. This building is not part of Microsoft. July 4, 2016: Frustrating 4th of July: Paid Holiday discrimination thanks to Microsoft and Lionbridge July 5, 2016: Philippe Boucher resigns from Lionbridge July 5, 2016: Meeting with Alfredo Silva, organizer with the International Association of Machinists (AIM), District Lodge 160 July 26, 2016 : Lionbridge requests a collective bargaining meeting because of upcoming lay offs July 30, 2016: A tentative agreement is signed to be submitted for ratification on August 3rd. August 3, 2016: The agreement is ratified 30 to 1 August 4, 2016: TWA withdraws its NLRB charges against Microsoft and Lionbridge

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VERY SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 2016 Finding Time: The Economics of Work Life Conflict, by Heather Boushey 2014 Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play When No One Has The Time, by Brigid Schulte The Fissured Workplace, Why Work Became so Bad, by David Weil What Unions No Longer Do, by Jake Rosenfeld 2013 The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, by George Packer Free Time, the Forgotten American Dream, by Benjamin Kline Hunnicut No-Vacation Nation Revisited, by Rebecca Ray, Milla Sanes and John Schmitt Sleeping With Your Smartphone, by Leslie Perl The Responsible Company, by Yvon Chouinard & Vincent Stanley What's The Economy For, Anyway? by David Batker and John de Graaf 2012 The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson

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VERY SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY The Gardens of Democracy, by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer The Temp Economy: from Kelly girls to permatemps in postwar America, by Erin Hutton 2011 Failing its Families: Lack of Paid Leave and Work-Family Supports in the US, by Janet Walsh, for Human Rights Watch The War on Moms, On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation, by Sharon Lerner Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life, by Tom Geoghegan 2010 No Logo, by Naomi Klein, 10th anniversary edition The Big Squeeze, tough times for the American worker, by Steven Greenhouse 2009 Love the work, hate the job, by David Kusnet pages 97 to 149 about Microsoft's 'permatemps. Revisiting Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, co-edited by Lorenzo Pecci and Gustavo Piga The Predator State, by James K. Galbraith

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VERY SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 2008 No-Vacation Nation, by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt 2007

Let my people go surfing, by Yvon Chouinard 2006

The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, by Jeremy Rifkin 2005

Take Back Your Time, Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America, edited by John de Graaf 1999

No Logo, by Naomi Klein, especially the chapter 10 "Threats and temps" (Microsoft story is on page 231). A 10th anniversary edition was published in November 2010. 1992

The Overworked American: the unexpected decline of leisure, by Juliet B. Schor

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THE OTHER MICROSOFT

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PAID VACATION ACT OF 2013 AMENDMENT IN THE NATURE OF A SUBSTITUTE TO H.R. 1406, AS REPORTED,OFFERED BY MR. GRAYSON OF FLORIDA SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Paid Vacation Act of 2013' SEC. 2. FINDING Congress finds that (1) according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, each year the average American works one month (160 hours) more today than in 1976; (2) job-related stress costs business $344 billion a year in absenteeism, lost productivity, and health costs; (3) some 75 percent of visits to primary care physicians come from stress-induced problems

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PAID VACATION ACT OF 2013 (4) 147 countries require annual paid vacation leave, and the United States is the only industrialized Nation without a minimum annual mandated paid vacation; (5) one of the fastest growing economies in the world, China requires 3 weeks off for employees,which they call ‘‘Golden Weeks"; (6) Canada requires 2 weeks off for all employees, and 3 weeks off for employees with 5 years or more with one employer; (7) the Pew Research Center says more free time is the number one priority for middle-class Americans—with 68 percent of those surveyed listed this as a high priority for them; (8) in 2008, about half (52 percent) of American workers took a vacation of a week or longer, and only 14 percent of American workers took 2 weeks or more for vacation; (9) men who don’t take regular vacations are 32 percent more likely to die of heart attacks, and 21 percent more likely to die early of all causes; 199

PAID VACATION ACT OF 2013

(10) women who don’t take regular vacations have a 50 percent greater risk of heart attack, and are twice as likely to be depressed as those who do; (11) the travel industry adds $740 billion a year to the Nation’s economy, while stress and burn-out at work cost the economy over $300 billion a year; (12) vacations allow workers and businesses to increase productivity, decrease stress-related health costs, and provide time for family strengthening and bonding. SEC. 3. ENTITLEMENT TO VACATION. Section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S.C. 207) is amended by inserting after subsection (b) the following ‘‘(c)(1) Beginning on the date of enactment of the Paid Vacation Act of 2013, an eligible employee of an employer that employs 100 or more employees at any time during a 200

PAID VACATION ACT OF 2013 calendar year shall be entitled to a total of 1 workweek of paid vacation during each 12month period. ‘‘(2) Beginning on the date that is 3 years after the date of enactment of the Paid Vacation Act of 2013, an eligible employee of an employer that employs 50 or more employees at any time during a calendar year shall be entitled to a total of 1 workweek of paid vacation during each 12-month period, and an eligible employee of an employer that employs 100 or more employees shall be entitled to a total of 2 work weeks of paid vacation during each 12 month period, beginning on that eligible employee’s first anniversary of employment. ‘‘(3) An eligible employee shall provide the employer with not less than 30 days’ notice, before the date the paid vacation under paragraph (1) or (2) is to begin, of the employee’s intention to take paid vacation under such paragraph, and identify the date such paid vacation shall begin. ‘‘(4) For purposes of this subsection

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PAID VACATION ACT OF 2013 ‘‘(A) the term ‘eligible employee’ means an employee who has been employed for at least 12 months by the employer with respect to whom leave is requested under paragraph (1) or (2) and for at least 1,250 hours of service with such employer during such 12month period; and ‘‘(B) the term 1 workweek of ‘paid vacation means vacation time, in addition to and apart from sick leave and any leave otherwise required by law, to be taken in a continuous series or block of work days comprising 7 calendar days that cannot be rolled over, but must be used within the 12-month period ‘‘(5) The exemptions to this section provided in section 13 shall not apply to this subsection.’ SEC. 4. PUBLIC AWARENESS CAMPAIGN BY DEPARTMENT OF LABOR The Secretary of Labor is authorized to conduct a public awareness campaign, through the Internet and other media, to inform the public of the entitlement to leave afforded by this Act. There is authorized to be appropriated such sums as 202

PAID VACATION ACT OF 2013 may be necessary for the public awareness campaign.



SEC. 5. STUDY ON PRODUCTIVITY The Secretary of Labor shall conduct a study of workplace productivity and the effect on productivity of the leave requirement in this Act. The study shall also address any benefits to public health and psychological well-being as a result of such leave. Not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall transmit to Congress a report containing the findings of the study, and shall publish such findings on the website of the Department of Labor.

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ABOUT THE COVER

For the first edition of this book I thought it could be cool to 'copy' the design of Thomas Piketty's book, CAPITAL in the Twenty-First Century. My dear and talented niece Sophie Erskine made it work: I liked the connection it created between Piketty's huge book about the inequalities created by capitalism and my small book detailing the inequalities created at the bottom level of an ultra wealthy firm like Microsoft and a supplier like Lionbridge. For the second edition I thought about using Microsoft's basic colors. I also wanted to add some explanation about the content as The Other Microsoft could sound a bit cryptic. Sophie created again in a blink a classy and vivid design. Wizard Abbie Duquette worked out the right format. Thank you so much Sophie and Abbie :)

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THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

Thanks to all my Lionbridge co-workers, Seattle's NLRB attorneys Travis Williams, Daniel Hickey, Rachel Cherem, Anne Pomerantz, Patrick Berzai, John Trawley, Ryan Connolly, Sara Dunn, Al Kogler of the Communications Workers of America and Marcus Courtney of AFL-CIO, Les French of WashTech, Alfredo Silva of AIM, Maria Klawe, Brad Smith and the other Microsoft's directors and executives who supported the PTO policy change, John de Graaf, Jake Rosenfeld, David Kusnet, Brigid Schulte, Katie Johnston, Matt Day, George Gonos, Harris Freeman, Natalia Ilyin, Sonja Durr and the students of the Design for Social Change class at Cornish School of the Arts, the Microsoft’s paid ORCA card, the Washington State Ferries and the Sound Transit 545 and 554 bus drivers, the Seattle Public Library and the Kitsap Regional Library, Grace Episcopal Church, Bishop Greg Rickel, Eric Mason, Michal Hubka, Dorothy, Dani, Susan and Jim, Sue and Peter, Jane and Brian, Mary, Chelsea, Cindy and Kerry,Janet and Bill, Jo and Michael, Abbie Duquette, and of course all my family, INFINI

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Also by Philippe Boucher L'autre moitié de Microsoft (2015) De cette île (2012) Advocate (2011) Bonjour Bainbridge (2011) Honest Feedback (2009 - 2011) Guide pratique de la maison écologique (2008) 100 motivations pour arrêter de fumer (2007) People and Issues in Tobacco Control (2002) L’Espoir des Arbres, Manuel du Papier Recyclé (1982)

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About the author

French born Philippe Boucher has worked full-time as a permatemp for Microsoft via Lionbridge Technologies from December 5 2011 until he resigned on July 5 2016. He was previously an international advocate in tobacco control and for the promotion of paper recycling. He lives with his family in Bainbridge Island since 1999.

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