Slashdot Mirror
"Micro-Gig" Sites Undermining Workers Rights?
Mystakaphoros writes "An article in The Atlantic examines the effects sites like TaskRabbit, Fiverr, and Rev.com are having on employment and freelancing. (I would add Amazon's Mechanical Turk to the list as well.) As the article mentions, 'Work is being stripped down to the bone. It's as if we're eliminating the 'extraneous' parts of a worker's day — like lunch or bathroom breaks — and paying only for the minutes someone is actually in front of the computer or engaged in a task.' How many Slashdotters have used these sites, either to hire or work? What's been your experience?"
MOST STATES do not require breaks or lunch periods for employees. Or vacation, holiday, sick pay, insurance, minimum hours, max hours, etc...
Irrelevant, since these people are NOT employees. They are contractors. When I use Mechanical Turk to farm out work (and I often do) the Turkers set their own hours, they use their own equipment, they are free to work on other jobs, etc. Those criteria make them contractors, not employees. USA labor law is further irrelevant since very few of these people are based in the US. Most of the Turkers I have worked with are in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh).