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Amazon Prime Now Delivery Drivers Sue Over Classification As Contractors (itworld.com)
itwbennett writes: A proposed class-action suit filed by 4 delivery drivers for the app-based Amazon Prime Now service alleges that the company misclassifies its workers as contractors when the terms the drivers follow 'fit many of the hallmarks that would classify them as employees,' according to Leonard Carder, the law firm representing the drivers. Among those terms: The drivers reported to and worked exclusively out of an Amazon warehouse, were scheduled to work fixed shifts during Amazon's Prime Now service hours, and were required to wear shirts and hats bearing the Amazon Prime Now logo and carry a smartphone preloaded with the app, according to the complaint.
Won't be long before the non-bipedal delivery drones complain about their classification.
My understanding is that this is how FedEx drivers work. They're all independent contractors with FedEx. They wear FedEx clothes, work a dictated schedule, etc., etc.
What IS the difference between a contractor and an "employee", really, aside from some legalese? In both cases you're agreeing to work for a company in exchange for money/benefits/etc.
Love sees no species.
Is there really any way they could be argued to actually be contractors, as opposed to obviously being employees
It's amazing to me that Amazon attempted this since it's very well settled law.
https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS99/rpt/olr/htm/99-R-0775.htm
http://archive.washtech.org/news/courts/display.php?ID_Content=381
It can't be the case that any of Amazon's lawyers approved this arrangement; they all would have argued strongly against it. What that implies is this is coming direclty from Fear'd Pirate Bezeo's own hand.
Amazon's board would be derelict if they didn't look into this most seriously. It calls into question Jefe's judgment and his ability to steer Amazon out of the red and into the black.
don't take the job.
It's a new service. It's a new opportunity. It is hardly as if the terms of employment have altered.
tone
serfs aren't employees.
They have uniforms that say independent contractor on them.
Real independent contractor can not be forced to use or buy uniforms.
The use of such contractors is not for flexibility, but for the fact that they fear their workforce.
If it's not good for employees to have such protections, why should employers?
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Such a statement reflects a deep lack of understanding of the job market.
When all the options are equally bad, such as with Amazon's permatemps, it's the same bad job with new clothes.
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Here in America we've based our entire quality of life on a social contract between employer and employee. If that breaks down then everything goes to shit. We're also a country whose legal system operates on presidence and not logic or reason. So once Amazon gets away with shirking their social and legal obligations to employees everyone else follows suit. The real world just isn't as simple as you want it to be...
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And I'm shocked that Amazon ever through they could call these people ICs.
They aren't remotely ICs in my view, and I've had both ICs and employees work for me over the years. The line seems rather clear.
This ruins things for all the people that DO like and prefer the contractor paradigm.
So, you're talking about a rare few set of people that have the luxury of preferring contractor work over more secure arrangements. The majority, also known as the Rest of Us, would rather see the contractor model DIAF and be nuked from orbit.
Contracting agencies have an overdue need to experience the fear that they have dispensed by virtue of contract renewals and blackballing. If they have to be sued to death, so be it. Let history know that they wrote their own death warrant by abusing their own position as intermediaries.
It is just fine if you don't want to work contracting....just don't, there are plenty of other jobs to be had and [ Inaccurate Libertarian Bromide Redacted ]. Why sign up and sue rather than just go somewhere else that hires you as a W2 user?
Force comes in more forms than your classical libertarian bromides. It also comes in the form of lopsided agreements and being able to pass down risk to people least able to handle it.
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You're employed by the company and the risk stays where it needs to be.
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Again, no big deal, this is one of the reasons contractors have MUCH higher bill rates than W2 employees. You figure this into the bill rate.
Which gets eaten up by the costs that a proper (read: non-agency) employer would be able to offset due to economies of scale. Strike 1.
As for retirement, you can set up IRA's or something like a solo 401K and load it up with money pre-tax....
Which also gets a lower standing versus conventional 401k's and pension agreements. In addition, the *SA's promote lower quality of care in the name of "consumerism".
These days...a W2 employee gets pretty much no loyalty from the company, nor any true stability...so, I figure if you're gonna be treated like a contractor, you might as well get the BILL RATE of a contractor.
As stated above, your expenses and health care options make it a worse-off option. You get none of the economies of scale, none of the stability, all of the risk, all of the hassle, and no net reward.
Then what happens if the contractor/agency work model is killed off in the name of sanity?
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Why should Amazon care? Nobody is going to stop shopping there. People just want their cheap shit, and don't care who they do business with. If most people could save $0.50 buying their toilet paper from known child rapists, they would.
I don't respond to AC's.
You hurt more for being a second-tier contractor.
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The major difference in most court cases is "who owns the tools". If you're driving your car and paid by piece or get paid a pass through hourly when you want to work, then you're a contractor. If your employer provides your tools or schedules your hours, than you're an employee. If you pick your hours but use the employer's tools, then you're generally part time. This is why barbers and dentists lease the chairs from the practice, so that they are "their own tools". There is still, obviously, the ability for the employer to exclude hours, which makes sense (contractor can't come fix the door during the lunch rush at a café) but there's a lot in "must work these hours" versus "must not work these hours."
Wow
The IRS defines who is a contractor and who is an employee. A contractor is not under the supervision or command of an employer. For example if you agree to be a delivery contractor the hours that you work are up to you, the clothing you wear is up to you etc.. The most usual case is in phone sales or so-called telemarketing where the employer provides a desk, a phone, leads or hours of access to the phones or regulates the break or meal periods of the so-called contractor. If any of those things exist the person is an employee and not a contractor. contractors may also be required to carry a business permit as well as business insurance and may not be allowed by local government to work from home. If a business is sued the very first question that will be asked is to show me the contract. Less than 1% of businesses that use the false label of contractor can produce a written contract. And if you wish to earn money answer the wanted ads and turn over every business to the IRS that wants to label you an independent contractor. You will get paid for these names. Also your state and county may reward you as the false claim also cheats Workman's Compensation and Unemployment Insurance and finally they may also be cheating the Federal retirement laws for employees that work for several years. The false claim of independent contractor is a form of fraud.
Whether it is high-skill or low skill, very few lines of work can be argued as "occasional services".
On the other hand, the misclassification is trying to fit everyone and everything in that box.
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Now that case would be open and shut in the UK under IR35 regulations regarding "disguised employees" I think. Although I'm also starting to think that it never got those teeth though that was its intention, and they only target you if you're working for Amazon as an Ltd and pay yourself minimum wage and take the rest as dividends - which carry a much lower tax burden; they want the tax different you skipped on by taking out dividends instead of salary.
Captcha: bights - IR35 bights, but not as hard as it could
Microsoft got sued by contract temp workers, who called themselves "permatemps", mostly positions like entry-level QA and so forth. Some of these people were contracted for years at a time, but because they were contracted, didn't get benefits, of course. So, after the lawsuit was settled (which was lauded as a huge victory for those workers), to stay within the letter of the law, Microsoft simply laid off all temp workers for a minimum of three months after a year of employment, or else those people wouldn't qualify as "temp" anymore. Recently, the rules were changed to 18-months on / 6-months off.
Sometimes you need to be careful what you ask for. Or at least, *how* you ask for it. Low-skilled workers don't exactly have a lot of collective bargaining power. They may end up with a worse deal than when they started.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Having re-read the article... I managed to read something into it that wasn't there. Sheesh, not enough coffee I guess.
#DeleteChrome
That these were the hallmarks of employee status:
Scheduled hours? company shirt/hat? An app on their phone?
Would these contractors prefer random shifts?
Ken
I suspect their 'fixed schedule' will evolve into 'random, unpredictable schedule', just to remind them they are contractors... Winning!
Ken
But I'm starting to see it done in fairly high skill (sys admin, programming, etc) jobs. I know it's popular to look down on blue collar folks and all, but when they're done with them they're coming for you next. The dragon can eat the hobbit in one gulp and you didn't get very far when you tripped him...
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Amazon is not the only company under fire under the Contractors rules. Many that sue win because the labor rules which have been in place a long time are pretty straight forward. Read them here at the IRS: https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Independent-Contractor-Self-Employed-or-Employee
I can't stand a company making as much money as Amazon makes that feels the need to steal money from American workers. Now you can argue that we have enough rules in place and this Fed rule is crazy. But if these rules were not in place you would see more businesses like Amazon screwing American workers. Maybe Amazon thought they could get away with this? Or they was out to see how long they could get away with it. I don't know but it does look like they are in violation of the contractor laws at the very least for the behavior rules. Which means all those drivers will loose their jobs. Amazon will have to rethink how to keep their money. FedEx broke the rules in the past so did Lowe's. Here is the Lowe's case which is very similar to the Amazon suit. http://www.law360.com/articles/466061/lowe-s-workers-win-class-cert-in-contractor-status-suit
Or you could mandate equal treatment of all workers. In my company in Australia there were plenty of permanent contractors. Some worked for contracting firms, others worked for themselves. They all had the same conditions, just the questions were who paid for them.
In the case of those who worked for themselves and contracted themselves out to the company they were still required by law to pay themselves annual leave, superannuation benefits, etc. Just because you're your own employee doesn't mean you get to screw yourself.
It was actually quite funny listening to people complaining about the amount of money being paid to these contractors without realising they spent a significant fraction of their wealth on their accountants.
Also, contractors should expect to be paid more from their client than an equivalent salaried employee........specifically to offset the price of benefits (and taxes and whatever else) that aren't being taken care of. If they don't negotiate a good rate to cover these expenses, then that's on them. If they go through a contracting firm, that firm should be covering those same benefits for them or not taking a significant cut beyond a placement fee.
It doesn't matter a bit who signs the pay check. What matters is who controls when, where, and how the work is done. Control is what matters under employment law.
If you contract with someone to have your house painted , they can hire helpers if they want to, they can use whatever tools they want, etc, and generally you pay for results- they get paid when the houee is painted. You don't care whether they work from 8AM to 3PM or noon to 8PM. The contract is "I pay $x,000, you get the house painted within 10 days."
If you have someone show up at 8:00, you hand them a roller, and tell them to start with the ceiling in the bedroom, and tell them to use the Scotch Blue tape, that's an employee.
Then take away the cost-dodge incentive and replace it with one that has them trying to compete with a default of direct-hire FTE. It would at least go for the jugular for the staffing industry and those that depend on it as an HR weapon/cost-dodge.
That is, an individual cannot be required, as a condition of beginning/continuing work, to take anything that is not a direct-hire FTE job of indefinite time (read: neither agency nor temp/contract). Sell it as increased freedom and flexibility.
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