Employee Contract Illegal it is Labor Slavery
I have been working as a clinical social worker treating clients in poverty for the better part of 17 years. Little did my clients know, I was in poverty as well, and even, for a time, I went to work as a clinical family psychotherapist from my tent in the woods.
Perhaps your biggest clue is right there. If you've been working with the poor for 17 years and are earning below the poverty line IN A GOVERNMENT JOB where salaries are given a minimum and maximum and raises are given even if you're a lousy employee then you really are too stupid to have this job. For instance, I went to
the Idaho compensation page. I clicked on the link that listed the various jobs and their classification and discovered that "social worker" is a "K". Then I went to the
Pay Schedule page and scrolled down to "K". Lo and Behold! I find that a social worker, even one who is such a freakin doofus that they're earning only 70% of the
average of $23.70 is $16.59 an hour, well above minimum wage. I found this through a very simple google search and I don't even have a degree in social work. If it were me, I'd print the information out and take it to the labor relations board along with my pay stubs showing my slave wages. Get a good lawyer because if this has been going on for 17 years you could potentially be owed a whole lot of back pay.
I am one of many in poverty in the social work profession since Idaho began to privatize social services in about 1988. By 1995 they had set up private employers and agencies that pay social workers and non social workers as contractors for limited functions such as writing and face to face contacts in psychotherapy while keeping us on site at their disposal as slaves, answering phones, providing supervision, going to meetings, furnishing office and travel to clients homes at our own expense. If our work is late due to personal crises or illness we have to do it for free. I complained to the state senate, the health and welfare committee, the Idaho licensing board, the Idaho department of employment, senators and congressmen both state and federal and got nothing but the run around. Then I was fired.
Well, see above. You worked for the government. Even if you sat around making paper clip sculptures they still had to pay you a certain wage. It looks like the contractors were doing all the work while you were "supervising". Hell, call a lunch meeting with the other slackers and go out for Chinese food, bet you could even do that on the government tab. But, I think we've gotten to the REAL crux of the matter...you called in "sick" SO much you and were such an uber-slacker, you actually got fired from a government job! Congratulations! That's damn hard to do.
You see this is cheap labor,and who wants to pay for taking care of people at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Even the National Association of Social Workers turns their back to the poverty of their own professionals who pay for their very existence. I write them and they don’t respond. Yet they throw their noses in the air and speak ceaselessly about the “social injustice of poverty in the US†and they don’t, in all actuality give a damn for anything but their own glory and position as self appointed heroes of the marginalized members of society. In the same gesture, they walk across the bodies of their fallen colleagues without shame, guilt or even a second thought.
Doesn't matter WHO you're taking care of or what your "job" entails. If an entry level social worker, the guy the holds the stop/slow sign at road construction sites, and the accounts payable clerk in the county lawn maintenance division are at salary level "K", you'll all make the same thing. Maybe if you were that good and that valuable, you should have become a private contractor since they were making all the money. Why waste your time sitting at a desk, when those providing the REAL help to the poor (which is what you claim is most important) our private people in the field. Apparently, you could kill two birds with one stone...make a living wage and help those most in need.
I have worked many 40 hour weeks and been paid for as little as 10 hours of work. I furnished my offices on my dime. I paid thousands for auto and gas expenses. I was considered an employee and subject to the same rules as any paid employee, but I was also on contract and â€only a contract worker†with no rights. The EEOC says this is illegal, but Idaho care about federal law? - now that is funny.
Okay, now I'm confused. I thought you were the one "on site", "answering phones", "supervising", etc., now you're a contract worker? And if you are, how could you be fired? They'd just stop using you. If you had to furnish your own office, you're an idiot and if you weren't turning in auto/gas expense sheets you're too stupid to earn even minimum wage. But, if you've kept copies of these, make sure your lawyer has copies as well. Even stupid people win big lawsuits.
In an environment of sexual harassment by my bosses and co-workers harassed me with meetings full of sexual jokes and innuendo, one relative of the boss going so far as to rub her nipples against me, a married man in the office, the boss and her step sister sitting on my lap. These conditions in and Idaho State sanctioned a social service company in Kamiah Idaho.
My, but we're hitting all the right victim buttons aren't we? Slave wages, sexual harassment (and you're a guy, too...well, a metrosexual). But, let me see if I've got this right...you belong to the party of free love and unlimited abortion and you're put off by sexual jokes? How about if you just man up and tell them not to tell those kinds of jokes when you're around?
But I was angry about the slave wages. Sex didn't bother me much. So,I went to an online Attorney site while researching the billable hour verses employee issue. I paid for a lawyer to chat with me and she said that under federal law, Idaho can't require an individual to be both an employee and a contract employee at the same time. I am both and was just fired after bringing it and all of this to their attention and set up for false charge of sexual harassment for saying an employees Neice was attractive (not in her presence).
Ah, I get it. They fired you but said you could keep your name in the pool of contract workers even though they planned on never calling you again.
Anyway, Per what I see in federal law, Idaho is a violation of federal standards to classify employees as both employees and contract workers in order to place them inthe positi in the position of staying on site unpaid waiting for the next client when clients don't show up or they are conveniently scheduled hours apart.
Good-frickin-christ...why didn't you just leave! Sheesh!
Also, since the EEOC requires a contract employee, whose employer is receiving federal money, to be paid for at least 4 hours if forced by any circumstance to be on site to see another contracted client later, that means employers are also subject to paying the contract employee for at least 4 hours if he came in for one hour alone. This has not been the case for any employee I know of in my 16 year tenure with various private agencies.
Wow. I'm confused again...you worked for the government, you were fired, you were a contract employee, you worked for a different company...huh? Why not just leave after your 4 hours and tell them to call you if something comes up. Go home and spruce up the tent, it'd probably make your wife happy to have you help around the house...uh campsite.
An attorney could not believe that Idaho pulled this off and told me that I, and all others in the same situation, should sue every employer for which they have worked under this system for back wages. She said it appears that the state of Idaho made up its own policy and law in conflict with established federal employment and contract law. She said it is a fraud and it is illegal, because all federal and all EEOC law does trump all state employment.I have for at least 12 years been trying to get this issue on the table, but the state of Idaho has blown me off.
She told you should sue...did she offer to take your case? Did she recommend a law firm that specializes in work issues? Because no lawyer is going to miss the opportunity to take on a case like this...imagine what the labor unions could do with this! Why is it that you guys ALWAYS but ALWAYS are the most put upon victims, have the best legal case in the whole history of labor relations according to some lawyer, but never seem to find a lawyer to take your case or get any resolution. Maybe you should check the political affiliation of those in the government, you know the real power guys. If they have an "R" behind their name, call the press. This could be the next Katrina...helpless government employees who only want to help the poor living in tent cities because they aren't able to help themselves because the government keeps them down and won't even buy them a desk, a tent, or provide a school bus to get back and forth to work in.
Cindie