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Comment by gerbler | Hacker News Reader

It's incredibly sad that deceptive low-paid work of this type 1) attracts workers and 2) is supported by the Supreme Court.

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Well, there's been a long term strategy to make the Supreme Court business-friendly (pro-capital) and anti-labor: "The US supreme court may soon become plutocracy's greatest defender" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/02/amy-co...

I think any work will attract workers as long as they need work. And the marketing was good enough to convince them that the payoff would be worth the initial outlay.

I get the complaint about deceiving uber and lyft drivers about the maintenance cost they are incurring by using their own vehicles, but what's the deception when it comes to people voluntarily working from home as a call center employee?

They're legally not employees, yet are required to act like one - only paid for call time, yet required to be available for calls at times suiting the company.

Yah know, this is what it's like for a lot of businesses. A friend of mine runs a coffee shop. He only gets paid when a customer comes in the door-- and spends. If they look, he gets nothing.

There was a time when corporations were so flush with cash that they offered long term stability. That day is kind of over.

That's illegal for an employee. It's fine for an entrepreneur who chose to open a shop and is using a bank loan he can default on.

But he doesn't have someone a) charging him for training and b) dictating when he's available for business in a manner that suits their bottom line and not his, does he?

If these employees were truly independent contractors, that's fine, I have no qualms with that. What shits me to tears is when businesses claim an employee is an independent contractor when they're very much not able to be independent because of the demands of the company employing them.

The article mentions that Arise overbooks contractors for corporate clients. The rationale is that Arise cannot dictate independent contractor hours directly, so by overbooking they can ensure sufficient labor for their clients at all hours. However, independent contractors are asked to pay for training material and complete unpaid training to be eligible for each client project. As a result, independent contractors may be getting systematically underpaid by holding the reasonable expectation of recouping their initial investment

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