Is it legal to make piece work entry a condition of payment?
Is it legal to make piece work entry a condition of payment?
My GF is a ghost writer. The publisher has her write into files that are uploaded to a shared platform where editors and other creatives and execs tweak and move each chapter through several named states (represented by different folders), until it reaches "Final."
She gets paid per X words. Come the day before the deadline for payroll, they (sometimes, often its late) open up the payroll system, and she has to re-upload the Final chapter to a folder in that tracking system. Tonight (when they opened the system for her), she has to enter 130 chapters by 10am tomorrow.
It's not just moving a file. She has to download the Final chapter, select the text, copy/paste into the payroll tracking system, and then fix formatting that their silly system creates, like extra spaces, double quotes, etc. Each chapter can take minutes. These pasted chapters are then the final product. She has to stay up all night until its done, or she won't get paid on time.
I feel like she's being taken advantage of, doing admin work for free. This feels like someone else's job. Is this even compliant with labor laws? Is it legal to have her do 12hrs of gruelling repetitive labor to move her completed text like this? Her being paid is conditional on her entering this data.
I know hourly employees must be paid for hours worked, whether it was tracked or not, and tracking is an employer responsibility.
Edit: added more words
That sounds like they are purposely making getting paid too much work. I'm sure they get out of paying for at least some of people's work based on what you're saying.
There’s too many unknowns here for you to get a reasonable answer.
I suggest asking a workplace lawyer based in your city.
If she’s part of a union, they probably have lawyers on hand she can talk to. If she’s not part of a union… I’m confident she can find one that would be willing to help if she joined. (Or at least give a referral to a local lawyer.)
But also, just for the record, I’ve never known it to go well when a BF/GF or any kind of romantic partystarts intruding into this kind of thing. I’ve fired more than a couple people because their intimate partner kept showing up making demands, and know a few others that dumped their partner because they decided they weren’t being “aggressive” or needed “protecting”… just some advice, but if your GF isn’t asking for this help, it might be best to sit it out. It’s certainly not a good idea to go directly to her boss/client.
I’ll speak as someone who has been in the creative space for 20 years.
Non-“making” work is a large part of any creative job. Sometimes it can be the bulk of the time spent doing the work. A professional isn’t just making; they’re often researching, synthesizing, pitching, negotiating, documenting, formatting, etc. All of that stuff is just as important.
I would check in with a community of professional writers and bring specific examples. An example type of job, the vague topic, the word count, the time spent writing, the time spent formatting in their tool, etc.
They can help to identify the gaps and problem-solve around it. Is the client underpaying? If so, how do you avoid that in the future and/ or negotiate a higher rate now? Or, is the writer spending too much time writing? If so, what are some techniques to expedite the craft?
These are good questions. I don't know. First, what state are you in? Second, does she have any coworkers? Also, does she know anyone in a similar field? If she went to school, does she know any classmates or teachers who might have advice?
Also: can this be automated? Nowadays, you can have a large language model code a lot of things. Could she instruct one to write a python or bash script to reduce since of the work?
Ultimately, I think she should keep looking for better work. But I know that can be challenging.
Ty for the reply.
Not comfortable sharing location info, and I know state laws vary. I do know that our state has a law on the books prohibiting withholding pay based on time entry, because my union rep pushed back when I kept not getting paid because a supervisor was forgetting to approve time.
This is similar, because its the final approval process, but the work has been done, taken out of her hands and finalized. Not to mention, she waits weeks sometimes for them to get off their hands and allow her to upload.
No known contacts in the field other than her coauthors. This is her second year doing this, which is her dream job, and its opening doors for her.
Definitely, it could be automated. But part of the problem is the text box that handles the pasted data inserts characters that are not present in the final work. We've tried dumping to plaintext several different ways and looking for hidden characters, but it still occurs. Thus, it would still require human review. Double quotes could likely be filtered, but who gets paid to develop the automation? She wouldn't know how to debug or validate the code, and she shouldn't have to.
She knows this isn't her ultimate dream job, but she is getting paid to write, and getting your own stuff published is a lot of work, luck, and who you know. She's meeting lots of insiders, but struggling with these constraints.
If this is US, find your state labor board here:
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/contacts
It's a very specific question, so probably won't be spelled out exactly on any website, but you should be able to contact somebody with more knowledge of the laws in your area.
Okay. I don't really have anything to add to that. Good luck though.
So a raspberry pi, or an arduino board will identify itself as a keyboard if you code it right. She could have all the text loaded and ready to go for the textbox and when it gets to that part, push a button that is hardwired and it can 'type' all of the text for her so that the system wouldn't crap it up as it wouldn't be 'pasted' in. Just an idea for a solution for her.
Seems like an automatable task im sure u can get chatgpt to write a python script woth selenium to do it automaticly.
I have no idea how this is from a legal point of view, but the fact they only give her the possibility to finish all that work within 24 hours sounds illegal
Is she deemed as a contractor? Does the company file her taxes? Being paid or not paid based on outcome is usually somwthing i see on contracts which companies force people to become to skirt labour laws and make payment based on ourcome instead of hours.
This changes the answer for you, because the reason they do this is it puts the onus on you to make everyrhibg perfect becayse they are paying for a piece of work.
There are indeed laws that punish companies that do this however but is based on location and all that (fwiw im not a lawyer)
Yep, that's wage theft