primitives bash Idaho social services

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=224x3814

Oh my.

Now the primitives are picking on Idaho.

Help_I_Live_In_Idaho (424 posts)       Wed Sep-02-09 05:10 PM
Original message
 
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.

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.

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.

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 ”only a contract worker” with no rights. The EEOC says this is illegal, but Idaho care about federal law? - now that is funny.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

And the Idaho Department of Employment has refused to help me (and many others with the same problem) by saying "it is a civil matter." The attorney says, it is not, and never will be, a civil matter, but it is fraud by the state of Idaho. (The word racketeering comes to mind - 17 years of it). By refusing to address it I believe they (the state and the employers) are negligent and can be sued. But, the big issue is that they are subject to human rights violations that would be pursued by the United States Department of Employment and the Equal Opportunities Employment Commission (EEOC).

I have been given similar and slightly differing accounts by attorneys saying this is tyranny for years. But, it always came down to them saying "this is really bad, but we don't have the resources or money to confront the whole state of Idaho." And they complain that they "would be attacked without cease by business interest groups in the State and in the right wing of the congress." Bottom line, it has always been swept under the rug, because it would open up such a quagmire and result in endless infighting.

Now the quagmire is disintegrating. Now the tables of the political climate are turning, and the wheels are already rolling. It is just a matter of time before contract employees of all stripes who have been subject to this tyranny begin suing for back wages and complaining as I have to the US Department of Employment to demand, under laws that already are in place (I have an open case with them) that all workers on contract be booked back-to-back and paid for missed appointments. It is very serendipitous for my employers that I am into social justice and not lawsuits - but one can get quite inflamed by worker injustice.

Thus this communication. I want to change the status-quo for social workers in Idaho and elsewhere. I am not in this for compensation but for justice.

Not many primitives seem concerned about the plight of social workers in Idahol there's very few comments, and most of those are simply "kicks."

Selfish self-absorbed primitives, not caring about social workers in Idaho.

HowHasItComeToThis  (1000+ posts)      Wed Sep-02-09 05:57 PM
Response to Original message
 
4. ANOTER PERTINENT POST

I want to start a thread on Idaho Privatization of Social Services but I'm too new to be qualified. Sure would appreciate one of you vets doing it for me.

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, I started working in Idaho in the early 1990s just when the privatization hysteria started - "self reliance" and "privatizing health and welfare programs." Now in 2008 we have almost all social workers and counselors working on the "billable hour," using their own cars, buying their own gas, and getting paid only for face-to-face contact with clients. The result is that we make half what we did before, pay our own expenses, have no federal employment rights because we are on contract, have no health insurance, have no insurance for transporting clients and are withering away socially, financially and morally. I have had collegues that live in their cars and cheat on billing to eat.

The social welfare system in Idaho has grown larger, costs more, and now supports a public sector of regulation and a private sector of pure corruption. PSR (psychosocial rehabilitation) workers baby sit clients for hours at $45-$55 per hour playing games and cards - doing "play therapy." The public sector regulates us so completely that it takes up to 8 hours to do the initial paperwork for one client. We never look at the paperwork again because we don't get paid for anything except personal contact and wasting our time writing it and trying to make the narrative sound like we are accomplishing something.

The only thing we are accomplishing is keeping the ever increasing population of mentally, sick, and impoverished out of the way of the corporate and cosmopolitan population. And, most of us are so broke and so demoralized that we don't care anymore. In the mean time the rich social service corporation owners are getting richer on our backs and the social workers and counselors will soon join the impoverished ranks of our clients.

This is the utopia privatization beings to us all.

We need to go back to public run social services

Oh my.

[Carl]

Something tells me that this guy is a lazy malcontent who never did his job or got along with any coworkers.

There is just too many things written into his tale of woe for it to be believable on its face and since one trait of a primitive is to leave out details I doubt much is true here.

[JohnnyReb]

DUmmie says, "We need to go back to public run social services"... which means, "I want to milk the system.....just like my clients."

[USA4ME]

Help_I_Live_In_Idaho
 
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.

You had a tent in the woods??  You were lucky. We lived in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

.

[The Village Idiot]

Did it ever occur to these people to, maybe, get a job somewhere else?

[The Village Idiot]

You had a tent in the woods??  You were lucky. We lived in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

But Dad had to walk 5 miles to school and 6 miles back, uphill against the wind both ways

[Chump]

Did it ever occur to these people to, maybe, get a job somewhere else?

Your theory is intriguing.  Playing it out in my head, I imagine that perhaps they did, possibly, seek employment elsewhere.  Mostly likely, however, they were met with the cold, hard fact of having absolutely no employable skills.  Thus, we find the typical DUmmie, resigned to a life of being useless.

It would be sad, if they weren't pieces of filth.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Hold on a minute!

On any other given day we are regaled ad nauseam with tales about how PRIVATE providers are growing rich and fat. Now we're told private companies are making their employees live in below-homeless conditions. FFS, Wal-Mart pays better!

Or maybe there just aren't enough crazy people in Idaho.

[claret1995]

But Dad had to walk 5 miles to school and 6 miles back, uphill against the wind both ways

With only one shoe

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

With only one shoe

And pay the mill owner 5 pence just be allowed to come to work and when we got home our dad would cut us in 2 with a bread knife while singing "Hallelujah!"

[AllosaursRus]

I've lived in Idaho for over 30 years off on, mostly on. I have known acoulple of my congress critters on a first name basis. You'd think if any of this is remotely true, someone would have at least brought it up before now.

The social services this asshat is talking about are all consultations, usually the state recommends them to variuos "contractors" for which they are paid a yearly retainer. If you don't get clients all you are paid is the retainer. Normally the patient pays the consultant directly. If they are on welfare, they are only paid what the state deems it worth. Kinda just like a fed program, idiot!

You would not believe the "experts"  that crawled out of the woodwork when Idaho started this privatized consulting program. There's damn near one on every frikkin block! Mostly for drug and or alcohol abuse. The ones handling court ordered DUI's certainly seem to be doing just fine!

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

You would not believe the "experts"  that crawled out of the woodwork when Idaho started this privatized consulting program. There's damn near one on every frikkin block! Mostly for drug and or alcohol abuse.

I'm sure this DUmmie is an expert on drug and alcohol abuse.

[GOBUCKS]

You had a tent in the woods??  You were lucky. We lived in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

You had a bag? And bread? And got to work day shift?

[DumbAss Tanker]

Even if he has a lot of the basic history of what happened to him personally right (Always quite doubtful with a DUmmie), that guy doesn't understand much of what he is talking about as supposed labor law.  The EEOC has nothing whatsoever to do with figuring how many hours a certain type of work procedure has to be counted, that is if anything a Department of Labor issue under FLSA. 

[delilahmused]

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 ”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

[vlad335]

OUTSTANDING Cindie!

[AllosaursRus]

Okay, now I'm confused. I thought you were the one "on site", "answering phones", "supervising", etc., now you're a contract worker?.

Cindie

That's the remark where I figured it out.

This NumbNutz wants his retainer to be enough to cover minimum wage for a year, regardless of the number of clients he has "serviced". In his opinion, since he is under a retainer, he has to be available 365 days a year. Even though he may have only 2 clients the whole year, he wants Idaho to pay while he sits around waiting for them to furnish him his next weird duck.