While contractors wait, Google's employees get costly Covid tests

Google provides a supply of high-end quick Covid-19 testing to its full-time employees who work from home. Meanwhile, contract workers who continue to show up at offices must wait a little longer for outcomes. According to a document acquired by Bloomberg, Alphabet Inc. permits US full-time employees and their dependents to request Covid-19 testing from Cue Health Inc., which provides results at home in a matter of minutes.

According to a letter tweeted Tuesday by the Alphabet Workers Union, contract workers who must report in person to Google's headquarters receive PCR tests from BioIQ that they can complete and ship into a lab.

In the United States, easy access to high-quality Covid-19 testing has become a measure of social inequity. Lines for testing have become long across the country as a result of the spread of the Omicron variety, while supplies of at-home tests have dwindled and costs have risen on the secondary market.

Test access has become so precarious that US President Joe Biden ordered insurance companies to cover the cost of at-home testing on Monday, and stated that the government will likely make 500 million tests free.

Google's direct employees have long had access to benefits that contractors, temporary and contract workers, who number as many as or more than direct employees, do not have.

For example, Contractors, are unable to request an additional computer monitor via Google's intranet and are not compensated with Alphabet stock. This difference has now spread to their health in the United States.

"We have many at-home and in-person viral testing options available free to our employees and members of our extended workforce, including temps and vendors," in a statement the Google spokesperson said.

The corporation claimed that by offering tests, it was reducing the strain on public testing resources.

Google provides employees with a Cue device and ten fast, at-home molecular tests, which cost $949 and are regarded more accurate than antigen testing because they can detect minute amounts of virus genetic material rather than seeking specific proteins on the virus's surface.

According to one of the sources, full-time employees who are not needed to be on campus can use an internal portal to request up to 20 additional Cue tests per month for themselves and their children aged 2 and up. Employees in this category are permitted to work from home on an indefinite basis.

Google software engineer Ashok Chandwaney, a member of the Alphabet Workers Union's executive committee, believes that all Google employees should be treated equally for their labor.