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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.
I was working at the college bookstore warehouse when my boss quit his job to become a contract driver for RPS in the early 1990's. He was much happier being outside the warehouse, driving around and meeting new people. His route was from the station to businesses. Every once in a while he would stop by to deliver packages when the regular driver was off.
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.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When a company breaks the law, any contract you signed is non-binding.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck- it's a duck. It doesn't matter if you call it a contractor.
If amazon wants contractors then it needs to put the jobs up for bids, accept random contractors for a given job, be subject to occasional shortages, etc. Once it tries to "lock" the contractors into fixed hours and shifts- they are not contractors- they are employees.
It's really that simple.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
Unless people act to stop it, we'll continue to whittle away the middle class, the economy will go from stagnation to deflation and eventual collapse as the only driving force in the economy evaporates.
As the economic differential spreads and grows the dollar will decline in value and collapse just like it does in so many banana republics where there is only a poor and ultra rich economic class.
The US economy is entirely based on the spending of the middle class and poor, this spending accounts for near 80% of the economy. The wealthy and upper middle class spend almost nothing in comparison. As middle class wages have declined due to a complete halt to wage growth so has their spending. The economic stagnation that has affected the country since the 2008 collapse is the direct result of this erosion of middle class spending power. Without an intervention by the government and a policy like the capital tax proposed by Thomas Piketty including a sharp increase in minimum wages this is almost an inevitable result.
Fortunately if the millennials stick to the policies they appear to be supporting now we'll reverse the political damage of the aging baby boomers before we have a catastrophic economic collapse but until that happens we'll only experience economic stagnation and erosion of middle class spending.