Dark Side of Gig Economy: Some Instacart Workers Go On Strike Over Pay That Can Be as Low as $1 Per Hour (fastcompany.com) 436
From a report: Instacart shoppers and drivers -- the people who gather your groceries and deliver them to you after you order via the Instacart app -- are on strike. While independent contractors can't technically strike, via a Facebook group some of the company's thousands of employees have organized a "no delivery day" in the hopes of getting higher wages, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The strike is only taking place in a few of the 154 cities nationwide that Instacart operates in. The action may be small, but the grievances are big. While Instacart, the 5-year-old San Francisco startup, is valued at $3.4 billion, it allegedly pays its workers as little as $1 per order. Ars Technica has a great breakdown of all the issues surrounding how Instacart employees get paid and it's complex, with three different income streams coming together Voltron-like to form a wage. The result, though, is that some shoppers are being paid less than the federal minimum wage, like a Jackson, Miss., worker who put in a 19-hour week in Jackson, Mississippi, that paid out $37.75 (roughly $2/hour). That's far below the $14/hour wage that Ars Technica says Instacart is targeting.
Gig economy (Score:2)
Re:Gig economy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a bug but a key feature of gig economy.
It is. The "feature" is that by calling workers "independent contractors", Instacart can violate all of the laws set up to make sure that employers don't take advantage of workers. Morality, ethics, and common decency have no place in business-- all that matters is paying workers as little as possible in order for the company to make as much profit as possible.
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>The "feature" is that by calling workers "independent contractors", Instacart can violate all of the laws set up to make sure that employers don't take advantage of workers.
This is an old trick that's so obvious it's not even really a trick. I've been on the wrong end of it myself... and I could have filed an anonymous complaint with the tax authorities over it, but that likely would have tanked the company and I'd have made even less. And honestly, I was making decent money anyway.
The innovation here
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"A living wage" is not something that people are entitled to, no matter how much you wish it to be so.
So what do you propose we do with people unable to earn a living wage? Slums? Work camps? Organ farms?
More importantly, while I agree that delivery is a basic skill, but so is violence and crime. Personally, if I were put in a situation where my kids are starving because of my inability to earn a living wage, I'd have zero problems robbing a bunch of free market libertarians to provide them with basic needs. Now, what society would you rather live in? Free market paradise that see desperate people committin
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Yeah, let 'em die. [Re:Gig economy] (Score:2)
That's a common libertarian statement, yes: they have no problem with people starving, but if you try to make a system where people don't starve, they say "The immoral position is yours, namely attempts to interfere with it."
Right. Let people die, it's the only moral thing to do. That way the economy works, and the economy is more important than the people in it.
I will repeat: this is exactly why people have such a low opinion of libertarians.
Race to the bottom [Re:Yeah, let 'em die.] (Score:3)
That's the economic equivalent of believing that the earth is flat. Thanks for demonstrating your complete and utter ignorance so clearly.
Here is the Forbes article (you know Forbes, right? Not exactly a left-wing-socialist-tool) explaining it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/f... [forbes.com]
It would be easier to show this by showing graphs of demand curves, but /., with an old-fashioned text-only interface, doesn't support that. The take-away calculation is that if minimum wage increases, while some businesses will decide not to hire some workers because their productivity now is less than their cost, pay increases for the rest of the minimum wage work
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The problem is, often so called contractors are legally employees in spite of the smoke and mirrors obfuscation. The law being violated is employment law.
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homeless bums make more per hour collecting cans from a dumpster
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'Burn to book ratio'. Same as in 2000, duh.
They're selling bagged dry pet food on the internet again.
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This is not a bug but a key feature of gig economy. Also, multi-billion valuation for a grocery delivery service? Why?
The service industry as a whole is becoming rife with assholes behind desks directing around suckers, excuse me workers and paying wages that are not high enough to live on. The janitorial industry is becoming concentrated in a few firms that sub contract to the lowest bidder to avoid hiring anyone. Essentially shell companies with assholes in chairs. Most of these service industry corps are overvalued and traded back and forth between more assholes in chairs. The over valuation of assholes in chairs will b
Workers of the World, E-Unite! (Score:2, Insightful)
So, are e-unions the future? I hope so. The plutocrats have gotten the upper hand for too long, creating growing inequality. It's time us 95% get some bargaining power back (if GOP doesn't outlaw or de-fang unions & e-unions).
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God I hope NOT!!
I"ve been contracting for nearly 20 years now, and I am quite happy with it.
I learned to incorporate myself (S-Corp), and figured out what I need to bill in order to make a living at what I do, taking into consideration my health insurance, retirement, vacation/s
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> I"ve been contracting for nearly 20 years now, and I am quite happy with it.
I doubt you fall into the same category as someone who depends on gig economy jobs for survival. There is a huge difference between someone making $150+ an hour bouncing place to place writing software, and someone who can't find any other work.
This is the disconnect I find with most IT contractors who assume these people are in a similar situation. I need the stability of a regular paycheck because I have a family, otherwise I
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Corporations spend a fair amount on political lobbying and pass those costs on to the consumer. Almost every product you buy in certain categories has a hidden "lobbying tax". You are essentially forced to pay it. Workers need a counter version of the same thing.
"Right to work", nice word-play there. Each job you take h
Why is this even surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only way it's economically viable for most people to get someone else to go shopping at a retail store for them is to pay that person much, much less than it otherwise would cost conventionally to do that.
The gig economy seems entirely oriented around pay schemes that are so complicated that most of the people signing up to do the work can't figure out up front they won't make any money doing the work.
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I doubt there is enough traffic on this service to turn it into a travelling salesman problem.
I further doubt the people working these gigs have the brains to work it as such, even where the traffic is high enough. That would be the software's job.
The sites that gets to 'critical mass' and dispatches deliveries in a way that lets the delivery people make decent money will be the ultimate winners in this space. But that could just never happen.
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basic insurance will not cover them like pizza dri (Score:3)
basic insurance will not cover them like pizza drivers no you need the higher cost Commercial Insurance.
If you think that's bad... (Score:2)
If you think that's bad, you should see the hourly rate made by people selling stuff on Etsy.
factoring in cost of materials, I'm pretty sure some people there are making a negative per-hour income.
Sign of an economy about to go under (Score:2)
knowing how little they get paid (Score:3)
Low Wages (Score:3)
Exploitation (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, using the guise of 'independent contractor', companies are skirting our (American) wage regulations and shafting workers whenever and whereever they can. And people wonder where that income disparity is coming from.
This here is a nice shiny example.
This seems to be the bottom-line problem (Score:4, Insightful)
From the Ars article:
shoppers make a per-item fee (typically $0.40)— however, this is not per unit of that item.
Ars spoke with six Instacart shoppers who said that they have routinely been made to pick up several heavy items, such as cases of bottled water, soda, or ice. Those items, of course, not only have to be loaded into a shopping cart, and then into a car, but they must be also hand-carried to someone’s door—sometimes up flights of stairs. Shoppers are still paid a $0.40 per-item fee even if someone orders one, five, or 10 cases of bottled water.
This definition of an "item" creates a windfall for people/businesses ordering lots of things--often heavy, bulky ones. Instacart's pricing scheme makes them a good deal more competitive than typical delivery services, so the customers do the rational thing.
I have to wonder how much this entire issue would smooth out just by changing this into a true per-item fee.
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This sounds like the true fix to me. Perhaps have a weight modifier. Airlines charge more for overweight baggage, and water is probably about the cheapest heavy item sold.
You can still have a discount for buying multiple cases, because it should still be easier to grab 5 cases of water than 1 case of water and four other unique items.
That said, I just had the thought that maybe these people should run around with a dolly or something to make it easier. Automation for the win.
Hell, something like a powere
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the gun pointing to their head is the need to eat and have somewhere to live.
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I think the gun pointing to their head is the need to eat and have somewhere to live.
At $1 / hr (their words, not mine) they'd be better of doing anything other than this job. If you work for $1 / hr, you're a fool and your inability to eat is natural selection at work.
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:4, Insightful)
HMm...I guess I must have missed it in the article, that this was the ONLY job in town for everyone.
Yeah, the asshole libertarians think that a two dollar an hour wage is fine, because of course if people don't like it they can just go get a different job.
This is exactly why people think libertarians are assholes.
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so much that, but more that NOT EVERY JOB out there is meant to be made a career of, nor sole source of income to support yourself/family.
This should be common sense, no?
Each job should pay what it is worth. Do you think a burger flipper should make the same as a highly skilled computer programmer?
Should I have to pay $15/hr to get one of the neighborhood kids to pull weeds in my garden one weekend?
Is it worth $30K/yr for someone to put flyers on cars in a parking lot for an hour or two a day?
Seriously, not all jobs are meant or worth paying a wage to live off of....some ARE only for extra money on the side, or starting jobs for teens.
This has been the norm for decades, and only recently for some reason, has everyone started thinking that ANYTHING you could possibly do for money should pay enough to be your sole source of income.
Not all jobs are worth that....
If the individual doesn't like the jobs they are being offered, then THEY need to figure out what to do or what jobs to seek that do give enough compensation to live off of solely.....
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Each job should pay what it is worth. Do you think a burger flipper should make the same as a highly skilled computer programmer?
No. But if he's an adult working full time at the most sophisticated job that he's able to do, he should make enough for food, shelter, and health care. I'm not married to forcing his employer to bear that whole burden.
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For what it's worth (and I'm sort of a moderate rather than one of these libertarian assholes, more like I see that sometimes they have a partial point to make, kind of like everyone else), the crux of the problem is that the cost of housing and healthcare are skyrocketing. So we are arguing about how we should pay for it instead of trying to figure out why it's so damned expensive.
This is a libertarian insight that the rest of the political spectrum (me, I'm a moderate rather than a libertarian asshole, bu
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So we are arguing about how we should pay for it instead of trying to figure out why it's so damned expensive.
It's so damn expensive because we've tried to force fit ideology into it.
Housing is so expensive because we've allowed uncontrolled access to credit, and allowed it to people who never should have had it. That started a megaflation of housing prices.
We have a mutant health care system where people without insurance get their basic healthcare at emergency rooms - the most expensive healthcare on the planet, then the costs, which tehy obviously don't pay are just transferred up teh line, and basic servi
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:5, Informative)
If more young people, didn't have kids too soon before they can afford them
Wrong. The average age at which people have children is going up, and it has been for years. The trend has been toward older parents since at least the 1970s.
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressr... [cdc.gov]
if they didn't always go out and buy the latest shiny $$$ smart phone, didn't eat out all the time, etc, etc.
Oh, teens and 20-somethings in the 70s didn't blow money on stupid shit? Give me a break.
They did marry earlier though, and it is much easier to save for a house when funneling two incomes into it.
If you don't make Pro Athlete or rock star money, then you should know you can't live even close to that lifestyle and spend money like that.
We are talking about people getting paid $1/hour. I doubt they aspire to a celebrity lifestyle. If anything, they aspire to be free from the ever-present fear of homelessness.
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If he's an adult working full time at the most sophisticated job that he's able to do, he should make enough for food, shelter, and health care
Sophisticated isn't the right word. There are a lot of jobs requiring unskilled/minimally-skilled labor that pay more than flipping burgers, Or where you can get the necessary training at minimal or zero cost ---- the burger flipper role or retail stockboy role are literally jobs for someone who has no marketable skill AND can't make a full-time c
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No. But if he's an adult working full time at the most sophisticated job that he's able to do, he should make enough for food, shelter, and health care. I'm not married to forcing his employer to bear that whole burden.
Careful with that line of thinking, as it could very easily get one into age-discrimination territory.
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"You seem to think this is a right that everyone is inherently born with...?"
Yes, just like corporations have a right to cheap labor? When did this happen?
"The declaration of the US said it wants to give everyone the "pursuit of happiness", but it doesn't guarantee it,"
That's a 200 year old piece of paper written by people with fleas and wooden teeth. Since when do we worship old ideas while surrounded by technology that can produce everything?
"And if you are such a dense simpleton that you cannot take care
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to think this is a right that everyone is inherently born with...?
If you're an American working as productively as you're capable of, you deserve food, shelter, and health care. I didn't say it was a "right"; it's just the right thing to do. Some people are born simple and will never make it beyond "burger flipper." They shouldn't be left hungry or have to splint their own broken arm. Like I said, this support doesn't have to be 100% borne by the employer. Leaving the weak to die isn't something a civilized society should do.
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a human being working as productively as you're capable of, you deserve food, shelter, and health care. I didn't say it was a "right"; it's just the right thing to do. Some people are born simple and will never make it beyond "burger flipper." They shouldn't be left hungry or have to splint their own broken arm. Like I said, this support doesn't have to be 100% borne by the employer. Leaving the weak to die isn't something a civilized society should do.
Fixed that for you.
Re: Again...where's the gun...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Family is the answer.
Many people don't have families. Many more poor people have families that are just as poor as they are.
If US becomes totally communist, I will move immediately.
What makes you think you would be allowed to leave?
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Agree 100%, but it's harder to enforce beyond our borders.
Some irony present in this comment, since it's beyond your borders that these notions are more regularly enforced.
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Indeed. This is why I support something like a BIG - Basic Income Guarantee.
That said, I'm a dirty libertarian who supports a BIG, as I've gone so deep into the looking glass that I came out the other side. It'd be cheaper and provide more liberty than traditional welfare programs.
My basic proposal is to have the BIG be ~$6k per person*, while eliminating the tax rates below 25% and the standard exemption(Deductions stay). The 25% might need to become 26%. Whatever. Neutrality is around $30k of income,
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the business model is only viable when you effectively have slaves working for you, it's not a good business model.
Jobs that are supposedly only for 'teenagers' to make extra money have been mostly worked by adults for years now. Pulling weeds is basically gardening. You can hire kids to do it for cheap for all sorts of reasons, like they don't have to actually feed themselves or pay rent. When kids are young, it's kind of a fun thing to do so they can make some money and learn about working. But if you hire an adult to do it, they're going to charge you an hourly rate appropriate for a landscaper, and you can pay it or not. Maybe my job as a programmer deserves more money than a burger flipper, but I want that burger flipper to make enough so that when they go home after their 8 hours of real, legitimate work, they can afford to buy the video games that I make.
If the job is worth doing, it's probably worth paying for. If you can't because it's too expensive or you're too frugal, then do it yourself or don't get it done.
My local grocery store delivers (I think they even offer it free to seniors), and I imagine that those people are getting paid whatever the normal wage is at the store. Shopping for stuff, driving it somewhere and delivering it is a REAL JOB. Even just delivering things is a job that we pay people to do at *better* than minimum wage!
Instacart is not on the right side of this. Making workers deliver 20 cases of water for $3-4 is immoral. If these jobs are the kind that 'job creators' come up with when they get tax cuts, they can stuff them and pay more taxes.
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Should I have to pay $15/hr to get one of the neighborhood kids to pull weeds in my garden one weekend?
Yes. But right now you don't have to, so you're good.
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Hell, be a bartender!!
I did that during grad school, and made a LOT of money, and this was at a more typical restaurant bar, not a true BAR type bar.
Even back then, you got much more per hour than the normal server (I got about $6/hr)....and by the time I got tips from the bar, and tipped out from the waitstaff....well, I actual
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Re: Again...where's the gun...? (Score:2)
You mean the government that is trillions of dollars in debt?
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Looking at it another way, if Instacart drivers are being paid next to nothing, then it shouldn't hurt Instacart for them to go o
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Maybe its because they don't see it as 2hr, they see it as taking a gig that involves dropping something off on they way home for the grocery store trip they were making anyway,
Except that's not the way instacart works, any more that Uber works by you pick somebody up on your way to the store.
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:5, Insightful)
HMm...I guess I must have missed it in the article, that this was the ONLY job in town for everyone.
Obviously these folks have a wide range of employment immediately available and choose the lowest paying option. They're just ignoring the better paying alternatives because they enjoy this line of work so much. I'm sure that's what's happening.
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Re:out of touch (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here's a novel idea....maybe move to another town with better opportunities?
Ok, I know it might mean having to move away from Mommy and Daddy, but trust me, it can be done....and has been pretty much since the dawn of time.
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Re:out of touch (Score:5, Insightful)
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If a bunch of people from sub-Sahara Africa and Syria can do it, so can folks in America.
It seems a lot of people don't really know what the bare essentials really means.
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In many towns, the unemployment rate exceeds 50 percent.
Yes, it can be the only OPEN job.
There used to be some $10.00/hr jobs before that was illegal.
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If you have kids before a good job, your purpose is to serve as a warning to others. Better luck next reincarnation.
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MinerTime, an app that lets coal miners take part in the wonderful new brave digital world of the "innovative" gig economy.
Oh! Oh! Do they allow me to skip that expensive and bulky respirator so I can maximize my profits?
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Furthermore, you cannot force employers to pay you more than your labor is worth.
Yes you absolutely can. If the position is "worth" less than minimum wage, that's the employer's problem, not the employee's. The employer's not forced to maintain or staff that position, but if the position exists compensation isn't capped at "worth".
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Typically fixed with automation. Jobs that aren't worth minimum are butt simple. For example: Every (Carl's Jr/Hardee's) has a burger flipping conveyor grill.
Worth is the intersection of supply and demand, labor is the same as any other commodity.
Locally fast food workers/operators have priced themselves higher than local ethnic restaurants. I can get a good Thai lunch special for less than a burger fries and a soda. Sucks to be them.
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Key information missing, so please folks don't get all bent.
Re:Again...where's the gun...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, where's the gun to their head to do this contract job?
If you don't have a job, you starve.
That's a gun to the head.
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"The" guy [Re:Again...where's the gun...?] (Score:2)
But the guy they quoted in the article already had a public sector job.
Here is the article cited: https://www.fastcompany.com/40498626/instacart-workers-are-striking-over-wages-reportedly-as-low-as-1-an-hour [fastcompany.com]. There is only one "guy quoted," and the quote is "some shoppers are being paid less than the federal minimum wage, like a Jackson, Miss., worker who put in a 19-hour week in Jackson, Mississippi, that paid out $37.75 (roughly $2/hour)." No mention of a job in the public sector.
Here is the second article cited http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Instacart-worker [sfchronicle.com]
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"...while on the clock for the state."
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AND...once you get a civil service job, it is nye impossible for you to get fired, especially if you are female and minority.
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In CA the state government has an administration (CA GSA) that exists only to warehouse useless workers.
They _can't_ fire them, the cheapest solution is to just transfer the air thieves to the GSA. It's a six story, full city block building just south of Broadway in Sacramento. Nothing gets done, but they are out of the way.
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Again, where's the gun to their head to do this contract job?
If you don't have a job, you starve.
That's a gun to the head.
What about 'this' job?
Why is this job necessary? (Score:2)
There is no gun forcing you to take a job you can't do well enough to earn a decent living doing
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There is no gun forcing you to take a job you can't do well enough to earn a decent living doing
Of course not. You always can just starve to death, that's always an option.
No problem. The economy is bad, you just die. Problem solved.
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So this is the only job available?
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Stalin: "Join my party or starve"
Conservatives didn't like it when Stalin did that, but are okay with it in different forms. I see hypocrisy.
USA is the wealthiest (large) country. There is no reason anybody here should starve or die of readily curable illnesses other than Ayn-Randian political beliefs.
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That's a gun to the head.
What you describe is just a "general" gun to the head that EVERYONE has.
That's not a gun to the head to do THIS contract job, specifically.
That's a gun to the head to FIND AND DO a sufficiently-paying job. Well, guess what.... this one isn't sufficiently-paying, so go look for something else.
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the person 'can' refuse a trip
That's what they are doing by striking.
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Again, where's the gun to their head to do this contract job?
Ok..it does sound like the app is a bit unfair, treating 6x cases of water the same as 1x case, but still...the person 'can' refuse a trip, or even to work for the company at all.
It takes a bit of smarts to figure out if the bill rate for a contracting gig is worth the effort, you know?
Put on those big boy pants and do some ciphering.
The articles cover the 'lowest' equivalent rates but fail to say how often that has happened. What are the average and highest equivalent hourly rates and why is that information ignored?
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On the flip side of that question, where's the legal compulsion to work if you don't think the pay is high enough?
Of course striking is fundamentally different than just deciding not to go to work; it's a collective action, one that attempts to establish a kind of monopoly leverage on employers.
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...where's the legal compulsion to work if you don't think the pay is high enough?
I'm legally obligated to pay my child support. If I decide not to work, it puts me on the losing side of that equation.
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I'm legally obligated to pay my child support.
You can't do that on a $2/hr job.
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I'm legally obligated to pay my child support.
You can't do that on a $2/hr job.
If I was making $2/hr and working full time, my obligation should be scaled to match. Paying enough to show an honest effort should keep me from being arrested or having my driver's license suspended. If I opt not to work, they very well may toss me in jail.
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Because though the lowly outsourcees working gigs at TriangleShirtwaist.com may not burn to death when the exits are blocked, they may go hungry if the site gets DDoSed.
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Wow that's a lot of syllables just to agree with the people in the story refusing to work for the pay given.
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Just be grateful they aren't all as awesome as you. You might be shielded from offshoring & H1-Bs but a bit of domestic competition could eat into your billing rate.
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Technically, there is nothing illegal about it, and there were no one holding a head to the serfs and indentured labor either. The indenture was actually a valid contract between consenting bona fide parties.
Care read history about why they agreed to those manifestly unjust terms?
Care to read history to understand what usually unfolds when the population is pushed to breaking points?
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