CrowdFlower Lawsuit Could Change Crowd Labor Industry Forever

Why does the WP post not cite the court case?

 

That's why no-one should be solely dependent on Turking. Just like when you're taught or instilled at a young age to put education first. Because job-security carries a heavy weight now days and working for someone else, can never guarantee 100% job security. Use Mturk as a side source of income and learn how to venture out and make money in other ways besides "crowdsourcing." I certainly make a lot of extra cash from simply flipping things on craigslist. Did you know there's people who make a whole living on craigslist? Import from liquidators, sell at flea markets. Ebay/Amazon also offer many other services for you to make money. But most importantly, if you like CrowdSourcing learn the ropes of the game and crowdsource. Because a lawsuit can affect virtual platform crowdsourcing websites, but it won't ever stop anyone from making money behind a computer.

Heck if I was to worried about job security with crowdsourcing, I would invest in a good push mower, zero turn, trimmer, leaf blower, and and go to work. But I don't categorize crowdsourcing as a "prime" income. Just venture out, the world is filled with money.

 

An Employee is a person who is hired to provide services to a company on a regular basis in exchange for compensation and who does not provide these services as part of an independent business.

I don't just work for Crowdflower, I work for who I want, at a time of my choosing. You know, an independent contractor.

Case dismissed.

 

I don't consider myself an employee of these companies and would not expect any benefits. I do think it's disgusting when they don't pay at least minimum wage or near it for a HIT. If they were to hire an employee to do these tasks at minimum wage, they'd be paying $14-20/hour because of taxes and benefits. They're already saving a ton by having us do the work, the least they could do is give us minimum wage or something near it based on average completion time. Personally, I just don't bother doing tasks that don't pay around minimum wage or above. Unfortunately, that keeps me from doing most tasks.

If it's determined that we're "employees" of these companies, they will just hire traditional employees and none of us will be turking.

 

If it's determined that we're "employees" of these companies, expect more lawsuits (possibly class action) to follow for back pay at minimum wage. This lawsuit is just the foot in the door.

I expect we will be affirmed as ICs, but you always plan as best you can for every option.

 

If we are employees, then they can start paying a good chunk of my social security and other taxes so I don't have to at the end of the year. Wait, they don't do that...I'm not an employee.

 

I forgot to mention if this loony won this lawsuit, I failed to mention it will bite him two days later. He claims to be making only $2.-$3. an hour? Why? Because he didn't want to put forth the effort that everyone else does to earn "over" minimum wage? Sounds like lazy person hoping for a big check. Even if you did get a big check, you know the law of nature. Your cars going to blow up two days later on the way to your "real" job, you're going to have a major household problem, and liable to lose 10,000 in some malicious way. Lifes setup so you get what you deserve. You think your going to sue your way through life, try again.

 

Because you aren't being paid a wage, whether high or low. The low payment for each hit is what allows the system to exist.

 

What does them being reliant on us to get their work done have anything to do with it? You could be paid to sit around and do nothing all day by an employer who didn't need your help to do anything. You'd be an employee, but not one that the employer relies on.

 

I believe the same way. If all the jobs were paying $10.00 an hour then 40% of the United States would be Turking. Do you know what happens when you have that kind of population increase in a crowdsourcing platform? Unless you have 40% more requsters coming in, which is highly unlikely, than you're going to be able to complete 1/4th the amount of hits. Then someone's going to complain or compare Mturk to the other crowdsourcing sites because there won't be as much opportunity. Would you rather have a website where your able to make $10.00 an hour, but can't get an hours worth of hits a day because of population?

It's very, very simple. If you don't like the pay? Go get a job? Mc. Donalds is hiring 7-days a week. I retract that statement, because if you complain about the pay to low, while you sit at home and and crumbs and cookies, than I'm sure you would be a complainer at Mc. Donalds. And if you complain about working at Mc. Donalds, I'm sure your going to complain about any other real job. Moral of the story, quit complaining, go pick up a shovel, some boots, and put 10 hours straight on the farm in the Texas 105 degree heat. Better yet, quit being a disgrace to society by the definition of greed. Aren't any of us "forced" into crowdsourcing. Many of us choose it because we either A.) like working on the computer all day or B.) we enjoy the CONVENIENCE. If you want to make a big paycheck, go get an education, and utilize it. However, I forgot, if your the one to complain about the pay of crowdsourced labor, that you're not forced to participate in, then I'm sure that you would not be able to make it through a higher education program. Better yet, take a flight to Africa and see the kids starving and listen to their bellies growl while you cry and complain more than my four year old.

It's simple, if your not happy with the pay, don't work on it. If it wasn't for the low pay, than we definitely wouldn't see 300,000 hits posted to Amazon in one day. If I had a 10,000.00 project and was required to pay people $9.00 an hour, guess what? I'll just hire someone with a little more professionalism rather than letting someone online whom I don't know from a man on the moon, do my work.

See my point?

 

Consider this scenario: They would end up with a broiler room filled with the same employees. However there would be a heavy turnover because this type of job would never garner loyalty. And the same employees couldn't be relied on to do the HITs all the time. Then you have a sort of type casting for answers. In the end the broiler room might end up sending out surveys or making phone calls and seeing what info they could collect from people for free or for pennies on the $ while they make minimum wage. It would be like the arrangement you get if you are picked to wear the Arbritron monitor. There appears to be a broiler room operator that keeps tabs on you and the info the monitor sends back while you are thrown a few bucks to wear the darn thing.

Short story is it would cost a lot more to make a complete circle if any of that makes any sense.

 

Does make sense.

And as from the researchers perspective. "I post a research survey, that needs 25,000 responses." Does that mean I have 25,000 employee's I need to do paper work on for my ten cent survey?

 

Why do you expect to get paid any "wage" for taking a survey or tagging photographs? What job is out there where you can expect to be hired on a full salary just for answering personal questions about yourself all day? Or tagging photographs? Or writing in titles for porn clips?

This is what I don't understand about people who keep talking about minimum wage. They actually think that the tasks that they do on mturk constitute a "real job," when some of the tasks don't qualify as "real work" (like taking surveys) or they're not doing the work of a salaried employee.

What do I mean by that (work of a salaried employee)? There's no such thing as a job where you get paid a salary just for doing one task the entire day. As a hired employee, you would be doing a multitude of different tasks throughout the day.

For example, say Tagasauris or Netmsi hired you as an employee. As an actual worker getting paid a salary, you wouldn't just be tagging photos. You'd also probably be doing other things for them, such as answering phones, distributing mail, making copies, and filing things away. That's what a "real job" is like. It's not, "Pay me a salary just to tag photos all day." It's, "We'll pay you a salary to tag photos, but you'll also have to answer the phones once in awhile, work the front desk, and even send out faxes."

Not even fast food employees who get paid minimum wage have the luxury of coming into work just to flip burgers. They have to cook the food, serve it, clean the tables, etc. Or salespeople. If you're a salesperson, you don't just stand there all day and sell things. You will also be fixing merchandise on the shelves, prepping your counter, and in some places, even cleaning up the store after it closes.

So if people want to ask whether a hit pays fairly, that's one thing. But talking about whether a hit pays minimum wage is ridiculous. Turking is not like a real job. It will never be like a real job.

 

Ohh, oohh! I've been looking into that, because I have some extra cash flow from the technical stuff I do and want to make that money work for me.

 

The only problem I have with that statement is I've seen many tasks where if the setup was better we could do the work at a much higher rate and possibly better accuracy. What we are doing now is poorly thought out brute force labor.

 

Wow! This is an argument I find fascinating. I guess it is the unemployment issue we face that we are arguing about it. I don't know if it still goes on. It must. Someone has to do the final stages of real product review, not just what we see here. But years ago when going to the mall was really "in" agencies set themselves up in certain malls across the country and bothered people as they shopped. Most ran from them but they could get a few. Those few knew their secret. They paid a few cents or bucks for answers. Just do the survey and "we will pay for your answers". My X turned me on to them. I did them. It paid for the lunches I so liked to "do" while shopping. Usually cash. And sometimes you got lucky. It was a big one that could get you bigger bucks if you followed thru with jumping thru more hoops. Maybe $50 to $75. If I qualified I did them. They were a few extra cents or dollars and fun.

That is all this is. Just a sophisticated offshoot of that. Except they can't see us and don't get to profile like they did in the mall. We didn't argue about what they paid us. If it was too low then you told them no, you didn't have time, maybe next time. It was their quota. Not your problem. They had to fast talk you into it.

Times are tough now. We will utilize every way we can to make money and hopefully we are using legal ways. This one is legal. Leave it alone. Those of us who like spending the day in front of our computer like doing this. Don't mess with our enjoyment and don't mess with our fun. Period.

 

I don't feel that we should be classified as employees unless you are doing a substantial amount of work for one requester, I.E. a private batch.

I do however feel that some of the requesters take advantage of the amount of work we do. Part of that, as an entire community, being our fault for continuing to do the work for such little pay. I do not think this will change, however, because these crowdsourcing companies know that we will do an entire batch of .10 cent hits at a much quicker rate than any employee in the work place would do it because we are paid by the hit and not by the hour.

Unfortunetly I don't see any hope for that guys case and I don't see too much happening to change crowdsourcing

 

If you are only doing surveys all day long, then I would agree with you.

But there is other sort of work here - writing assignments, compiling information for directories on restaurants, schools and the like... it is disingenuous to compare all of Turk to the public research firms that (used to) hang out in malls. Quite a bit of Turk is distributed office work that someone would have been doing as a paid hourly job in the recent past.

 

That's beside the point. It isn't set up "better". It's set up the way it is by someone who's job it is to decide that, and as such, we aren't employees/wage earners. Nor do we make as much money as we would if it were set up "better". If you want to complain to their supervisor about them doing a lousy job at deciding, go ahead.