5 ms·

Isn't the solution here to turn contractor vs employee issue into a question of choice and benefit for the employee vs the employer? If retirement, time off and

by yibg 6y ago

Isn't the solution here to turn contractor vs employee issue into a question of choice and benefit for the employee vs the employer? If retirement, time off and health benefits are also equally available to contractors then people can make the choice for the type of work they want without being disadvantaged.

sokoloff 6y ago
What does "time off" mean for someone who is unambiguously a contractor (such as a one-person plumber, handyman, maid, babysitter, landscaper, CPA, lawyer, etc)? They already have as much time off as they choose to have. It's all (obviously) unpaid as "who would pay them?"
- yibg 6y ago
  Yea time off is a bit iffy here. Some of the gig companies currently (due to covid) provides some level of "paid" sick days. But yea as a contractor it's probably less relevant than retirement and healthcare.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  Time off is one of the greatest scams in the modern economy. Unless you work a position where the time increment of your work is less than the amount of time you take off, ultimately you end up being pushed to do the same amount of work in less time. You might as well have skipped your vacation or planned your PTO during a less busy time. Really all PTO is for most salary exempt positions anymore is ability to delay work without getting fired. Now if you work in a position where you churn out things on a daily basis or less and someone will fill in for you while you're gone, PTO is actually PTO.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    An agreement to be able to delay work without getting fired doesn't seem entirely like a scam.
    - Frost1x 6y ago
      It is when you call it vacation or paid time off. Call it "work delay credits" or something of that nature. There's an implication from PTO of a different era where you weren't required to makeup work you missed while on PTO. Much of that has disappeared. That's fine for most salary exempt positions assuming you aren't fed a constant queue of work to keep you pushing 50+ hour weeks regularly and it's OK to do 20 hour work weeks and some 50 hour work weeks. Maybe I'm just old and people don't care that they do more for less TC than they did in years past.
kube-system 6y ago
If it's a scenario where it even remotely makes sense to do something like that, they probably should be employees. There's a lot of jobs where work simply is not with a regular customer -- i.e. tradesmen, independent consultants, musicians, etc. If a person mows lawns for 25 different customers in a given week, who gives them their vacation/retirement/health benefits?
throwaway_isms 6y ago
If you make it a choice, it effectively becomes no choice because employers will never agree to classify a worker as an employee because it would increase their costs and they have the ability to seek out another worker who would agree to the independent contractor status against their own interest because they need the job to keep a rood over their head and food on the table. It would give employers the ability to make it a race to the bottom for employees, like what would happen if minimum wage laws were removed.
- proc0 6y ago
  > against their own interest And how exactly would you reach this conclusion? How would you know what's better for someone, better than they do? At least in CA, the decision was clear that it wasn't against people's interest.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    In CA, the voters were duped by a massive marketing campaign underwritten by employers with interests in the outcome, with perhaps a small amount of "gosh I don't want Uber to cost more" personal interest.
    - proc0 6y ago
      Sometimes employer's interest coincides with the public, but I guess even voting isn't enough to convince some people of that.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > At least in CA, the decision was clear that it wasn't against people's interest. This must be why Uber incessantly spammed their workers with Prop 22 propaganda via push notifications[1] on their phones and tablets. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21517316/uber-spamming-user-political-push-notifications-prop-22-vote https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21517316/uber-spamming-u...
    - 6y ago

by yibg 6y ago

sokoloff 6y ago

What does "time off" mean for someone who is unambiguously a contractor (such as a one-person plumber, handyman, maid, babysitter, landscaper, CPA, lawyer, etc)? They already have as much time off as they choose to have. It's all (obviously) unpaid as "who would pay them?"

yibg 6y ago
Yea time off is a bit iffy here. Some of the gig companies currently (due to covid) provides some level of "paid" sick days. But yea as a contractor it's probably less relevant than retirement and healthcare.
Frost1x 6y ago
Time off is one of the greatest scams in the modern economy. Unless you work a position where the time increment of your work is less than the amount of time you take off, ultimately you end up being pushed to do the same amount of work in less time. You might as well have skipped your vacation or planned your PTO during a less busy time. Really all PTO is for most salary exempt positions anymore is ability to delay work without getting fired. Now if you work in a position where you churn out things on a daily basis or less and someone will fill in for you while you're gone, PTO is actually PTO.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  An agreement to be able to delay work without getting fired doesn't seem entirely like a scam.
  - Frost1x 6y ago
    It is when you call it vacation or paid time off. Call it "work delay credits" or something of that nature. There's an implication from PTO of a different era where you weren't required to makeup work you missed while on PTO. Much of that has disappeared. That's fine for most salary exempt positions assuming you aren't fed a constant queue of work to keep you pushing 50+ hour weeks regularly and it's OK to do 20 hour work weeks and some 50 hour work weeks. Maybe I'm just old and people don't care that they do more for less TC than they did in years past.

kube-system 6y ago

If it's a scenario where it even remotely makes sense to do something like that, they probably should be employees. There's a lot of jobs where work simply is not with a regular customer -- i.e. tradesmen, independent consultants, musicians, etc. If a person mows lawns for 25 different customers in a given week, who gives them their vacation/retirement/health benefits?

throwaway_isms 6y ago

If you make it a choice, it effectively becomes no choice because employers will never agree to classify a worker as an employee because it would increase their costs and they have the ability to seek out another worker who would agree to the independent contractor status against their own interest because they need the job to keep a rood over their head and food on the table. It would give employers the ability to make it a race to the bottom for employees, like what would happen if minimum wage laws were removed.

proc0 6y ago
> against their own interest And how exactly would you reach this conclusion? How would you know what's better for someone, better than they do? At least in CA, the decision was clear that it wasn't against people's interest.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  In CA, the voters were duped by a massive marketing campaign underwritten by employers with interests in the outcome, with perhaps a small amount of "gosh I don't want Uber to cost more" personal interest.
  - proc0 6y ago
    Sometimes employer's interest coincides with the public, but I guess even voting isn't enough to convince some people of that.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > At least in CA, the decision was clear that it wasn't against people's interest. This must be why Uber incessantly spammed their workers with Prop 22 propaganda via push notifications[1] on their phones and tablets. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21517316/uber-spamming-user-political-push-notifications-prop-22-vote https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21517316/uber-spamming-u...
  - 6y ago