last month, abortion was soon banned or restricted in several states—but some tech companies pledged to help workers sidestep these limits. Google, Amazon, Lyft, and DoorDash told employees they could claim expenses for out of state travel for abortion care. Google went a step further, offering to let employees in affected states permanently.
Excluding those workers from abortion benefits deepens the divisions within the tech industry’s two-tiered workforce. At large tech companies, temps, vendors, and contractors—dubbed TVCs—often labor alongside permanent employees for less pay, fewer benefits, and less job security. They comprise a large and growing share of the tech industry’s workforce.
At Amazon, the hundreds of thousands of drivers who operate delivery vans and freight trucks bearing the company logo work for small third-party contractors, making them ineligible for Amazon’s benefits. And because Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash all classify their drivers as independent contractors, they also remain excluded from employee benefits. A 2019report found that Google’s 121,000 temps and contractors outnumbered its 102,000 full-time employees.
Last week, the Alphabet Workers Union, which includes workers at Google and other companies owned by its parent Alphabet, condemned the company’s selective abortion travel policy.
One group of Google subcontractors working at a store that sells the broadband service Google Fiber is fighting to be included in the abortion travel benefit. In March, workers at a pair of Google Fiber stores in Kansas City, Missouri, employed through the staffing firm BDS Solutions,fell, Missouri implemented a total abortion ban with no exception for rape or incest.