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"After paying about $1,500 for home office equipment: a computer, two headsets and a phone line dedicated to Arise; after paying Arise to run a check on her bac

"After paying about $1,500 for home office equipment: a computer, two headsets and a phone line dedicated to Arise; after paying Arise to run a check on her background; after passing Arise’s voice-assessment test and signing Arise’s nondisclosure form; after paying for and passing Arise’s introductory training, to which she devoted three days, unpaid; after paying for and passing a certification course to provide customer service for Arise client AT&T, to which she devoted 44 unpaid days; after then being informed she had to get more training yet — an additional 10 days, for which she was told she would be paid, but wasn’t; and then, after finally getting a chance to sign up for hours and do work for which she would be paid (except for her time spent waiting for technical support, or researching customer issues, or huddling with supervisors), Tami Pendergraft spent three weeks fielding telephone calls from AT&T customers, after which she received a single paycheck for $96.12" That may not be illegal, but it sure as heck should be.

ec109685 4y ago
At the very least, immoral. Shameful companies support this exploitation.
buildbot 4y ago
Not a lawyer, but in washington at least I am pretty sure this would be straight up illegal.
fragmede 4y ago
What a perversion of capitalism!
- bfgoodrich 4y ago
  [dead]
- techhazard 4y ago
  This is no perversion of capitalism. Companies have only one responsibility: to increase profits to the shareholders. All other responsibilities have to be legally enforced; stuff like worker safety, food safety, minimum wage, 8-hour workday, no child labour etcetera. These are all things companies will gladly ignore if it profits them. Minimum wage in this case, through a loophole of payback.
  - Stratoscope 4y ago
    Of course a corporation has responsibilities to its shareholders. But increasing profit never has to be the only responsibility. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... (https://archive.vn/ARcc3 https://archive.vn/ARcc3) > Corporations Don’t Have to Maximize Profits > There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.” You will find many more citations with a search like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=is+a+corporation+obligated+to+maximize+profit https://www.google.com/search?q=is+a+corporation+obligated+t... I personally know executives in food manufacturing/preparation companies, both public and private, who gladly pay close attention to worker safety, food safety, and all the things you say a company would do only if forced by law. They do it because they know it's the right thing to do. And it helps them recruit and retain employees, and keep their customers happy and coming back for more. Their shareholders support them in this and would complain very loudly if the company ever put pure profit above all other goals. And they definitely don't view the line workers as resources to be exploited. They view them as their colleagues.
  - b112 4y ago
    Companies have only one responsibility: to increase profits to the shareholders. Yes, and those companies exist in a society, and long term planning is vital for long term profits, and that is 100% sensible and correct operating procedure. Treating employees poorly can effect the ability to hire, and retain good people. It can effect consumers' desire to buy your products. It can result in unions, and the passing of laws, and therefore red tape. So even if you have a dim view, re corporate responsibility, it matters not, for that role has larger scope than "profit this second". And beyond this? All corporate decisions are made by people, and those people have every right to make moral decisions.
  - astrange 4y ago
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Rather, this is capitalism working as intended. Most wealth in capitalism is built on the backs of exploited labor somewhere.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Labor share of income in GDP: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG It’s over 50% so on average this is not true. But it nearly became true in 2008; turns out the Great Recession was bad. The trend after that is somewhat positive. Though a problem with “exploited” is it’s zero sum thinking and doesn’t include customer surplus. If you get life saving surgery, you could say it has infinite value to you. If the surgeon asks for an infinite price, they’re exploiting you. If they don't, since you are therefore getting infinite unpaid value, are you exploiting them? nb the people in this article are certainly being exploited, this is covered in theory under “monopsony”…
    - FpUser 4y ago
      >"It’s over 50% so on average this is not true." Curious on what basis bigger than 50% share of income constitutes non-exploitation? For example if there is one owner and 1000 employees.
    - Retric 4y ago
      You can exploit workers without receiving 51% of the resulting income. Also, that figure is before you consider the vast tax advantages of investing.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      Who said that the exploited labor had to be in your country? Does everyone have collective amnesia about Nike’s SE Asian sweatshops, or the hazardous working conditions in Bangladeshi garment factories that manufacture the most of our cheap fashion (the most glaring example being the Tazreen Fashion factory fire [0]). Someone, somewhere is getting screwed out of fair wages for the corporation to make its profits. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...
- nkrisc 4y ago
  Seems like the natural conclusion of capitalism to me.
bryan0 4y ago
This article is kind of a mess, but if you get to the end you learn yes these cases were found to be illegal in arbitration hearings. Unfortunately they were not allowed to proceed with a class action lawsuit because of arbitration rules, so they would need to fight it one at a time.
- gcanyon 4y ago
  To me, there's a world of difference between "lost at arbitration" and "is illegal." I'm saying that the rules should be clear-cut up front. To draw a comparison with another company that skirts this line: if Uber required drivers to take customer service classes before allowing them to drive people around, and especially if the drivers had to pay for those classes, that, to me, should be illegal. When you hire a gardener to mow your lawn, you don't get to specify whether they use a Greenworks or Black & Decker mower. Or require that they pay you to train them how to trim your junipers. In this situation, the law should be clear up front that this sort of relationship is disallowed, such that the circumstance never occurs to go to arbitration.
- essentialfloss 4y ago
  These arbitration rules superceding class action is a fairly new phenomenon, and stems from an att v concepcion. A guy I met clerked for a judge that decided that case, and wrote most of the decision and he said that he regretted it enormously. Despite just being the mouthpiece of his pos judge, he sees his words quoted over and over denying exploitation. The whole premise is insane, and guts class actions.
- londgine 4y ago
  isn't that good for employees and bad for the employer? Each employee can do the same exact arbitration, and win. The employer, rather than wasting lawyers for 1 class action, now must pay for each individual arbitration
  - essentialfloss 4y ago
    Arbitration does not have precedent, so each case has to be argued separately and can have different outcomes. On top of that burden and can have fee-shifting provisions that set a significant hurdle to pay upfront costs on the employee. Class action waivers are bullshit.
retrac 4y ago
It might be illegal. Some US states (and my province in Canada) have labour laws where your employer generally cannot require you to pay expenses for equipment necessary to do the job. (Someone who brings their equipment to do the job is a contractor, not an employee.) Many jurisdictions also require that required job-specific training be paid. This issue came up a lot with work from home during the pandemic. Did your power bill go up from running your employer-provided hardware at home? In some jurisdictions, they have to compensate you even for that.
- t0mas88 4y ago
  These employees are all contractors on paper. Probably to get around the rules you mention.
  - retrac 4y ago
    Such machinations often do not hold up, legally. If the employer simply declaring that the employee is a contractor made them a contractor, all minimum wage employees would be contractors, probably. There's usually a definition or test, either in statute or case law. In my jurisdiction, whether you have a boss or supervisor is a major factor. Contractors are given a specific task to complete and then they go do it. If you're getting daily monitoring or tasks assigned throughout the day, you're probably an employee. Like with not paying minimum wage or illegal deductions, employers often get away with it. The power imbalance is very large for such workers, and even when enforced the fines are often just a cost of doing business. In Ontario, Canada there's a couple billion dollars in unpaid wages every year, and hundreds of investigations for wilful wage nonpayment by managers, yet there has been exactly one jail sentence for it, in the last twenty years. With odds like that, I might steal too!
    - joe-collins 4y ago
      And then there's Uber et al. . . .
    - nikanj 4y ago
      The test is "who can afford more lawyers"
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Very unethical for companies to not disclose this information as well. I would pay extra for customer support if I was sure that it was going to the company's actual employees than some for-hire disposable contract workers.
- cudgy 4y ago
  So long as the workers are paid fairly and treated reasonably (which of course these Arise employees were not), why does it matter if they are actual employees? Actual employees can be treated poorly too.
  - neon_electro 4y ago
    Employees have meaningfully different recourse available to them compared to contractors when it comes to labor disputes.
madsbuch 4y ago
feels a bit like when the industry is calling for university graduates - do 5 years (Denmark, standard) of studying to maybe qualify for a job. This is hard. who should shoulder required competence? (I understand that it is general competence said person received, not organization specific)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ec109685 4y ago

At the very least, immoral. Shameful companies support this exploitation.

buildbot 4y ago

Not a lawyer, but in washington at least I am pretty sure this would be straight up illegal.

fragmede 4y ago

What a perversion of capitalism!

bfgoodrich 4y ago
[dead]
techhazard 4y ago
This is no perversion of capitalism. Companies have only one responsibility: to increase profits to the shareholders. All other responsibilities have to be legally enforced; stuff like worker safety, food safety, minimum wage, 8-hour workday, no child labour etcetera. These are all things companies will gladly ignore if it profits them. Minimum wage in this case, through a loophole of payback.
- Stratoscope 4y ago
  Of course a corporation has responsibilities to its shareholders. But increasing profit never has to be the only responsibility. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... (https://archive.vn/ARcc3 https://archive.vn/ARcc3) > Corporations Don’t Have to Maximize Profits > There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.” You will find many more citations with a search like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=is+a+corporation+obligated+to+maximize+profit https://www.google.com/search?q=is+a+corporation+obligated+t... I personally know executives in food manufacturing/preparation companies, both public and private, who gladly pay close attention to worker safety, food safety, and all the things you say a company would do only if forced by law. They do it because they know it's the right thing to do. And it helps them recruit and retain employees, and keep their customers happy and coming back for more. Their shareholders support them in this and would complain very loudly if the company ever put pure profit above all other goals. And they definitely don't view the line workers as resources to be exploited. They view them as their colleagues.
- b112 4y ago
  Companies have only one responsibility: to increase profits to the shareholders. Yes, and those companies exist in a society, and long term planning is vital for long term profits, and that is 100% sensible and correct operating procedure. Treating employees poorly can effect the ability to hire, and retain good people. It can effect consumers' desire to buy your products. It can result in unions, and the passing of laws, and therefore red tape. So even if you have a dim view, re corporate responsibility, it matters not, for that role has larger scope than "profit this second". And beyond this? All corporate decisions are made by people, and those people have every right to make moral decisions.
- astrange 4y ago
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Rather, this is capitalism working as intended. Most wealth in capitalism is built on the backs of exploited labor somewhere.
- astrange 4y ago
  Labor share of income in GDP: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG It’s over 50% so on average this is not true. But it nearly became true in 2008; turns out the Great Recession was bad. The trend after that is somewhat positive. Though a problem with “exploited” is it’s zero sum thinking and doesn’t include customer surplus. If you get life saving surgery, you could say it has infinite value to you. If the surgeon asks for an infinite price, they’re exploiting you. If they don't, since you are therefore getting infinite unpaid value, are you exploiting them? nb the people in this article are certainly being exploited, this is covered in theory under “monopsony”…
  - FpUser 4y ago
    >"It’s over 50% so on average this is not true." Curious on what basis bigger than 50% share of income constitutes non-exploitation? For example if there is one owner and 1000 employees.
  - Retric 4y ago
    You can exploit workers without receiving 51% of the resulting income. Also, that figure is before you consider the vast tax advantages of investing.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Who said that the exploited labor had to be in your country? Does everyone have collective amnesia about Nike’s SE Asian sweatshops, or the hazardous working conditions in Bangladeshi garment factories that manufacture the most of our cheap fashion (the most glaring example being the Tazreen Fashion factory fire [0]). Someone, somewhere is getting screwed out of fair wages for the corporation to make its profits. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...
nkrisc 4y ago
Seems like the natural conclusion of capitalism to me.

bryan0 4y ago

This article is kind of a mess, but if you get to the end you learn yes these cases were found to be illegal in arbitration hearings. Unfortunately they were not allowed to proceed with a class action lawsuit because of arbitration rules, so they would need to fight it one at a time.

gcanyon 4y ago
To me, there's a world of difference between "lost at arbitration" and "is illegal." I'm saying that the rules should be clear-cut up front. To draw a comparison with another company that skirts this line: if Uber required drivers to take customer service classes before allowing them to drive people around, and especially if the drivers had to pay for those classes, that, to me, should be illegal. When you hire a gardener to mow your lawn, you don't get to specify whether they use a Greenworks or Black & Decker mower. Or require that they pay you to train them how to trim your junipers. In this situation, the law should be clear up front that this sort of relationship is disallowed, such that the circumstance never occurs to go to arbitration.
essentialfloss 4y ago
These arbitration rules superceding class action is a fairly new phenomenon, and stems from an att v concepcion. A guy I met clerked for a judge that decided that case, and wrote most of the decision and he said that he regretted it enormously. Despite just being the mouthpiece of his pos judge, he sees his words quoted over and over denying exploitation. The whole premise is insane, and guts class actions.
londgine 4y ago
isn't that good for employees and bad for the employer? Each employee can do the same exact arbitration, and win. The employer, rather than wasting lawyers for 1 class action, now must pay for each individual arbitration
- essentialfloss 4y ago
  Arbitration does not have precedent, so each case has to be argued separately and can have different outcomes. On top of that burden and can have fee-shifting provisions that set a significant hurdle to pay upfront costs on the employee. Class action waivers are bullshit.

retrac 4y ago

It might be illegal. Some US states (and my province in Canada) have labour laws where your employer generally cannot require you to pay expenses for equipment necessary to do the job. (Someone who brings their equipment to do the job is a contractor, not an employee.) Many jurisdictions also require that required job-specific training be paid. This issue came up a lot with work from home during the pandemic. Did your power bill go up from running your employer-provided hardware at home? In some jurisdictions, they have to compensate you even for that.

t0mas88 4y ago
These employees are all contractors on paper. Probably to get around the rules you mention.
- retrac 4y ago
  Such machinations often do not hold up, legally. If the employer simply declaring that the employee is a contractor made them a contractor, all minimum wage employees would be contractors, probably. There's usually a definition or test, either in statute or case law. In my jurisdiction, whether you have a boss or supervisor is a major factor. Contractors are given a specific task to complete and then they go do it. If you're getting daily monitoring or tasks assigned throughout the day, you're probably an employee. Like with not paying minimum wage or illegal deductions, employers often get away with it. The power imbalance is very large for such workers, and even when enforced the fines are often just a cost of doing business. In Ontario, Canada there's a couple billion dollars in unpaid wages every year, and hundreds of investigations for wilful wage nonpayment by managers, yet there has been exactly one jail sentence for it, in the last twenty years. With odds like that, I might steal too!
  - joe-collins 4y ago
    And then there's Uber et al. . . .
  - nikanj 4y ago
    The test is "who can afford more lawyers"

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Very unethical for companies to not disclose this information as well. I would pay extra for customer support if I was sure that it was going to the company's actual employees than some for-hire disposable contract workers.

cudgy 4y ago
So long as the workers are paid fairly and treated reasonably (which of course these Arise employees were not), why does it matter if they are actual employees? Actual employees can be treated poorly too.
- neon_electro 4y ago
  Employees have meaningfully different recourse available to them compared to contractors when it comes to labor disputes.

madsbuch 4y ago

feels a bit like when the industry is calling for university graduates - do 5 years (Denmark, standard) of studying to maybe qualify for a job. This is hard. who should shoulder required competence? (I understand that it is general competence said person received, not organization specific)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]