Paid Time Off MattersA (slow) progress report

In the Seattle Times: Microsoft temps gain first contract

In the Sunday August 20 edition of the Seattle Times, this article by Matt Day: Microsoft temps gain first contract.

Unpaid public holidays and no paid parental leave: Microsoft and Lionbridge are Scrooge like companies

In December 2012, Henry Blodget wrote a post in Business Insider about the Scrooge Award he gave to Corporate America. Three years later, as Xmas is coming, Microsoft and Lionbridge jointly deserve a Scrooge Award for not providing paid public holidays to all their employees. As we are not paid during those public holidays we suffer a loss of income that takes a big part of the fun out of this period as we worry about how we are going to compensate for this $ loss. Could it be possible that Microsoft does not know its trusted Lionbridge supplier does not pay for public holidays? It is doubtful as Microsoft directly profits by not paying either for those public holidays. Yes, some suppliers are more human and do pay those days to their workers (like WIPRO does). As we noted in the previous post, Microsoft should require all its suppliers to provide paid public holidays as this is clearly mentioned in article 7 (d) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: "Rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays ", and Microsoft claims it is committed to implement this Convention. We'll keep denouncing this Scrooge-like behavior until it changes. Of course in these times of celebrating a nativity we'll add to our outrage the lack of any paid parental leave. The Universal Declaration of HumanRights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also contain dispositions for pregnant moms. Article 25.2 of the UDHR states: "Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance". Article 10.2 of the Internal Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 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." 50 years later, as this Convention was adopted in 1966, these benefits are still not required by Microsoft for all its suppliers. Although this Convention was never ratified by the US Senate, Microsoft voluntarily committed itself to implement all its content (as far as it was relevant to its responsibilities as a multinational corporation) when they joined the UN Global Compact in ... 2006.  9 years later Microsoft is still not respecting its commitment to implement dispositions adopted 50 years ago and implemented routinely in most industrialized countries, including by Microsoft's subsidiaries operating in those countries. Lionbridge Technologies does not give a damn about the UN Global Compact but their subsidiaries in other countries also have to respect those dispositions. Only in the US...

 

How BloombergBusinessweek sees Temporary Workers demands

Read the article here
Photograph by Ryan Duffin for BloombergBusinessweek

Lionbridge Technologies, Temporary Workers of America and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

Since August 2013, Lionbridge Technologies has been charged by TWA and investigated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in four cases concerning violations of the employees rights to organize.

See details below.

How trustworthy is Lionbridge Technologies?

CEO Rory Cowan loves the fact that Lionbridge Technologies has been selected by Forbes magazine to be for the second consecutive year among its list of the 100  most trustworthy companies in America. He says that "For nearly two decades, we've provided our clients, employees, partners and shareholders with the highest level of transparency, integrity and quality." How does he reconcile this glowing statement with his refusal, after we gave more than 3 years of excellent work to Lionbridge and Microsoft, to provide us with any paid time off nor any pay increase? 

Paid Time Off Matters as a Business School Case Study

Business Schools (like Harvard) love case studies. We thought it would be interesting to create a case study about the implementation by Lionbridge Technologies  (whose CEO is Rory Cowan) of Microsoft's requirement to provide paid leaves to its employees. We also included ourselves (Temporary Workers of America) as a party as there is an on going collective bargaining negociation going on. This case study is free. Just contact us to get the word format document with the elements of the case and send us your recommandations. This is part of our effort to crowdsource innovative solutions to this situation. As there is legal component with the writing of the collective bargaining contract this case can also be of interest for Law Schools.

contact: temporaryworkersofamercia at gmail.com

Lionbridge FY 2014, 2013, 2012 results

Results 2014

 

Results 2013

Results 2012 

Details below. We found particularly interesting the data concerning Lionbridge's "share repurchase program":

2014: $5.9 million  2013: $5.2 million  2013: $18 million

Total share repurchase program for the 3 years: $29.1 million