Transcription Platform Rev Slashes Minimum Pay for Workers (gizmodo.com) 112
Rev, one of biggest names in transcription -- and one of the cheapest services of its kind -- opted to alter its pay structure with little warning for thousands of contractors on its platform, some of whom are furious at what they expect will be smaller paychecks from here on out. From a report: Launched in 2010, Rev made a name for itself by charging customers who wanted transcriptions of interviews, videos, podcasts, or whatever else the bargain-basement price of $1 per minute of audio. That's attracted some notable clients, including heavyweight podcast This American Life, according to the company. According to one whistleblower, a little less than half of that buck went to the contractor, while about 50 to 55 cents on the dollar lined Rev's pockets. But in an effort to "more fairly compensate Revvers for the effort spent on files," Rev announced on an internal message board on Wednesday that its job pricing model would change -- with a new minimum of 30 cents per minute (cpm) going into effect last Friday. "There was an internal forum post made two days prior, but not everybody checks the forums," one Revver who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Gizmodo. "A lot of people found out when they logged on on Friday. People are still showing up in the forums asking what's going on!"
Whistleblower? (Score:4, Insightful)
Minimum wage? (Score:2)
Doesn't that risk coming in below minimum wage? If you have to listen to the audio more than once to transcribe it correctly then at $18/hour of transcribed audio you're down below a $10/hour rate of pay.
Re: Minimum wage? (Score:2)
Doesn't matter. Minimum wage applies to employees. These are contractors. They are self employed. They can only blame themselves if they can't do the math.
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They are not contractors. I do not know what they are, but they are not contactors. I used to contract. There would be a contract in force that contracted 6 months of service for a specified range of hours per week/month at a rate of $200/hour. Just because one of the parties "felt like" changing the contract, it could not be changed without the agreement of both parties to the contract or the exercize of the breach conditions of the contract.
These people sound like "jobbers", not contractors.
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They are not contractors. I do not know what they are, but they are not contactors.
Rev says they are "freelancers".
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There is minimum/maximum wage for contractors....1099 workers.
Only if you are a W2 worker does min wage come into effect.
Just as a note, minimum wage for tipped employees is less than what it is for regular non-tipped hourly workers.
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Only if you live in an uncivilized state. CA doesn't have a different minimum wage for tipped employees.
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Not really a bad thing.
I waited tables, bartended back in the day, and if you are worth anything, you make WAAAAY more than minimum wage when you combine your tips with the W2 paid wage.
The nice thing is....most folks don't declare ALL their tips, so they get those tax free. Even after t
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Doesn't that risk coming in below minimum wage?
No. The minimum wage in India is 176 Rp.
I doubt if many of their freelancers are Americans.
Re:Whistleblower? (Score:5, Funny)
You are out of date, whistleblower is now a buzzword. It means:
a) a person who observes illegal/unethical/improper conduct and brings it to the attention of proper authorities, often anonymously
b) an entitled whiner who sees a perceived slight that may inconvenience them in some way and trumpets it loudly on social media.
It is closely related to another buzzword "fake news"
Re:Whistleblower? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whistleblower can be anyone, not just lawyers and law enforcement, they are not qualified to point out if such activity is criminal or not. However most people are qualified to point out right from wrong.
As someone who had left a job for moral reasons, and later because I felt the company screwed me over. Just getting up an quit and go somewhere else, isn't an easy process
The new job you are applying for needs to better or at least the same as your current one. So if this company dropped the rate to $0.30 a minute (from $0.50) you will need to find a place that pays more than that $0.30 a minute, preferably closer or exceeding the $0.50 a minute.
Next you need to find these jobs and get hired. Often in cases like this when there is a slash in price, it is because the business sector isn't marketable so finding an additional job in that sector is difficult.
If you reach out to a lot of laborers in their late 40's and 50's you may find a surprising number of them who use to work in IT during the 1990's who were canned when the tech bubble popped. Because it was difficult to find the job.
The free market economy work great in the large scale. But if you look at the finer details there is a lot of needless suffering from real people that is happening. Where a degree of rules regulations towards these companies to make sure employees are paid well, we will after some adjustment period find a more solid economy less prone to big ups and down.
Once again, capitalism at work (Score:2, Interesting)
Definition of capitalism: The art of making money with the work of others.
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Definition of capitalism: The art of making money with the work of others
Better expressed as: the freedom to trade your labor for money.
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"Better expressed as: the freedom to trade your labor for money."
Strange that your definition of capitalism doesn't involve capital.
And stranger still is that while you highlight voluntary exchange, you gloss over the fact that for most people the exchange is substantially less than "voluntary".
Unless you have lots of capital. Then capitalism works very well. You can enter into voluntary exchanges for goods and services, or opt not to. You can purchase some land and live off the land if you like. Or if you have enough, you can hire someone else to work it for you, pay th
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capital NOUN
wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available or contributed for a particular purpose such as starting a company or investing.
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labor isn't capital
In fact, capital is pretty much everything except for labor.
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In fact, capital is pretty much everything except for labor.
It also doesn't include land, and most economists also exclude natural resources.
"Capital goods" are assets that can produce more assets.
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Land is kind of a grey area but its usually included in the PP&E figure as a 'capital asset'. PP&E is literally the 'Property' (land), 'Plant' (building), & 'Equipment' in a classic "factory" type of operation; and its definitely capital in that context.
But you're right that natural resources, and the land they are in isn't usually viewed as capital. So it depends a bit on context.
What should be happening (Score:2)
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Maybe to some people a minimum of $18 per hour is a good deal for transcribing stuff.
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Yeah, if you turn on closed captioning on some stuff you can see how terrible it is. Traditional transcription services are very expensive, and even their output is uneven.
Or choose the 80 cents per minute tasks, applying (Score:3)
30 cents per minute is the new *minimum*. Other take now pay 80 cents per minute.
Industry standard for transcription is it takes one hour to transcribe 15 minutes, so $12 per hour if you choose the 80 cpm tasks.
If I were doing transcription, I'd probably choose the take that offer 80 cpm ($12/hour), do them while waiting for my next Lyft ride, and be applying for another job.
I don't generally work for $12/hour, but when I was between jobs recently I was glad to be able to just sign up and make about $15/hou
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4X productivity, training, required hours (Score:2)
A big reason is that stenographers do about four times as many words pee minute. Stenographers are certified after training and come out to your office to transcribe conversations in real time.
This gig work is random untrained person logging to listen to a video and make $5 during their ride to work, or whenever they feel like it.
So mostly productivity and working when and where the customer needs them vs working when and where the transcriber wants to. If someone tries it out via the online gig and decide
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Not not higher lower (Score:3)
Indeed, I misread your post, with negative results.
We are in agreement.
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This I would think would be the precise argument for NOT paying an untrained person more.
That is what Rev.com has figured out. They were way over-paying. There are plenty of good English speakers all over the world willing to work for less.
With automated voice-to-text and grammar correction tools like Grammarly, the skill level needed is going down while the available labor pool is growing.
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Perhaps there's something I do not know. However, why should a transcriptionist be compensated at a rate higher than a stenographer [payscale.com] when at least superficially they're identical jobs?
According to the link you posted, the average hourly rate for a stenographer is US$19.63.
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Uh, yes. Before they were taking home $27 - $30 an hour.
Transcribing an hour of audio can take a lot longer than an hour.
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Average speaking speed is around 100-130wpm, so unless you have perfect hearing, can type accurately at 130wpm and also correctly label the speaker in zero time, an hour of conversation is going to take more than an hour to transcribe no matter how good you are.
Ok, there will be pauses in the conversation too. I'm assuming those balance with the times multiple people are speaking at once.
Given professional stenographers doing real-time closed captioning make mistakes and share only around 80-90% of the word
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> $1920/mo or $23040/yr. I'm pretty sure that's not even a living wage in Chile,
Actually the median pay in Chile is just under half a million Chilean pesos, or about $620 in purchasing power. That's pretty good for South America.
If you're lucky enough to be in the United States, it might be a good idea to get a job. Little gigs you do while waiting in the doctor's office aren't the best way to make a living. If you like transcription, and want it to be your job, you can make $30/hour while your doing t
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> This argument that "some jobs are real jobs and other jobs are not real jobs" never seems to hold water. A job is a job. If it doesn't pay a living wage then it shouldn't exist.
So every task that anyone wants done is a full-time job, and more than that - it's a career?
If you pay the neighbor kid $30 to know your lawn or feee your dog while you're on vacation, we should throw you in jail. Alrighty then.
You're welcome to have your own opinions, of course. If that's what you think, there are indeed seve
I can't type for shit (Score:2)
Well now you know why I don't do transcription - apparently I can't type.
Anyway, if you think pet sitting should be illegal since it's not a full-time job, or a great career choice, "you do you", I guess. Here in the United States, people are free to have a side gig if they want to. Perhaps you'd feel more at home in a totalitarian state of some kind. China will make you work 70 hours - but they also let you have a side gig if you want. Maybe you can convince them to make it illegal.
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My suggestion I very simple. If you want to be somewhere where having a side gig is illegal, the United States might not be the best fit. Singapore likes to make things illegal. Perhaps you'd like it there. Or California. Lots of things are illegal I California, though they do allow people to have a side gig - foe now.
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Singapore likes to make things illegal.
Singapore makes much anti-social behavior illegal, but their economy is very lightly regulated.
Or California. Lots of things are illegal I California, though they do allow people to have a side gig - foe now.
Nope. According to Rev.com's FAQ, they can't hire freelancers from California or Massachusetts because of state regulations.
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Yes, as I said very, very clearly, the best way to pay your bills is to have a full-time job. Your reply to that is that anything that isn't a full-time job should be illegal. No babysitting! It should be illegal to eat a little extra money on your bus ride home by doing a transcription, you said.
> have you looked at the cost of living there? Just look at it. Just look.
And you want to force the the rest of the country more like California? While also making it illegal for people to make extra money.
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Pay all workers a living wage per hour, per week, per month, per year. It has to be calibrated to the actual real costs one reasonably might be expected to assume to live a basic life in a given region.
A teenager still living at home has a living wage of $0.
Does a 16-year-old teenager working his first job really need to be paid enough to afford a house, car, and food for a non-existent family?
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Those people in California, especially near the Bay Area, need a living wage most of all
If you can't afford a Rolls Royce, buy a Ford.
If you can't afford to live in San Francisco, move to Oakland.
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Good point! (Score:2)
> It needs to add up to a living wage whether you live in California or in Oklahoma or Mississippi
You bring up an excellent point. People who live in Oklahoma (average home price $114,800) shouldn't be allowed to work since thr task isn't worth California prices (average home price $393,000). You want to make it illegal for anyone in Oklahoma to work at all if they can't afford a $400,000 mansion there in Oklahoma.
You hate lower-income and middle-income people, don't you?
My brother lives in Oklahoma. H
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The cost of living in India is lower than in America. So the obvious solution is for Rev.com to stop hiring Americans. But I don't quite understand how fewer jobs will lead to living wages.
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> Who wants to make what illegal, that sounds confused.
Maybe you're open-minded enough that you thought it through and decided making this site illegal isn't a good idea after all? Because it sure sounded like you said you wanted to make such sites illegal unless they pay enough to live comfortably in southern California.
"way. Those people in California, especially near the Bay Area, need a living wage".
If you've thought it through and realized that not every Mississippi teenager can afford a house in
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Okay so you're suggesting that the law be only people in lower-cost states can do gig work for these sites? Alternatively, the site would have to pay Californians three times as much as it pays Oklahomans for the same work?
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Btw, one perfectly respectable answer here would be "upon further reflection, I've changed my mind".
A couple days ago I said something here on Slashdot and somebody pointed out why my idea doesn't work, why the first thought I had wasn't right. I had to reply "good point. I hadn't thought of that" or something alint those lines.
If you find yourself tempted to claim that you never said the stuff that you said an hour or two ago, "hmm, that's a good point" would be great reply.
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Okay, so now I understand you. Illegal for lower-income Californians to do the work. Perfectly legal for people in Oklahoma or Louisiana or Mississippi to sign up on the site and do it. Because obviously the site isn't going to pay triple for Californians to subnit stuff. Alrighty.
You only want to tell lower-income Californians they aren't allowed to work like the rest of the country. Gotcha.
Which actually means you and I have something in common - I don't like Californians either. But wow you take it
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Does this job provide health insurance?
It is not a "job", it is a freelance opportunity. And, no, of course it doesn't include health insurance.
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However what is the average rate for a translater?
How many translator services are available?
How many people are hammering for a job as a translater?
The old rate may have actually been higher then the national average. So a price correction may be needed. However if I were to do it, New hires would get the lower rate (as agreed when they were hired), raises would be lessened.
Giving a person a fee cut, hurts and is often much worse tha
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Not an issue (Score:2)
Rev freelancers have full control over what jobs they decide to work on. They can accept or reject any projects without consequences as well as set preferences indicating what jobs they choose to accept, with full control over all parameters including file types, audio length, and pay.
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1. The extra income. It is a job to make a quick few bucks to augment their normal job.
2. The Drifter. They don't want to be tied down to a company, and prefer to have full control of their lives.
3. Last Resort. They don't want to be a freelancer but it is the only work they can find.
The Drifter type is often the more successful type of freelancer. They pack on high profit jobs, and keep their next job ready on the pipes. These guys if getting a pay cut just w
Why would you? (Score:1)
At the new lowest price, anyone transcribing at real-time speed would be earning around 12 cents an hour.
Who would do that and why?
If you are so poor as to think that 12 cents an hour is an acceptable value for your time then you are also probably far too poor to be able to afford a computer or other device needed to undertake this work. In fact, at that rate, selling even a cheap computer would likely generate funds equal to 500 hours of work.
Something doesn't sound right.
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The probable explanation is that they are going broke.
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Yes. And that thing is your math.
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At the new lowest price, anyone transcribing at real-time speed would be earning around 12 cents an hour.
Where are you getting that? 30 cents per minute is $18 dollars per hour.
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That's per minute of audio not per minute of typing.
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Actually, the transcribers that do real time live closed captioning transcribe in real time, 1 minute of audio takes 1 minute. They have huge freakishly customized macro sets and custom keyboards and are amazing. They however do not work for pennies on the minute.
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Live CC transcription is rarely accurate.
Re: Why would you? (Score:2)
And they are rarely complete or accurate. Many types of transcription require more precise work.
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They also have a fairly high error rate.
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Not debating your point, but the GP stated that this was $0.12 per hour if transcribed in real time, which is a ridiculous assertion.
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Something doesn't sound right.
What's not right is your unit of measure. The new floor is 30 cents per minute, not per hour. 30 cents per minute is $7.20 per hour, which is about on par with the U.S. minimum wage of $7.20 per hour.
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$0.30 a minute * 60 minutes in an hour = $18.
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Only if you transcribe in real-time, and don't have to re-listen to something to make a correct translation. If it's a non-native English speaker you're transcribing, I suspect 50% of real-time is more likely, and unless you're very good at it (think court reporter), I suspect the average is only 75% real time.
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Only if you transcribe in real-time, and don't have to re-listen to something to make a correct translation. If it's a non-native English speaker you're transcribing, I suspect 50% of real-time is more likely, and unless you're very good at it (think court reporter), I suspect the average is only 75% real time.
Why listen in real-time? I had a blind friend in college that would listen to all her audio books at double time or even faster.
When she wasn't wearing headphones, it was pretty much incomprehensible to me but she had no problem understanding it because she had lots or practice.
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From the summary we're given $.30 per minute. Assuming that the company still takes about 50% from anyone contracting through their service, that equates to $.15 per minute or $9 per hour assuming you're transcribing at re
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30 cents per minute is $18 an hour and 50 center per minute is $30 per hour.
This is the difference between
$7.20 Poverty
$18.00 Working Poor
$30 Low Middle Class
The price drop is really majorly changing the quality of life of the workers.
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$18/day is a good living in some places.
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but $18.00 is Working Poor. You can live comfortably however you will not have money for extras or emergencies, or live less comfortably and have some money for extras and emergencies.
$10 an hour is about 36k a year (plan on a 2 week time off)
28.8k a year after taxes.
24k after cheap health insurance
18.8k after groceries.
11.6k after rent
8.6k after electricity and heating.
To meet basic living conditions the person would have $8.6k a year left
Simple solution (Score:2)
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So close yet so far. You were probably thinking of:
"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
So (Score:2)
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So what are these people going to do? Bitch and moan but inevitably knuckle under and take whatever pittance they can get or say fuck that and go somewhere else?
Pretty much. This isn't exactly a highly skilled job. Basically a secretary in the most boring sense of the word.
Re: So (Score:2)
Transcription is traditionally the least of a secretary's duties. Remember that the origin of the word is related to "secret", in that this is a person you trust with the most important things in your life. A secretary is your public face, and is supposed to know almost as much as you do about what you are up to.
Most people colloquially referred to as "secretaries" today are usually receptionists by normal job classifications; another of the traditional secretary's duties, but by no means descriptive of the
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Ridiculous. You're reading far to much into that word. Stop over thinking it
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
But what's the rest of the scale?? (Score:2)
The article makes a huge deal about the bottom of the scale but calling it a scale implies there are other brackets, does it not? What's the rest of the story here?
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Summary: "easy" jobs now start at 30 cents per minute. "Hard" jobs start at 80 cents per minute.
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Summary: "easy" jobs now start at 30 cents per minute. "Hard" jobs start at 80 cents per minute.
So are we supposed to be outraged that easy jobs pay less while harder jobs pay more? Or just that easy jobs pay less?
Time to start a competing company (Score:5, Interesting)
In the end, competition is key.
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They probably know that the business model doesn't work.
This kind of work is already outsourced to the developing world, and it will be one of the first to be replaced by AI which is getting close to human levels of accuracy now.
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