NY Times Hpocritically IC'ing Workforce

Reader comment on: The Times Shell Game

Submitted by Geo Dowley (United States), Dec 20, 2011 20:03

The Times helped create a company a number of years ago, Publishers Fulfillment Corp. (or similar name), that does the same thing -- namely, employing de facto employees inappropriately classified as contractors. I knew someone who worked a second job delivering the Times 7 mornings a week starting at 3AM, and they were paid on a by-the-newspaper compensation basis (10 cents a paper), with deductions from that compensation to actually pay weekly *rent* for the table space they are *required* to assemble papers on. Contractors were told exactly how and in what spot to deliver each and every paper, if a customer ever complained (truthfully or not) that it had been lost or stolen. It sounded to me as if there was far less autonomy and far more supervisory intrusiveness than there is for the average supervised office or factory employee.

So pretending their delivery personnel are "independent" contractors doing a specific task their own way is ridiculous. It was just a way of the Times keeping their dying "woodpulp transportation" business model alive by offloading all of the overhead and FICA tax onto the (in reality) employees.

I emailed a Times reporter about that five years ago, when I fiurst heard about it -- a business section reporter who had actually written about IC scamming by companies. Have you guessed yet that there was zero response? See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

And to think people believe well-off leftists are hypocrites. Hard to believe, huh?

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