"Micro-Gig" Sites Undermining Workers Rights? 426
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:Age old "issue" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, it's just contract labor. If you're selling it, price your labor appropriately, taking into consideration that you are not getting benefits, etc. If you're buying it take into consideration that you're not getting loyalty, retaining experience and knowledge, etc.
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot watch the car repair guy do the work to see if he is goofing off or taking a dump. You cannot have a legal way of automating this either.
Oh, you are a computer programmer. Install this big-brother app as terms of your employment contract and THEN we'll pay you.
BTW: If the camera can't see your eyes while the keyboard is being used, you don't get paid.
1984 has arrived!
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that generally the "labour" part of the equation is an inflated hourly rate in order to cover the down-time in between tasks. They also have minimums so that if it takes 10 minutes you still get billed for 30. And
Generally freelancers have become accustomed to properly accounting for this extra rate charge on every billable hour to fill in the gaps. When you're "working" for mechanical turk you're really no longer an employee you're a business owner. Not everyone is cut out to run a business and nor should they need to, specialization is important. However, with businesses looking to become more efficient they can start calling their janitor a "contractor" and make them pay all of the payroll taxes. Technically that's illegal unless the janitor is also responsible for buying his own mops, brooms and can set his own hours but companies have been pushing the edge of what's legal (and often crossing it) for some time. The goal is often to make as many people 'freelance' as is humanely possible to avoid paying benefits or taxes or comply with safety regulations since their "employees" aren't actually employed--they're separate private businesses working alongside them.
The easiest way to avoid worker's rights is to avoid making them legally an employee.
Freelancing and Micro-gigs (Score:5, Insightful)
On the micro-gig sites, remember that you'll be competing with people who can live quite comfortably on $5/day. If you can live on that, more power to you. Otherwise, you'll want to find other ways to peddle your services.
Game the System (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife did Mechanical Turk for a few weeks when out of work, and oh boy. The only way to make even minimum wage is to completely game the system. It is supposed to be self quality checking, but that doesn't really work. Her work (writing in this case) was so far above the norm (she did graduate college) that it was off the scales. The max she could make doing honest work was around $3-$4 per hour. Most workers there just spam the system trying to grab jobs that are we few cents more, cut and paste some garbage, rinse and repeat. In other words, you get what you pay for.
Re:What about illegal immigrants (Score:5, Insightful)
Because illegal labor isn't essential to the economy -- that's just hand-waving, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain bullshit. Well, the labor may well be essential, but not at that price. That whole situation is fucking criminal and should be treated as such, and using it as a basis of comparison is asinine at best.
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what a directly competitive global market looks like my friend, when you have people with living expenses in double digit dollars competing with those who have triple digit expenses (at least), a disparity in acceptable wages begins to appear.
Of course a programmer worth their salt will have worked hard enough that they should perhaps be willing to accept no less than a certain minimum, but that is nonetheless a competitive advantage they have in developing countries - why would they compete fairly when they don't have to? Would it even be fair to cut themselves off at the feet like that?
There is no solution to this quandry. Just pick your battles and keep your customers, really, lots of businesses value security and reliability over low cost.
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the funny part and a bit of consolidation:
Nobody skilled would ever take such a job, so it's a by morons for morons type thing.
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at the history of the garment industry and piece work.
As the internet tends to do, it disaggregates things – breaking things up into component pieces. Why does this matter? Workers become more fragmented. Thus, relatively speaking, this shifts power towards management, which is important when you try to negotiate your wage.
Also, companies tend to invest less in their works – such as training, pension plans, etc. Why bother when there is no longer expectation?
As for your example, you may or may be paying for “labor”. May places have rate sheets – Installing new breaks is X hours and the workmen are paid for X hours of work even if they don’t work X hours. If journey men take 2X hours – well – they are journey men. If a master mechanic can do it in .5 hours – well he is a master mechanic.
Re:What about illegal immigrants (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but you can for a:
plumber
painter
electrician
furnace duct cleaner
maid
nanny
drywaller
etc.
Basically if you are going to someone else's private property to perform work, they can legally monitor your activities and pay you accordingly.
No, despite what your mom told you, you aren't special. It's just that latent feeling of entitlement that programmers get due to a lack of sunlight.
Welcome to the club.
Race to the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we're at the point now where if a job can be digitized and sent elsewhere then it will end up being done by the lowest-overall-cost person (for a given level of quality) regardless of where they are in the world.
So the only long-term way to make a living is to ensure that you're working on something specialized (so there's less competition), or that you're at the top of the skill heap (so you can charge more), or you're working on something that can't easily be sent elsewhere.
We're already seeing the Canadian east coast becoming a popular place to locate call centres for North American businesses because they speak good English, the cultural variations are minimal from the rest of North America, and there are fewer timezone issue to worry about (as opposed to India or China).
Re:Freelancing and Micro-gigs (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are not offering something that makes your service more than that than why should someone pay you more than that (that something might be the fact that you live closer to the person buying the service, or it might be that you have a better understanding of their requirements).
Because the added cost of living in a country that actually provides for the needs of the entire population raises the price of living.
...).
If we stopped paying unemployment, supporting the elderly, sick and disabled, as well as stopped paving roads, it'd be a lot cheaper to live because taxes would be much, much lower. You wouldn't have to worry about those pesky things that happen to other people, or are required only once in a while (like police services, fire services, building codes, etc
Price isn't entirely determined by the service. It's determined by the cost to provide the service, and comparing ACTUAL costs isn't as simple as putting two numbers side-by-side.
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:4, Insightful)
What worker's rights? (Score:3, Insightful)
As we continue to empower the wealthiest at the expense of the least fortunate, we continue to step closer to delivering fascism for the people.
Re:It's how contract work works! (Score:5, Insightful)
I make my living as a programmer for hire. Clients find me, ask for the moon, and I give it to them - but my hourly rate only reflects time on task. I don't charge my clients for trips to the water cooler. Unless I'm on site, I average about 6 hours a day. But this can be compensated by the fact you can adjust your own rates. For all the bitching about evil corporations, I'm surprised more people don't start their own S Corp and do this. It's a lot more responsibility, but you are the master of your own fate. (You are still responsible for your own fate when working for a business, but I suppose a lot of people don't see it that way) In fact, you may not even see corporations as all that evil when you're on the other end of the stick.
Mostly it's the lack of health insurance. If we went to a single-payer system, I would be glad to go that route, but I can't risk my kids getting cancer while I'm off being my own boss and not able to afford the $3k/month family health insurance that can drop you for no reason.
Re:Freelancing and Micro-gigs (Score:5, Insightful)
The classic example of this is what happened right after NAFTA passed...and then what happened a few years later. Right after NAFTA passed a bunch of companies relocated their production facilities to Mexico because they could pay workers in Mexico about 10% of what they needed to pay workers in the U.S. (even after calculating for additional transportation expenses) and still pay better than any other employers in that area of Mexico (thus getting the best of the available workers). A few years later many of those companies were moving their production facilities back to the U.S. because, for the work they needed done, Mexican workers were less than 10% as productive. This was not a universal experience. It only applied to certain industries. In other industries, Mexican workers were productive enough to be competitive (and in some industries they were productive enough that U.S. workers were NOT competitive).
Re:being your own boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:2, Insightful)
It's just that latent feeling of entitlement that programmers get due to a lack of sunlight.
It could be worse. Some people have a sense of entitlement just because they're United States citizens. Seems they actually believe that populist "We the People of the United States, in Order to ... promote the general Welfare" nonsense, and think the government should act on their behalf! Thankfully, serious and thoughtful people like you and I realize that government does not derive its "just powers from the consent of the governed" (which could lead to gross distortions from citizen's self-interest) but from the zealous pursuit of the One True Form of Freedom, a libertarian paradise where citizens are free to live outdoors and go hungry.
Re:being your own boss (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy crap... do you think we're all stupid? SEIU rakes in many millions in dues each year. How else could they contribute $18 million a year to political candidates?
the ultimate "flat world" competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Functional market (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, pretty much. that's how supply & demand works.
That assumes a functional market.
The IT labor market is dysfunctional.
But no one believes it because everyone employed is cocky.
I'm employed and therefore I qualify and everyone who isn't employed is a screwup.
The system works!
I don't care WHAT you do, this what will happen:
You will be at your job working on whatever your working on. You'll see new technology coming along and you'll think "Gee, I better learn it!"
In meantime, you're working your 55+ hours a week with the too frequent 80 hour weeks because your employer refuses to hire an entry level kid to do your grunt work.You're tired. You have to keep up with your job. Take a class? Hardly! Study on your own? Too tired. You NEED to get away from the computer sometime!
Then the system your working on becomes a "Legacy" system and your company farms out the work to Elbonia. They then tell you that you can keep your job if you move to Elbonia and take an Elbonian level of salary - a 75% pay cut.
You think, "I got skills! Fuck'em!" and you turn them down; which is exactly what they thought you'd do.
So you enter the labor market. And you see that your skills are "obsolete". You take classes but to no avail because the employers want a few years of experience
You say, "You'll learn! On your own time and dime!'
They tell you that they need someone 'to hit the ground running!'
So you go on. And on. And on....
Now folks start wondering why a skilled IT person who "knows computers" is out of work. They think what's his problem? Is he a drunk? Obviously, there's something wrong.
You may not hear it often, but you get that feeling based on the way people react and questions they ask you and their tone. Like:
"Have you been looking for work all this time?!"
With a tone of NFW! No one with skills should have to look for work in IT! Can't happen.
Out of work == No good.
And you notice that all the folks who are working steadily are a bit younger.
You're told, "Well, older people want more money!"
You try to retort - like shouting in a hurricane - No! I'll take market rates!
But you're still told that you don't have the skills - I don't care what skills you have, you WILL be told that.
Then folks start reading about how Google just has young faces, about the H1-Bs, and other dysfunctional things that happen in the IT field. Then they say, "Have you considered leaving the field?"
"yes. But, when I try, I'm asked, 'Why do you want to leave such a lucrative career?!'"
Please shoot me.
When I as at IBM, I saw all these "old" mainframers being moved into the OS/2 area, and being young and arrogant thinking, "The poor out of date bastards! That'll NEVER happen to me!"
And it did.
Until the IT labor market stops being so dysfunctional - and the blame rests squarely on the employers - I tell folks, if you can, go to medical school./
But that won't last either .....
Re:being your own boss (Score:2, Insightful)
It's unfortunate how economists start out with the idea that trade-offs are a necessity, then design models that prove their assumption right.
A better solution: provide a basic income, and let each individual supplement it if they choose with these kinds of micro-gigs (or by pursuing their own projects, and/or by educating themselves in MOOCs, and/or by entering challenges from biz or govt).
Re:Functional market (Score:5, Insightful)
I try to keep a quiver full of excruciatingly difficult questions which most people could not possibly know the correct answers to. I bust a couple of them out on each interview. I suppose this would disqualify me on your first criteria, heh heh heh. But I'm not looking for a correct answer when I do, I'm trying to make sure the candidate won't try to bullshit me when he doesn't know something. It also shows me if they're willing to think about a problem for a bit before giving up. I don't want bullshitters on my team, and I do want people who will at least try to solve a problem before giving up.
I'm not even really looking for an answer with the function I'm asking them about. I'm looking for how they handle it. If you get a question like this and try to just crap code onto a whiteboard, you're going to fail. If you actually design it the way they ostensibly taught you to in school, you'll do all right. Except most people never really learned that in school. They just procrastinated until the last minute, crapped a bunch of half-assed code into an editor and limped through on the basis that all their classmates did about the same thing. Truly master this one part of the interview and you'll be able to land any programming position you interview for. Even if you are an asshole.
Re:being your own boss (Score:3, Insightful)
A better solution: provide a basic income, and let each individual supplement it if ..
Why such half measures? A still better solution: provide infinite income! 20 Ferraris a week for everyone, with unlimited hookers and blow! Unlimited free health care, and no one has to work!
Or, you know, you could accept the reality that no one owes you anything, and you're going to have to work for your keep, or depend on charity (charity: what you get because the giver is generous, not because you deserve the gift).
Re:being your own boss (Score:4, Insightful)
I stand corrected,by your language and posts in the past, I assumed you were UK.
Well, to each his own, I don't see anything moral or ethical one way or the other using every legal means there is to keep as much money as I can that I make for myself. It isn't the govts money, it is mine. They didn't earn it, I did.
I didn't earn it for society either, I earned it for me.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being charitable with both time and money. I prefer to have that 'choice' and not have the govt force me to do so.
But it is money, plain and simple, and I see nothing that involves ethics in any fashion with regards to how much I keep and how much I have to give to the govt.
Re:being your own boss (Score:4, Insightful)