Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app
pluralistic.net
pluralistic.net
(1) https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realp...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4403058
Key quote: “ We find strong evidence that algorithmic pricing helps building managers set prices that are more responsive to market conditions, with adopters lowering rents more rapidly than non-adopters during economic downturns.”
The claim that RealPage leads to price fixing reminds me of the claim that inflation is happening due to corporate greed.
From the paper you linked:
> We also find that average rents are higher and average occupancies are lower in markets with greater algorithmic penetration during periods of economic recovery.
> We estimate that the coordination channel results in an average markup increase of $25 per unit per month, impacting about 4.2 million units nationwide.
That said my understanding and experience is they can't be considered a contractor in this case (which is the goal) Contractors must be able to control their hours. In fact, that's the main legal test - do they have autonomy in controlling their work hours.
This trick of forcing them to be reserved but not paying them, yet claiming they are contractors is an old one, and as far as i know has rarely if ever been successful. That is - it has been one of the main determining factors in whether somebody is a contractor, and it is remarkably hard to find a court case where the court was like "yeah this is fine" and not "actually these are employees".
To cement this further, the department of labor issued proposed guidance on this last year saying (essentially) that exerting control in ways that force lack of autonomy in practice is the same thing as controlling their hours directly- ie directly on point.
If they are instead hourly employees then they already have to be paid for the time you force them to be unavailable for other things.
I understand why this wouldn't be anyone's thing.
Do you know of any countries where government employees handled 'the whole thing' adequately?
> The less money you have in your bank accounts and the more you owe on your credit cards, the lower the wage the app will offer you.
I guess nurses are being sold on the flexibility of working when they want to, but this is horrifying.
It seems sort of like the catch-22 of loans - you should only borrow money when you don't need to.
For facilities that use these apps: are these the only game in town? Where are we on the slope to nurses in a region having no other way to get shifts?
Why is it that nurses are down there with, maybe below, teachers? Perhaps because they are not expected to have a long-term relationship with their customer.
Same with teachers, usually.
"Staging" in your ambulance for an entire 24 hour shift. Fuck your comfort. Not on a call? You can hang out in the rig. But not in the back.
Oh, when I said 24 hour shift, you can be mandatorily "held over" for 12 hours if your replacement is sick/calls out.
Oh, when I said up to 36 hour shift, the last private EMS company I was at allowed shifts of up to 60 hours, at which point you could be assigned to another shift after 8 hours break.
But at least that means a good amount of overtime. Shame EMTs often make around $10-11/hr in a lot of places (if that).
It's not healthy for patients, and there's a few reasons why it's "tolerated" (not agreeing with these) - "We always have done it this way", and around here, being a unionized city/county fire-paramedic is the top tier for income, and around here, there's few enough paramedic schools that several of them have minimum EMT field experience in time or patient contact numbers, so it's considered a grind until you can get through. And EMS companies know that because of that, there's a steady pipeline of young people willing to "go through the wringer".
But that mechanism would make absolutely no sense for people working out in the field.
We can hope that ideas like UBI will help somehow.
While I can't say it's the same individual people contradicting themselves, I've noticed a very similar conflict arising between:
1. "In the awesome free market, all deals and pricing information is public, making it extraordinarily efficient."
2. "In the awesome free market, everyone has the freedom to make secret contracts with hidden prices, which destabilizes cartels and makes them a non-problem."
Each boast involves a directly incompatible vision about what the "free market" actually means, yet proponents of either kind of free-ness go suspiciously silent when the other ones are talking.
The libertarian argument for free market isn't that all information is available. And their argument against cartels forming definitely isn't that secret contracts are necessary to defeat them.
I think you've read things a bit too hastily. I never said my example of inconsistent views came specifically or only from libertarians. (Or even the much larger group of people self-identifying that way.) The larger political group of "free-market cheerleaders" would be sufficient.
> [To #1] argument for free market isn't that all information is available.
That's not what I said. The selling-point is economic efficiency. Perfect-information is typically a required precondition within the models.
My complaint involves people who strut around boasting that they'll help usher in the conclusion while actually picking policies that sabotage the original requirement.
> [To #2] argument against cartels forming definitely isn't that secret contracts are necessary to defeat them.
"An effective-enough consideration that I can dismiss your worries about cartels as foolish" != "Absolutely necessary to end cartels"
No. That is what I was calling you out for. Perfect information is not a precondition. No libertarian I ever heard of not any economist ever argued that.
Especially the point about workers assuming the risk of the corporation is not acceptable.
In Morocco, there's no Uber or Lyft. The apps there have two things in common:
1. They have a wink-wink-nudge-judge character to them - taxi drivers get violent when these apps cut into their earnings.
2. Because of the above, the app is structured like an auction house. When you pay the driver, you do it in cash.
The stuff that Uber/Lyft do that makes their drivers not traditional contractors simply doesn't fly when the app itself is kind of illegal.
There's no penalty for rejecting rides, there's no irritation when the ride brokers take a >50% fee.
Just maybe, that isn't a good way to do things either.