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Comment by jorgemf | Hacker News Reader

In my country is illegal to have someone as a freelance doing the same as a full time job. So I see the point of upwork. If that company is your only client and you are working full time with them, they should hire you (at least in my country). In my country you have more rights if you are full time employee than if you are a freelance, as for example a monthly pay after they fire you to help you to find another job

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Yup this seems to basically be co-employment risk mitigation. I have seen situations where there is a hard limit on how long we can hire a contractor for a task through an agency. I have also seen limitations in what we can specify, measure, reward and what we cannot.

The issue is basically that for contractors, you generally pay no benefits or retirement plans. However, if they are effectively employees, you do need to pay them that (ref. Uber driver cases where they are suing for classification as employees)

That's precisely why these full-time situations should be avoided when working as a freelancer. Freelancing is a type of self-employment. Hiring someone full-time for an extended period of time is not.

Hiring freelancers just to save social security costs or to avoid labour laws is unethical at best and in many jurisdictions downright illegal.

Setting up a payroll system to make this look good on paper is quite a dodgy move.

This is remotely possible, but does not explain the malfeasance in communications toward both parties that relied on Upwork.

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