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Comment by neb_b | Hacker News Reader

While the conditions weren't nearly as bad as those in this article, I experienced some of this as a contractor for Walmart at their Sunnyvale office.

On Thanksgiving, they had a special lunch prepared for everyone that had to come into the office (mostly just to monitor and be ready if anything went down). There were emails and signs, everyone was excited about it. When I went down with my team, they stopped me and a couple of other contractors at the door and said we couldn't go in unless we were full-time employees. There was no mention of that anywhere. We had to go get lunch somewhere else.

A couple of times a year they would buy movie tickets for everyone at a nearby theater. At lunch, the full-time staff would leave to go watch a movie for a few hours while the contractors stayed in the office.

Both of these weren't really a big deal, but they definitely made you feel like you were a second class employee.

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There are limits of what they are allowed to provide to contractors before the Department of Labor says, “I don’t care if you call them contractors, you’re treating them like employees so you need to give them all the same benefits”. Companies using contractors are doing so specifically so they don’t have to provide those benefits, so they need to be very careful not to cross that line.

That's a good point.

I wasn't trying to say they should have offered these benefits to everyone, but sometimes it seemed like the contractors were just ghosts. It would have been nice to at least have these activities mentioned somewhere so you had some idea of what was going on (and if contractors were or weren't included).

Sometimes the full-time employees would all get up to go do something and you had no idea what was going on (and if you should go with them or stay back).

Yes, you've described exactly why this is a bad practice.

As unfortunate and depressing as it is, a lot of that is required or strongly encouraged by the IRS. Otherwise, it starts treating the contractors as actual employees: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...

Sadly, the entire point is that they are not employees, let alone second class ones. In the end, it boils down to the perennial question of how much of your work is done by employees and how much by vendors. And it always leads to awkward situations. (Quite a few of those when I was an employee at Google and something I don't see as much anymore, luckily.)

This is almost definitely not about the IRS--or at least it is only to the extent that Walmart might use that as an excuse. It's very likely that Walmart is already treating them as de facto employees with scheduling and management practices. Letting them eat at Thanksgiving isn't likely going to be to be the straw that tips the scales to employee.

IRS: here's a list of things that can be evidence you are using contractors as employees.

Walmart: OK we'll ignore every single one of them except that we won't provide them with health insurance, we won't withhold tax, and we won't let them eat Thanksgiving dinner or go to the movies.

There is a massive problem with employers skirting the law with respect to this, but companies don't care because enforcement isn't consequential enough to make them care.

I thought the whole reason companies care this much is because it enforced. The go to example of what happens when you treat contractors like employees is what happened to Microsoft where they got sued for breaking this line.

https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...

That happened in 1989/1990. The regulatory landscape has changed a lot in 30 years.

Also I'm not saying it's never enforced, I'm saying the enforcement isn't consequential or consistent enough to convince companies to stop treating contractors like employees.

Sure. So a contractor gets flexible hours, the possibility to telecommute and leeway on how projects are handled right? Give that a try some time as a contractor and let us know how hard the company tries to abide by those rules. I'm sure it'll work out swell.

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