"Micro-Gig" Sites Undermining Workers Rights?

Mystakaphoros writes "An article in The Atlantic examines the effects sites like TaskRabbit, Fiverr, and Rev.com are having on employment and freelancing. (I would add Amazon's Mechanical Turk to the list as well.) As the article mentions, 'Work is being stripped down to the bone. It's as if we're eliminating the 'extraneous' parts of a worker's day — like lunch or bathroom breaks — and paying only for the minutes someone is actually in front of the computer or engaged in a task.' How many Slashdotters have used these sites, either to hire or work? What's been your experience?"

Re:being your own boss

[h4rr4r]

Most states do require some breaks per 8 hours. They do not require they be paid though.

Re:Age old "issue"

[alen]

you don't pay for the actual labor time
there are standards that say how much time it takes to complete a task in fixing a car. you pay by the number of hours in the book

Re:being your own boss

[ShanghaiBill]

MOST STATES do not require breaks or lunch periods for employees. Or vacation, holiday, sick pay, insurance, minimum hours, max hours, etc...

Irrelevant, since these people are NOT employees. They are contractors. When I use Mechanical Turk to farm out work (and I often do) the Turkers set their own hours, they use their own equipment, they are free to work on other jobs, etc. Those criteria make them contractors, not employees. USA labor law is further irrelevant since very few of these people are based in the US. Most of the Turkers I have worked with are in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh).

Re:being your own boss

[cayenne8]

I don't think you're correct on the requirements either, however I just wanted to say that most employers whether required or not do this to stay competitive in the job market pool.

A slightly related example is health insurance, I've noticed that most places that have called me that DON'T have it are almost immediately up front about it as they've experienced the lack of health insurance to be an instant dis-qualifier for them as an employer to potential employees for whom that's important.

Well, not necessarily. If you are a contractor, you negotiate your bill rate to cover your costs for insurance, vacation and sick time off...that's why bill rates are high for contractors, or at least on surface it appears they are making TONS more money that normal W2 employees.

But it can be a sweet deal. I have incorporated myself, and love it when I can do the 1099 corp to corp deal. I get a nice high deductible insurance policy, say $1200, and that qualfies me to set up a HSA (Health Savings Account) into which I sock the max pre-tax dollars I can (approx $3K a year?). Out of that, I pay my regular meds and maintenance trips to the dr, dentist..etc. I usually tell them I'm paying myself and they have often given me like a 15% discount right off the top.

Anyway, HSA, unlike FSA...are not use it or lose it..they grow and grow with you, and at retirement, if you have it all built up due to being healthy...you can convert it to retirement dollars.

Also, with contracting...you get to write off everything. And, if you look into it..set yourself up as a "S" corp, and you can save paying alot of SS and medicare (employent taxes).

When you go into contracting, you are the employer and employee, and you have to think of it that way when doing billing rates and paperwork, sure it is a bit extra work, but if you are good at what you do, it is one of the last ways in the US to actually keep more of your hard earned money from the tax man.

Although..the current administration is trying to chink away at that foundation too unfortunately.