HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA etc.

[jimmyjazz 46986]

2 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

Well yeah. But when you consult you're typically billing 3-4x what your "hourly rate" would be based on a full-time salary. Or at least I hope you are.

Not quite 3X but my compensation is fine at work.

My main point was that the gig economy is pretty specifically an hourly construct, whether you're slinging espresso at a dinner event or acting as a consultant.  There is no slack, or at least there shouldn't be.

[BradInATX 9208]

5 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Not quite 3X but my compensation is fine at work.

My main point was that the gig economy is pretty specifically an hourly construct, whether you're slinging espresso at a dinner event or acting as a consultant.  There is no slack, or at least there shouldn't be.

You're right. And your concept is how the tech companies are exploiting their workers by classifying them as "contractors". Companies are paying "contractors" what they'd pay a full-timer hourly (so basically salary divided by 2080), with no benefits. Where they should be paying them 3-4x their "calculated hourly" rate if they were a regular employee, because they're not getting billed for all of the in-between task work that a regular employee does.

If they were paying these "contractors" the type of markup that a consultant like you or I would charge, it'd be fine. But they're not.

Edited December 18, 2019 by BradInATX

[jimmyjazz 46986]

4 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

You're right. And your concept is how the tech companies are exploiting their workers by classifying them as "contractors". Companies are paying "contractors" what they'd pay a full-timer hourly (so basically salary divided by 2080), with no benefits. Where they should be paying them 3-4x their "calculated hourly" rate if they were a regular employee, because they're not getting billed for all of the in-between task work that a regular employee does.

If they were paying these "contractors" the type of markup that a consultant like you or I would charge, it'd be fine. But they're not.

I see your point.

While I'm an engineer, I'm not really a high-tech guy (meaning I'll never be hired by Google, Dell, etc.).  Do "contractors" for those companies come to work for a set number of hours per day and get paid accordingly, or do they bill for specific work done?  If the former, they're essentially salaried, although w/o benefits.

If I take a phone call from my wife or post on surly while on salary, I don't stop the clock.  If I do so when I consult, I stop the clock.  How do these pseudo-contractors handle such things?

Apologies if I've thrown this off track.

[Incredulity 11861]

33 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

Fair enough. Quantity, and probably quality will be better with the regular employees. 

And the question about variety is fair. But all Vox (a very specific use case, BTW) would have to do is either:

1) Have the freelancers start an LLC and continue business as usual, except checks going to the LLC and not the employee. Again, a 30 minute process.

or

2) Hire a firm that has a wide pool of subject matter expertise (for example a firm that has content creators for all 32 NFL teams). In this case, the company (Vox) gets the same result, without the "employees" getting exploited (because the content creation firm would be paying them a real wage).

 

But let's be real. This law was not meant for a company like Vox. There are plenty of workarounds for them. The article is nothing but click bait. They'll be fine. The article is meant to stop Facebook, Google, etc. from employing THOUSANDS of people who are essentially doing full time work whilst being exploited as contractors. And yeah, the burden that Facebook would take on to change Payroll and Accounting infrastructures to support 5,000 LLCs instead of 5,000 "contractors" is burdensome. Which is the point.  Fuck you, Facebook. Stop using loopholes to get around employment law. You aren't struggling. Pay your employees and give them benefits.

 

It also is aimed at Uber (gig-economy) situations.  The current mix of heavily regulated providers(taxi) and gig economy providers in for-hire ride business is completely untenable. 

[Hornius Emeritus 12781]

On 12/17/2019 at 11:06 AM, lemonlime said:

First, you call your political opponents "human scum."  Next, you do absolutely nothing to help workers, and completely ignore issues with independent contractors including lack of benefits such as health insurance. Then, you make sure to torpedo the ACA, which many (most?) freelancers use.  Then you bitch and moan about the other side's attempts to fix these problems, without offering any solutions or legislation of your own, or even acknowledging that there's a problem.  And then you win some more elections by lying to the American public about what you've done while fearmongering.

 

Why tamper with a winning formula?

[BradInATX 9208]

10 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I see your point.

While I'm an engineer, I'm not really a high-tech guy (meaning I'll never be hired by Google, Dell, etc.).  Do "contractors" for those companies come to work for a set number of hours per day and get paid accordingly, or do they bill for specific work done?  If the former, they're essentially salaried, although w/o benefits.

If I take a phone call from my wife or post on surly while on salary, I don't stop the clock.  If I do so when I consult, I stop the clock.  How do these pseudo-contractors handle such things?

Apologies if I've thrown this off track.

Well, the original premise of the thread was stupid, so throwing it off track is the best thing you could have done.

What you said is spot on. You're on the clock at a full-time job for bathroom breaks, personal calls, going to have work conversations that you probably wouldn't bill for as a consultant, etc. 

The tech companies are hiring people as "contractors", then setting expectations that they are only billing for hours worked. For example, I had a friend who worked for Facebook as a contractor. Well, he actually worked for an external firm that worked solely with Facebook, but that's not really relevant - same end result. He was paid an hourly wage to go through banner ads that people were wanting to pay Facebook to display and check them to make sure they met the guidelines (vulgarity, nudity, whatever). To do that work he used an app/portal provided by the company. Said app/portal would keep track of how much time he was actively sorting through ads. 

My understanding from him is that his time card was not directly tied to the timer on that app. But if he consistently submitted time cards with more hours than that app tracked, we all know what would happen. 

And he was paid something like $30/hour to do it. Extrapolated to a regular job, $60k and change isn't bad. But he'd have to work 10-12 hours a day to hit 8 hours of billable time. And that's really the key. A true "contractor" who only bills for actual work time would be charging them $50/hour or more. But they're not paying that.

Just one example. They repeat that model with as many employees as their lawyers will let them. They'd do it for the whole workforce, minus the CxOs and VPs, if they could. It's ridiculous.

Edited December 18, 2019 by BradInATX