Customer service reps for Disney and Airbnb who have to pay to take calls (2020)
propublica.org
propublica.org
But true, the key is to read the contracts in detail and find the least costly way out.
Or, better yet, to read it before starting and realize that the only winning move is to not play the game.
----- To determine if a worker, no matter how labeled, is actually an independent contractor or an employee, courts have fashioned an “economic realities test.”
In Pendergraft’s case, the arbitrator, Deborah Hankinson, a former justice on the Supreme Court of Texas, weighed the test’s six factors, checking off those that suggested Pendergraft had been an Arise employee. Did Arise exercise significant control over Pendergraft? Check. “Arise closely monitored all aspects of her work,” Hankinson wrote. Were agents like Pendergraft vital to Arise’s business? Check. “Without CSPs, Arise would have no service to sell,” the arbitrator wrote. Was Pendergraft’s work the kind that required no specialized skill? Check. In the end, Hankinson checked five of the six factors — and the sixth, she determined, could go either way. “Ms. Pendergraft was an employee of Arise,” the arbitrator concluded.
In her ruling issued in February 2015, Hankinson found that Arise, as Pendergraft’s employer, had been required by federal law to pay her the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The company also had to pay for her training time and equipment expenses.
Added up, that came to $5,841.82.
But that wasn’t all. Employers who violate the Fair Labor Standards Act face lower damages if they can show they had reason to believe they were in the right. An employer, for example, could present evidence that it had consulted labor law experts and followed their advice. Since Arise made no such showing, Hankinson doubled the damages, ordering Arise to pay Pendergraft $11,683.64. -----
This way of running a company is why workers fought to obtain rights in the first place.
"Rogers Communications (TSX:RCI.B)(NYSE:RCI) consistently ranks as one of Canada’s most hated companies. "
The level of greed shown here is astonishing.
Paying for training and doing it unpaid as well??
WOW, just WOW.
On the customer end Rogers attempts to maximize ARPU (average revenue per user) by being as cheap to upgrade, and charge the most they can for their often sub-par service.
I had a corporate Rogers cell phone, near-zero coverage where i live and where i spent a lot of my time and had to move to Telus.
On the Customer service side, we see them doing everything they possibly can to get people as cheaply as possible.
I'm sure rogers execs were "excited" at the idea the CSR's would pay for the training costs.
It’s a negative feedback loop.
The current customer service is so bad that people who call get traumatized so next time they call they put up their defenses and sound more of an asshole than they typically are. The customer service reps then assume (as you have done) that people who call in are absolute assholes and therefore give less of a fuck when answering calls next time. The cycle repeats.
Perhaps, but I think a greater cause of this is people feeling more free to be their "true self" to a voice on the phone, behaving in a way they never would if confronting someone face-to-face.
That may not be illegal, but it sure as heck should be.
Many of these people are struggling to make ends meet and it’s a lot of effort and lost work to risk for a small payout, but if enough individual claims are won it doesn’t take much effort for some lawyers to start automating the process and file tens of thousands of claims like those against Uber.
https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2022/04/uber-...
Oh no - you're facing millions of dollars in mandatory fees to defend against thousands of nearly identical cases in arbitration? My goodness, who forced you to adopt that arbitration clause? How terrible of them.
Lastly: I'm not a corporate lawyer, so I don't know what legal reasons a company has to prefer arbitration over legal procedures. But they must have some. And those reasons are unlikely to lead to worse outcomes for the company.
It is contentious because legal research has repeatedly demonstrated that there are legal fields in which for an undetermined reason the plaintiff faces far longer odds than they would have in court.
This concerns arbitrations that in 90% of cases are in favor of the defendant. While in 'normal' case law you see rates closer to 60%. (Yes the research also accounted for cost differences by comparing similar classes of cases, no-cure-no-pay etc..)
It is also suspected that the plaintif usually gets less compensation for damages through arbitration.
Another issue is that arbitrators sometimes earn a lot money and are obviously incentivised to attract 'customers'. The problem is that there are and will always be many more plaintiffs than there are defendants. So the selection of arbitrators depends on decisions by the future-defendants. (Unless a specific organisation is legally mandated, but I've not encountered this before)
Also, pretrial discovery is much broader in a class action, so much more expensive. The procedures available to a plaintiff in an arbitration are much more limited.
But big picture, it’s better to have more options rather than fewer.
When you hire a gardener to mow your lawn, you don't get to specify whether they use a Greenworks or Black & Decker mower. Or require that they pay you to train them how to trim your junipers.
In this situation, the law should be clear up front that this sort of relationship is disallowed, such that the circumstance never occurs to go to arbitration.
This issue came up a lot with work from home during the pandemic. Did your power bill go up from running your employer-provided hardware at home? In some jurisdictions, they have to compensate you even for that.
I think you would be shocked at how often this happens.
I once had a major Canadian bank try to make me buy a cell phone so they could avoid a minimal monthly charge for one??
HR in Canada is rife with abuse, because they are under no obligation to tell you what the laws actually are. Your ignorance of the laws works to their advantage.
See "non disclosure agreements" in Canada for a prime example.
There's usually a definition or test, either in statute or case law. In my jurisdiction, whether you have a boss or supervisor is a major factor. Contractors are given a specific task to complete and then they go do it. If you're getting daily monitoring or tasks assigned throughout the day, you're probably an employee.
Like with not paying minimum wage or illegal deductions, employers often get away with it. The power imbalance is very large for such workers, and even when enforced the fines are often just a cost of doing business. In Ontario, Canada there's a couple billion dollars in unpaid wages every year, and hundreds of investigations for wilful wage nonpayment by managers, yet there has been exactly one jail sentence for it, in the last twenty years. With odds like that, I might steal too!
Source: Have done so and won.
This is hard. who should shoulder required competence?
(I understand that it is general competence said person received, not organization specific)
Most wealth in capitalism is built on the backs of exploited labor somewhere.
It’s over 50% so on average this is not true. But it nearly became true in 2008; turns out the Great Recession was bad. The trend after that is somewhat positive.
Though a problem with “exploited” is it’s zero sum thinking and doesn’t include customer surplus. If you get life saving surgery, you could say it has infinite value to you. If the surgeon asks for an infinite price, they’re exploiting you. If they don't, since you are therefore getting infinite unpaid value, are you exploiting them?
nb the people in this article are certainly being exploited, this is covered in theory under “monopsony”…
Does everyone have collective amnesia about Nike’s SE Asian sweatshops, or the hazardous working conditions in Bangladeshi garment factories that manufacture the most of our cheap fashion (the most glaring example being the Tazreen Fashion factory fire [0]).
Someone, somewhere is getting screwed out of fair wages for the corporation to make its profits.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...
Also, that figure is before you consider the vast tax advantages of investing.
Curious on what basis bigger than 50% share of income constitutes non-exploitation? For example if there is one owner and 1000 employees.
All other responsibilities have to be legally enforced; stuff like worker safety, food safety, minimum wage, 8-hour workday, no child labour etcetera.
These are all things companies will gladly ignore if it profits them. Minimum wage in this case, through a loophole of payback.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
> Corporations Don’t Have to Maximize Profits
> There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”
You will find many more citations with a search like this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=is+a+corporation+obligated+t...
I personally know executives in food manufacturing/preparation companies, both public and private, who gladly pay close attention to worker safety, food safety, and all the things you say a company would do only if forced by law.
They do it because they know it's the right thing to do. And it helps them recruit and retain employees, and keep their customers happy and coming back for more. Their shareholders support them in this and would complain very loudly if the company ever put pure profit above all other goals.
And they definitely don't view the line workers as resources to be exploited. They view them as their colleagues.
I question that initial premise.
This allows plenty of scope to make considerations like long-term reputation and employee satisfaction/loyalty/welfare high priorities, even at the expense of profits.
There's plenty of scope for further discussion about these points, but the key point remains: shareholder primacy is not law and not the focus of company directors' fiduciary duty, regardless of what people claim in self-serving arguments from various points of the ideological spectrum.
Uncapped growth is just as evil as unfettered greed - both charge forth without a second thought to externalities, while motivated to externalize as many costs as possible. So we end up with boiling oceans and rampant homelessness, because those are all "not our problem".
They are not. They are expected to serve the interests of the company, as distinct from the interests of shareholders, and matters like employee welfare/satisfaction and company reputation relating to externalities are very relevant to the interests of the company.
That some companies ignore these matters is separate from the principle: it’s not inconsistent with capitalism for companies to care about issues other than profits and shareholder returns. Though it’s obviously related, company welfare is distinct from shareholder benefit.
Yes, and those companies exist in a society, and long term planning is vital for long term profits, and that is 100% sensible and correct operating procedure.
Treating employees poorly can effect the ability to hire, and retain good people. It can effect consumers' desire to buy your products. It can result in unions, and the passing of laws, and therefore red tape.
So even if you have a dim view, re corporate responsibility, it matters not, for that role has larger scope than "profit this second".
And beyond this? All corporate decisions are made by people, and those people have every right to make moral decisions.
First off: it's not a company's responsibility to increase shareholder profit. It very much depends on the view of the people involved. But you're completely right when you think that greedy people can push in that direction and that a legal framework is the only way to keep that in check and make sure companies pay their dues to society. Social democracy still seems the only way to strike a proper balance between exploitation and lack of incentive.
Few absolutist capitalists want to hear that they, their companies, their wealth, their shareholders, etc. are mere tools - which Human Society can use in pursuit of its own responsibilities...or quietly "dispose of", if Society finds them to be more trouble than they are worth.
So, unless I misunderstand something, that's a big existential threat for Arise.
"good magical morning! thanks for calling Disney cruises"
"hi, this call is being recorded for quality assurance. am I speaking with a contractor for the arise corporation?"
"wait, this call is what? that's my line. I'm not at liberty to..."
"yes, we know you signed a non disclosure agreement. as a matter of fact, we all are former contractors for the 'mouse client'. we are calling to inform you of your legal rights pursuant to the binding arbitration agreement between you and the arise corporation..."
a fantasy, I know, but I can't resist dreaming of such poetic justice.
The companies don’t care, extracting cheap labor as they churn through their victims is part of the business model.
No. People are poor and a lot of jobs aren't willing to work around a second job. These companies (unsurprisingly) are not upfront about the way you'll be treated. This isn't just these companies: Low-wage jobs commonly misrepresent things like this. Having a right to a job contract (regardless of being 'employee' or 'contractor') would help with this a little - at least it would be upfront, theoretically. Or heck, simply being really strict about labor laws would help, alongside fines/punishments that make skirting labor laws unprofitable.
You would do better scavenging for refundable bottles.
Not in a lot of places. I lived in Indiana. There weren't a lot of places that accepted bottles at all. A few places accepted aluminum cans, but you really needed a large amount. Getting enough for transportation costs was an issue. Realistically, you might have been OK when I was a child in the 80s because you got a deposit: Otherwise, I didn't have refundable bottles available until I moved to Norway in my 30s.
You're also just wrong about how much money you can earn scavenging for refundable bottles - I spent plenty of weekends in my youth doing that.
I knew a woman who was paid to click ads, she earned less than 1 euro a day, on average, but it was better than begging - which seemed like her only viable alternative since her age ruled out prostitution. Factor in the cost of the laptop and internet connection and she was really getting a net negative sum.
She was fortunate though, thanks to previous decent income, she owned an apartment complete with a lodger. Although he was barely earning much more as an online salesman for some kind of ponzi scheme that was, one day, going to make him rich. Last I heard he was owing months in rent since he wasn't even receiving the tiny amounts he was supposedly earning.
In both instances we're talking about reasonably intelligent people who were just caught in this trap of near zero earnings with no opportunity of escape that wouldn't involve a prolonged period of much worse.
"Just set up this home office, it will pay for itself in a month!"
"This one week training, and then you'll be taking calls in no time!"
This and that, and also, sunk cost fallacy is helluva drug, and you don't need to be mathematically illiterate to fall for that.
And looking at an actual posting on Arise, it looks quite legit: https://www.ariseworkfromhome.com/opportunity/remote-custome...
You could expect this on basically any tech job aggregator posting aggregator site or even most companies' own postings. The only big giveaway that something is off about it is the last line:
> *This is not an offer of employment. It is an opportunity to enter into a business-to-business relationship with Arise®.*
If a person is fortunate enough to see that and check the FAQ [0], hopefully they realize how much of a mess this is and that you're basically paying Arise to maybe get paid by someone else, but how you get paid is up to you and might as well be a mystery.
But for those who don't check that and are in desperate need, yeah, I can easily see how Arise at face value looks perfect and desperation goggles hide the flaws:
- Site looks very normal and legit
- The work it discusses is shit call-center work that no one wants to do so there's likely lots of openings for someone who really needs money
- No training needed, you will be trained so a bad job history/no job history isn't a problem
- Criminal records don't seem to matter so if you had issues in the past, it's no big deal
- Work at home so no need to worry about commute/office hours
- The site is "up front" about you needing to pursue opportunities, so that makes it more "honest" and trustworthy
It's a very nice blend of honesty mixed in with the misdirection that likely its enough to get many people to pay the initial fees, maybe for a training or two, and even do a few hours of work for basically free during a high volume period. Arise pays pennies for the work, gets $$$ from the companies for getting the workers, and ropes in tons of cash from the agents. It looks and feels like a normal employment offer to get enough money out of a person to justify the efforts, and then the person is saddled with reality that they don't have a job, they basically paid for the opportunity to pay to get a few $$$ at awful rates.
It's a gross and exploitative company. I think our ire should be focused on that part instead of people who don't realize it's a scam.
* Collective action is hard, seems like good work for a startup / law firm to simplify the experience of suing for backpay, winning arbitration, navigating NLRB paperwork, etc. In exchange for 10% of the proceeds.
In the article they called one such arbitration ruling "drips and drabs" compared to their revenue. But what if the spigot opens up?
* As usual follow the money, the "links in the chain" model described is ridiculous when you see all the work performance requirements and controls are governed by the company at the top. They should be named and shamed, but also some enterprising folks should be working to pierce that veil.
* Similarly, we need to support UBI and more social programs to raise the floor for these low margin fungible worker churn buckets.
Because really, why wouldn't managers pursue this? They don't have dreams of making great hardware because they are not engineers. Their dreams are in the realm of squeezing money from people.
> end up as low-pay gig workers
Or you know switch to developing other software. As long as this is possible individual developers will be still in a much better position than low-skilled gig workers.
Apple is buying up its supply chain AND other platforms copy Apple's tactics. In the future, where do you want to run your software on?
Do they? Has Google/Android (or even Apple for that matter) gotten much worse in that regard over the last 10 years?
You can switch to making desktop, web, enterprise, video game etc. software. Or something more specialized. I mean yeah, I understand the issues you're talking about and I don't think they are not important. However it's not entirely black and white. And I don't think the situation really comparable to low wage/skill gig-workers who generally have almost no real choice whom to work for.
Are there really less viable (openish) platforms to build your software for than 10/20/30/40 years ago? I'm pretty certain that the answer is not that obvious as you seem to be implying.
(Some) People really suck.
Some kind of blacklist where you can see if a company you might use has values that align with your own?
There are companies that do ESG reports on companies, but something like glassdoor for consumers would be easier to use
It's insidious because I am virtually positive the people doing deliveries are making less than minimum after vehicle costs (fuel etc) There are no tips required and no fees with "walmart plus" so I bet on some deliveries the people foolish enough to work for walmart under "contract" are making less than what it cost in time and materials to get it to a customer's door.
One day there will be a lawsuit but it will be class-action so everyone will get $1 while the lawyers get millions from walmart
Congress could end this overnight but since corporations buy the laws they want, it will never happen.
It's a bit like the hustling mentality in Russia lol
See also: https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/zsmr6c/the_countri...
Still, almost all of these countries have policies in place that in the US would trigger an immediate “but that’s communism!” reaction - for example universal healthcare and social security.
The underlying reasons for banning the USSR communist party flag is very likely to be much more complex than a single cause as you suggest.
I bet Arise corporate offices have good security, and those guys are paid well.
It was bought and sold a few years ago by this family office in Dallas:
https://www.straitlanecapital.com/news_post/strait-lane-anno...
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/strait-lane-capital-...
Then Warburg Pincus thought they could flip it, so they bought it:
https://www.vccircle.com/warburg-pincus-backed-vivtera-acqui...
https://www.vccircle.com/warburg-pincus-backs-indian-it-exec...
As you can see, all the executives at Vivtera are Indian, and have a background at Genpact, so they have connections and know how in India for setting up cheaper labor call centers or whatnot. They probably are paid well by Indian standards, but the big money is in being able to find the financing to flip these businesses, like what Straight Lane and Warburg Pincus do.
Nazi Germany all over again.
Shameful America.
And I thought Uber & others were bad (I still do, but didn't expect worse)...
A bored pasty nerd sits at a computer on a mid priced IKEA desk, lit only by the glow of several LCDs.
Clicks link about some new, novel form of large-scale customer service abuse of call-center type low ranking employees.
Reads article.
Nerd mentally adds it to the list of a hundred other employee-abusive things he's seen in the telecom industry.