The degree to which both costs and risk are shifted onto workers is at times astonishing:
“After paying about $1,500 for home office equipment: a computer, two headsets and a phone line dedicated to Arise; after paying Arise to run a check on her background; after passing Arise’s voice-assessment test and signing Arise’s nondisclosure form; after paying for and passing Arise’s introductory training, to which she devoted three days, unpaid; after paying for and passing a certification course to provide customer service for Arise client AT&T, to which she devoted 44 unpaid days; after then being informed she had to get more training yet — an additional 10 days, for which she was told she would be paid, but wasn’t; and then, after finally getting a chance to sign up for hours and do work for which she would be paid (except for her time spent waiting for technical support, or researching customer issues, or huddling with supervisors), Tami Pendergraft spent three weeks fielding telephone calls from AT&T customers, after which she received a single paycheck.
The really awful thing from that story (Planet Money did a great recent episode on the ProPublica coverage) is that they are able to get away with this through Arbitration clauses. By way of their contracts, they strongarm their contractors into dealing with any "misclassification" issues (eg. exerting too much control over a contractor) individually, silently, and outside of court. Contractors have no ability to sue in a class action suit, and aren't even allowed to speak to fellow contractors if they go through arbitration. It's such a sneaky and frankly complicit way to enforce their business model. They know it's grey, and they put people in the corner so they can't call it grey with a loud enough voice for serious attention to be brought to the issue.
Thankfully some law firms have taken the approach to overwhelm Arise with individual arbitration claims. Arise likely calculated in to their model as a cost of business expense, so the best that can be done is to make that expense grow.
Arbitration is actually very expensive for the company but generally they can rely on the fact that most people will not utilize it for a variety of reasons. If people large scale started taking companies like this to claims it could quickly become more expensive than class action lawsuits trying to arbitrate each individual claim.
If you feel strongly against arbitration clauses, activism to get people to use them is the fastest way to kill them as the cost benefit will quickly become a negative.
How would you "amend the Federal Arbitration Act to deny the use of arbitration as a tool to suppress legitimate use of the courts to address remedies"? Do you just want to get rid of mandatory arbitration? That sounds like repealing the FAA and replacing it with its mirror image.
Well, I (and many others) think that making the courts the sole venue for resolving these disputes is not necessarily better. Getting rid of mandatory arbitration means that only large cases (with lawyers on contingency) and class-actions (where the lawyers are the only ones who benefit) will go forward. Mandatory arbitration is the best venue for medium-sized individual (settlement/judgement) cases, and courts are not viable for them.
I see mandatory arbitration as a trade-off, and would simply prefer that people take that kind of clause into account when they transact with others.
> is that they are able to get away with this through Arbitration clauses.
The root cause is the demand for that type of labor is dwarfed by supply for type of labor, and the long lasting solution would be to provide those people with better options.
Well, I think AT&T and Arise actually are people, they're just not individuals.
But getting to the core of your point, how would you allocate blame? Is the CEO responsible for every mistake? Do you part it out to various levels of management, based on their involvement with this specific case? Do you think it's better if more corporations copy Google's approach, and outsource all the low-wage work to avoid bring blamed for problems?
To be clear, I am not sure who is to blame for what, but I think the real problem is a shortage of opportunities for people at the bottom of the corporate ladder (as well as for those struggling to get on it). The average HNer isn't protected from exploitation by laws, they are protected by their BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement).
> Do you part it out to various levels of management, based on their involvement with this specific case?
In general with larger corporations this feels like it makes the most sense. With resources like LinkedIn it should be a lot easier to determine the person or person(s) in charge of these decisions along with the CEO.
The degree to which both costs and risk are shifted onto workers is at times astonishing:
“After paying about $1,500 for home office equipment: a computer, two headsets and a phone line dedicated to Arise; after paying Arise to run a check on her background; after passing Arise’s voice-assessment test and signing Arise’s nondisclosure form; after paying for and passing Arise’s introductory training, to which she devoted three days, unpaid; after paying for and passing a certification course to provide customer service for Arise client AT&T, to which she devoted 44 unpaid days; after then being informed she had to get more training yet — an additional 10 days, for which she was told she would be paid, but wasn’t; and then, after finally getting a chance to sign up for hours and do work for which she would be paid (except for her time spent waiting for technical support, or researching customer issues, or huddling with supervisors), Tami Pendergraft spent three weeks fielding telephone calls from AT&T customers, after which she received a single paycheck.
For $96.12.”