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HP Contract Workers Sue For Recognition
manganese4 writes "The Idaho Statesman is carrying the story of 33 local Boise HP contract workers suing HP. They claim that they were expected to perform at the same level of expectations as HP workers and thus should be given the rights and privileges of HP workers. HP claims the suit is without merit." From the article: "The suit seeks to represent 3,000 workers in Boise and elsewhere in the company and could involve as much as $300 million, according to the complaint."
I'm pulling for these guys. Companies tend to have the nasty habit of using what they call contractors to get out of paying taxes and benifits that they really should be. If you go to the IRS website and look up the rules which are used to determine whether someone is an employee or contractor it's clear that rules are being broken.
I've had my share of contract and full-time work, and I guess I'm kinda weird, because I actually read my contract. If it doesn't say I get benefits, I don't expect benefits, If it says I will, I expect benefits. Am I going to be getting a 1099 or a W2 at the end of the year? Because one is typical of a contract employee and the other is a regular employee. Regular employees typically get benefits, and the company pays the taxes. Contract employees pay their own taxes and benefits.
Later Apple did hire me as an employee. At that point since I believed that I was an employee, pursuant to the previously signed statement I wrote a notice and tried to deliver it to Apple's legal department. They seemed completely flummoxed as to why I was notifying them that I was an employee.
Whats funny to me is that when Microsoft got sued for much the same reasons the response here was very much against the Redmond Giant. Now thats its another company the attitudes seem to have shifted against the contract workers. This is also a reason I will never again do temp work. I'd rather fish uneaten burgers out of the Burger King dumpster.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
While colloquially classified as "contractors," these individuals were not contract employees. They were full-time employees (W-2) of the contracting company, who in turn had a contract with the customer to provide a staffing service. The contract was with their employer -- not the employee directly.
The contractor vs. employee argument only comes into play when you're talking about true-blue contractors who work for a flat rate under a 1099, not W2 employees.
This was the situation in the famous Microsoft contractor vs. employee case. Contrary to common belief, the contractors were not the instigators in that case. It was the IRS who audited Microsoft and determined that they had incorrectly classified people as independant contractors as opposed to employees, and was therefore liable for back employment taxes (which, by the way, are paid if you're a W2 employee of a contracting company). The contractors then picked it up from there and demanded that, since the IRS classified them as employees, they were due the benefits give to full-time employees.
In my humble, and non-lawyerish opinion, this case is entirely without merit. They were employees of the contracting company, and were given a benefit package that they agreed upon by becoming employees.
I don't know about Boise, but in Colorado Springs, it was BAD. Employement opportunities got to be really scarce, no one was going to walk away from their jobs.
HP simply abused the situation. Looks like in Boise they are continuing to abuse a similar situation. This is more the contracting agencies and HP collaborating to screw people over en masse for profit, using dubious contracting methods. I've worked in the situation, and it is certainly NOT as cut and dried as this article makes it out to be.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
HP & Agilent terminated most of their IT departments and rehired them through an agency.
So HP deserves everything they get from this lawsuit. The previous posts about these guys
being asses and wrecking it for all other contractors, well, they don't know the real story. HP is as guilty as
Microsoft in this case.
I read a lot of comments from the field about how it's all about their contract and what's in it. And that's not really the issue here. Simply stating in a contract that a person is not an employee but a contractor doesn't make it so, even if both parties agree. What does matter however is the set of expectations the contracting party puts on the contracted one. Myself I'm a swimming coach and the club I worked for treated me very much like an employee while paying me like a contractor, I chose not to pursue legal action because it's a very small community we coaches travel in, and suing a non-profit childrens organization doesn't sit well with anyone. Instead I just jumped ship and got a better job elsewhere. Anyway, my research led me here: Employee vs. Independant Contractor Enjoy
I've had two positions (two different employers) where I worked on-site with government agencies. I worked side by side with regular government employees and other sub-contractors in both cases. Does that entitle me to full government benefits? I'd love to have some of the health and training benefits offered by government agencies.
In my opinion, contract employees should only receive the benefits offered to them by their employer, not the company or agency they may actually work at. If you don't like the benefits you have, then switch jobs. Companies/agencies hire contract workers for various reasons:
handle extra work
partnering with minority businesses
internal hiring practices may be too strict - hire/fire easier with contractor
cheaper labor rates due to competition between contractors - let's face it, some companies/agencies are "bloated" (i.e. unions, legacy business units from mergers, or whatever other reasons people's benefits/pay increase beyond similar rates by other companies)
I worked there as a contractor. I did not like being treated the way I was treated as a non-employee. There were certain meeting you couldn't go to, etc. (usually ceremonies, etc. - not secret information of any kind).
Anyway, I left because I didn't like it. They were real pissed when I left too. They tried to guilt me into staying by saying "But you signed a contract saying you will work here!". Of course the first paragraph of the contract said that I could leave anytime and they could fire me anytime. These idiots always want to have it both ways. Fuck em - I can find work elsewhere.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
If HP is found guilty then they are not the only ones who will go down for this. BellSouth is very guilty of this. At one point they fired most of their full time IT and development staff and hired Accenture to do most of their IT and development work. Here's the catch, Accenture went and hired all of the same people who were "fired". The same people who had been working the same job for five to fifteen years went right back to work at the same place sitting at the same desk. The only difference is they started getting their paychecks from a different company. Oh, and the other difference is, Accenture did not pay any overtime. Of course some people used the transition to their advantage and made use of their new employer but the whole thing seemed like a somewhat shady tax evasion thing. This happened during the tech bubble burst so people were happy just to have a job. It did seem insane to some people because now BellSouth was paying two to five times as much per resource. I figured it was a big shuffling of the corporate books. I did wonder how legal it was though. This case with HP could prove to be interesting......
No, nobody's being abused.
I was a contractor for ten years, and I've been a full-time employee for the last 12. As a contractor, I understood that I got an hour's pay for an hour's work. Period. I arranged my own vacation, insurance, and everything else that employees get as benefits. It was my job to ensure that my billing rate was high enough that I earned a good living after paying all those expenses, and I did. I earned a VERY good living, usually a lot better than my employee counterparts.
I quit contracting because I got tired of doing the lowest-level scut work that nobody else wanted, and now I earn a good living as an employee, but I have no illusions about loyalty or job security.
If I was abused by anybody, it was by the contract houses, who skimmed (or tried to, at least) an excessive amount of my raw billing rate as pure profit for them. Needless to say, when I found a contract house that treated me like I might actually know how the business works, I stuck with them.
Legal technicalities aside, I kind of side with HP on this. They entered into a good-faith agreement with the contractors, and both sides signed the contract. I think they should be told to obey the law from now on, but not be penalized for an honest mistake.
There are a lot of these lawsuits going around. Someone works salaried for 10 years, without complaining, with both the employee and the employer content with the situation and of the assumption that it is appropriate under the law. Then there is an unrelated dispute, and some lawyer shows up to demand tens of thousands in back overtime since the employee shouldn't have been exempt. It's a misapplication of the law, and it hurts everyone. Unless there is a record that someone didn't think they should be exempt, they shouldn't be able to sue for back wages.
Sure, the law defines what a contractor is, and companies should not be allowed to violate that. However, when someone willingly enters into a contract for specific compensation, they shouldn't be able to change the terms of the contract midway through and demand retroactive pay. It seems that our whole society is turning into vindictive, money-grubbing pricks who screw each other for a buck. Companies hate employees. Employees hate their companies. Customers hate the companies they buy from. Vendors hate their customers. All because some people have no integrity, and would rather make a little money they didn't earn than to be forthright, honest, and civil.
Then again, I might just be bitter.