How a Gig Worker Revolt Begins

We need to keep shaming and airing publicly the very real human cost of lazy, greedy and exploitative companies and CEOs. We must make these CEOs famous as lacking any ethics, morals or basic conscience, shame and an embarrassing legacy seem to be the only guard society has against their bad behavior. More exposes, please. Thank you.

If they had marketable skills then they would not be transcribing for .30 cents per hour. It’s a low skill and therefore low wage job that I’m surprised is not being done offshore.

I’m so disappointed by this. I’ve been a pretty heavy rev user although I’d switched to the automated version for most of my needs. Occasionally I still need a high quality transcript. I’ll be using Trint for auto transcripts and the site set up by Mx Z for human ones in the future.

What I noticed on Rev's site of grateful workers was that they came from Missouri and Louisiana, not exactly bastions of supporting workers in any way. I don't know anyone who could survive on $15.00 an hour + pay for health care. This company should be very ashamed and kudos to the companies who are looking at this exploitation.

The problem is not a moral one, which most commentators seem to believe. That is revealed in phrases such as “the company/ceo/capitalism is evil,” “someone/government should do something,” or “customers should stop using the service.” Instead,as capitalism is designed, workers should simply stop working for companies until wages rise enough to meet the needs of workers. Employees should realize, however, that possessing no skill to offer in the marketplace results in a low wage. It is true that the services of Uber drivers and other gig workers is under priced. The problem doesn’t rest with Uber or the riders, but rather with the person willing to drive me across town in their nice car for only $2.00.

Rev absolutely knowingly pays below minimum wage, which itself is largely considered not a 'living wage' as it is. It's slave wages for which they have been called out on the Rev Forum for years, all the complaints falling on deaf ears. The Rev solution to the complaints and occasional work stoppages was to lower the pay even more and bring onboard new 'Revvers' who are either too naive to understand how little the pay per minute translates into or so desperate that even $4 an hour is better than nothing. Kudos to the clients who actually care that the people that do their work are not being exploited. If they utilize Rev, rest assured they are. When it takes a professional experienced transcriptionist 4 hours to do an hour of clear uncomplicated audio and you're paying them $18 for that 4 hours, that $4.50 per hour is slave wages. Many of the workers at Rev are newcomers making far less. Any customer with a conscience or sense of social responsibility needs to look elsewhere for their transcription services and not use the cyber sweatshop that is Rev. As another poster wrote, Transcription Essentials is a forum where companies can post their job opportunities (free of charge afaik) as long as the compensation is at least $1/audio minute (compared to Rev's insulting exploitative 30 cents compensation). That site also has lists of companies that fairly compensate their transcriptionists.

The miracle advance of the Internet allows the return to serfdom. Now, that what I call progress!

Get over it folks. This is how the gig economy - in fact, pure unchecked capitalism - works. Sure, the Ubers, Foodoras, Revs, etc. of this world paint themselves as liberating the worker, that workers are independent contractors, oh look how much you can make in just your spare time, and other such nonsense. Their business model, however, is premised upon exploitation and the top making off like bandits (the days of the company town are not so far behind us). Behind their splashy facades are the modern-day hucksters and mad men, but instead of snake oil they are selling a fantasy. A pox on them . . .

The Fed estimates there are about 75 million gig workers (more every year). I am one of them. Corporations are loathe to hire people, tax cuts or not. Unregulated contract work is undermining the middle class and our social cohesion. Why exactly are we fighting for an economic minority's right to own multiple homes instead of millions of people to own one or just have healthcare? And tell me what moderate Democrat will do anything for gig workers? Gigging is rewinding us from modern civilization to feudalism.

God forbid Rev raise its charges to pay for the expense of minimun-wage pay for its "contractors". No, the "contractors" have to take the hit so Rev can undersell competitors.

It's only a matter of time before the whole concept of trade unionism and collective bargaining gets rediscovered. We've had nearly 50 years of right wing propaganda decrying unions and claiming they were corrupt (about the same amount of time people were saying government is corrupt and useless). The rise of "right to work" law and anti-union legislation at the State level has taken its toll, but there is a spark of a reawakening now. The strong Union the good contracts have a greater impact on income disparities than any tax structure. Without them, all the abuse of workers will continue and the exploitation that marks the gig economy will just get worse.

I'm fortunate that Rover.com only charges me 15% for taking care of dogs thru their site.

I have been in a rage at home the past 2 years of semi retirement watching the Uber guy (Dari) and the WeWorks buy(Adam) and various food guys and analysts(ubereats, door dash, etc) telling me how great their plans were on CNBC. I KNEW they could not work, simple calculations told me they were lying, and now it turns out their IPO's went down the tubes and they have been exposed as lies. You can't short and IPO and I am not a wealthy guy but I get satisfaction seeming them crash and burn. I am sorry for the workers but now I may have less uninsured food delivery people speeding past my house with $10 orders and at the airports I will see less people causing around hoping for a ride. Lets get an infrastructure plan so we can pay people $15 an hour(far more than the net they make now) on REAL jobs that pay real money and provide benefits to society. Incredible crooks

Maybe, and hear me out, capitalism is just plain evil. Certainly one crazy radical, who threw over the tables of money changers, thought so.

Read Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville's description of similar workers and issues in 1856. Nothing has changed. The empathetic lawyer faces the same conflicts of emotions and self interest that liberals face today.

Why doesn't "Mx" Zilles simply take the initiative and find a better paying job? She is not obligated to Rev in any way.

Nothing new. I worked at a place where the rule was, if we made more than X for the week, the balance would be paid in bonuses to the staff at the end of the month. We started making double X every week, and at the end of the month, the company owner and his wife told us they changed their mind, not we had to make ripple X to get paid bonuses, then they left on a month long vacation to Florida and the Caribbean. I quit that job. So did every one else after a short while. It’s a simple carrot and stick play. You dangle the carrot and hit any one who dares to approach it. I would recommend that human to go get a real job, one that goes with its graduate student degree, although am sure that this whole non binary thing means it graduated with something that no one needs, like Gender Studies. Get a job.

These ridiculous gig work companies only work because of the recession. It's not a coincidence that they thrived during and right after the great recession but now as we close in on full employment, people are revolting at their slavery based economics. All of these gig companies are worthless.

Temp agencies in NYC are the same. although the agencies are receiving billions of dollars, the agencies are paying 15.00 an hour in New York City and apparently nothing can be done.

I worked for Rev for about two weeks. The pay was appalling and the quality of the jobs available to me made the pay rate far less than what would be available to me at minimum wage. Add in the unpredictable, often capricious, graders with zero interest or incentive to train the transcriptionists and I threw in the towel.

One thing the gig companies don't get is that a customer lost due to these scandals is a customer lost forever. After the Instacart scandal of not paying employees their tips, I stopped using instacart and realized it really wasn't the end of the world for me to swing by Costco after work - and when I did, I saw SIGNIFICANT savings compared to the inflated costs instacart charges per product to make money. Buying the exact same items was a difference of approximately $75 dollars - and that's not counting the tips they steal from their workers. You think these services are great and you can't live without them, till you do or see that the market is flooded with alternatives and try those out. If the parent companies had any sense of the long term, they'd see that they can't afford to trea their workers so poorly. But capitalism is never about the long-term.

I started out as a dictaphone typist (min. wage, $1.75 per hour) in 1972. It is appalling to see these hourly wage rates. It is not an easy job.

In 2017, I considered Rev and reached out to them: "Your company looks a bit top-heavy and I would like assurance that the people doing my transcriptions are not being exploited. I have a lot of audio to transcribe. Please confirm that those who actually do the work are fairly compensated." They wrote back: "We appreciate your concern regarding transcriber compensation. It is also important to us that our transcribers are compensated fairly for their work. That's why we base project pay on the length and complexity of each file. We provide pay amounts before a transcriber even claims a project, and allow them the opportunity to preview the job before committing to it, so they can decide if the project and pay are right for them." The non-answer has haunted me ever since. Another black mark for the so-called gig economy.

The article has a key solution in it: Zilles is starting an alternative. There is nothing about Rev that prevents other from offering a competitor that would pay better, except Rev's marketing of its products to paying clients. Go around them. They've got nothing.

The gig economy originated as a way to soak up hours "wasted" (one's opinion of waste varies widely) on the equivalent of "cat videos" after working a day job, and has morphed into a way to earn a full time living. This is the root of the dis-association of pay scales. Of course there will be bottom fishers, but they depend on fish at the bottom of the pond. If rev.com got such poor quality transcribers that clients fled, they would need to pay more. I don't see rev.com changing, so flee the platform if the pay is too low, the entry point as a remote transcriber is very low. The only reason the owner of rev.com responded is that his business is dead without workers, the objective is to mollify the workers just enough to stay in business [i.e., keep his salary coming in. Hix [sic] isn't in business for Mx's health.].

I was a transcriber for over a year. There is a forum, Transcription Essentials, that kinda acts as a pseudo-union by collectively advocating for companies to pay at least $1.00 per audio minute. Companies that pay below that are not allowed to post about job openings. It’s the largest forum for transcription so it’s a great resource for companies to find experienced professionals to hire. Rev is not allowed to post and members advise people NOT to work with them. There are a lot of companies that are trying to exploit our labor. Without that forum I probably wouldn’t have been empowered to seek higher paying contracts. I was usually paid $1.25 per minute, which means I could make up to 25/hr. It is not easy work and we should be paid accordingly.

"Comrade" is a better gender non-specific. We should all use it rather than keep adding these infernal additions to Mr. Miss Mrs Ms and now Mx. I would also be OK with "Citizen," if the Marxist associations of "comrade" are too burdensome. We could get this down from 5 (and counting) alternative forms of address to 1 in no time.

We fought a civil war over slavery - and banned the practice. Why are slave wages still permitted?

At a certain point, unilaterally changing someone's pay rate is bait and switch. Wouldn't give to a charity that had that kind of overhead. Why why would working for one make any more sense unless you were a recipient of that overhead? It's a trust issue, and your own livelihood is what is at stake and not a charitable donation.

Uber takes more than 25%. Check with any driver. They can show you the figures. Uber used to take only 25% but unilaterally changed the amount that was divided.

The pendulum has swung too far: 1. in favor of capital vs. labor, 2. too far in favor of 0.01% vs. everyone else 3. too far in favor of business vs. workers We need Warren/ Sanders to bring pendulum back to the middle. They only look extreme in the context of how far the pendulum has swung the other way.

This case shows the need for a much simpler federal test for determining who is an employee and who is a contractor. When a company hires "contractors" around the world, it is impossible for any state to enforce its labor protection laws. The standard could be as simple as: 1. Work is assigned by the company; and 2. The pay rate is determined by the company. In that case, the time spent on each job would be treated as employment and subject to minimum wage, workers compensation, and other labor laws. Unfortunately, the current president and Senate are not interested.

Mx Ziles is free to ask to be referred to in whatever manner they want and I fully support their right to self-determination but I could not understand this article. The necessity to cognitively adjust my understanding of the words they and their throughout the article so that I could follow the explanation was too difficult and since this is something I'm reading in my spare time I don't have a reason to parse and study the text in detail. Good luck with whatever this article is about.