Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?
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ttrowa159 about 3 hours ago 57 comments
I worked with a few employers on contracts, and there were situations where they haven't paid fees for a while.
Is there a list or site that lists all the employers and if they have a record of them not fulfilling their contracts?
Discussion (57 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
This happened with such regularity that people would take their checks to said employer’s bank on payday and stand in line to cash them before heading to the office. You’d see a couple of coworkers in line to do this.
Maintaining a list like this is probably not super useful. Any company that does this kind of stuff as a routine will not continue the routine of employing people for long.
"On contracts" is explicitly mentioned. While bouncing your W-2 employees' paychecks is a big no-no, there are plenty of organizations that stiff contractors for decades.
POTUS was famous for doing this - stiffing small contractors working on his real estate projects. This seemed like a pretty major character tell, but folks voted for him all the same.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-claim-donald-t...
The secret is to do this under different corporate names, not that they go out of business literally, but in America and probably elsewhere, they just rebrand and restablish elsewhere.
I also met convicts doing "volunteer" work which did not pay but satisfied some aspect of thier parole. And with small businesses, there was of course the many children of business owners who were "helping out mom and dad", often as unpaid managers, in hopes of one day inheriting the business.
These YC founders are not held accountable for their ridiculous behavior
employees don’t realize how good they have it with payroll protections tbh. That’s how it should be of course!
Your vendors hate 90 day payment just as much as you hate when your customers do it, and they are covering for non-payment, late payment, and difficult customers by raising their prices. Crucially, they have to charge you the "bad customer" price because they don't know you, and then your incentive is to be a bad customer because it doesn't cost anything extra for you.
The restaurant owner thought it was crazy but couldn't argue with the cost reduction. The moral of the story was that if you'd just communicate more you may find a mutual benefit. The restaurant loved the vendor but the vendor also felt the restaurant was their best customer even though they were getting 70% less money! - because of the predictability, less need for inventory, better cash flow.
If companies start taking a reputation hit for not paying contractors in a timely fashion, they will correct the behavior eventually
[1] - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/contacts
If a company insists on working inside their version control system, insist that each biweekly payment be submitted in advance.
They were all surprised to learn that they couldn't do much without the source material that they never paid for.
One of them was very surprised when the website flipped to a white screen on a Monday morning at 9am.
They called asking why "THEIR" website was blank.
I explained that they didn't own any websites, as no money was exchanged.
If they would like me to transfer MY website to them, all they needed to do, was submit payment, along with late fees.
The money hit my account within the hour and they owned a website a few minutes after that.
Factual statements about bad employers are very much free speech. Judges aren't particularly fond of frivolous lawsuits. There are already mechanisms in place to quickly throw those away without wasting everyone's time and money.
So a random individual without the bankroll to defend is likely vulnerable, and this is a libel suit, so unlike a copyright suit, you can't solve it just by taking it down. You posted the allegation, now you must defend it. Yes, the truth is an absolute defense against libel, but you still need to defend it that far (through pretrial motions, discovery, etc.). Even getting to file for a dismissal is likely to be $five-figures with a good attorney, and you NEED a good attny. OFC, if you have a good case, a good firm may take it on spec, but....
And of course, how do you know all the postings on your site are actually fully factual and not exaggerated in any way?
Because, any honest employer falsely accused would be rightly very pissed off.
Tough problem.
You don't, but you smile and just delete the content. And then you've done your part as a platform. You're very happy to delete things when notified, and you do it promptly. Then you get to publish a very factual transparency notice.
Someone will have archived the page already? Social media is upset when they hear that the big company tried to attack the small independent site to take down this page that They Don't Want You To See? That's out of your hands, you're a neutral platform and you've done your part.
You just need to fold immediately, and you're covered by all the safe harbor neutral platform protections. Same as forums, social media, any website with user-generated content.
Now that won't stop an asshole from suing you over frivolous nonsense. But it does make it easy to throw their suit away - like you said, if you have the spite and money to follow through with a defense.
SLAPPs are only illegal in certain jurisdictions, not including federal or even many states.
and how is this hypothetical website you're hyping supposed to uncover the factuality of statements random people from the internet are posting?
Random people on the Internet have been at it long enough that there is plenty of precedent to establish that you can safely host a platform. But then again, I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, and for legal reasons this is not the legal definition of legal advice, etc.
Don't publicize who wrote a review, but keep it on hand for subpoenas. You are probably not liable for defamation if you can identify who wrote the review - and they should be able to prove it's true. Ask a lawyer first of course.
Also, what if there were malicious submissions? Then they would definitely go to court. How can you tell?
Surely they'd know that they didn't pay the employee writing the review...
That being said, the whole scenario seems absurd. Most countries have easy ways for employees to file claims of non-payment and companies are forced to pay up.. I've never heard of a company not paying staff AND getting away with it unless they're bankrupt.
Court cases are public, and non payment cases can be brought to courts, generally as breach of contract. So find the State the company is setup in, find the courts of the relevant jurisdictions, and see if they have any cases for non-payment.
Years of crime and corruption caused long perception and union density declines from the 50s to the late 80s, when hundreds of officials finally got RICO’d, some unions fell under government supervision, etc.
They still didn’t really give up on crime and corruption, but they never really recovered in the US.
It’s what you do when anyone is in breach of contract or some other civil matter. You just sue them.
If it’s a criminal fraud, there’s other people who will help, we call those the authorities.
Or are you just fear mongering about unions?