We need an MT Compensation Council and I'm prepared to initiate that - if there is sufficient interest. Posted: Jul 15th, 2017 - 11:31 am
I should not need to persuade anyone in this business that there numerous issues, problems and inconsistencies that arise from the unholy union between employment terms that presume scheduled employment of MTs and yet base their compensation on unit production metrics.
This marriage allows the MTSO to impose hourly constraints and strictures on employees, while avoiding the inherent disadvantages and costs that having hourly employees impose on the employer.
The most obvious example is system downtime or the unavailability of work, the costs of which properly belong to the MTSO, and yet it is the MT onto whom those costs are shifted. Home office costs are another example.
Less obvious, perhaps, and yet of equal importance, is the issue of how much editing of a job should qualify that job for straight typing rates instead of lower SR rates. With the company I work for, it is 80% retyping - and frankly, that makes no logical sense whatsoever. If I am paid only half the line rate for editing, then any job that requires more than 50% of the SR to be re-typed should qualify for the straight-typing line rate.
Even less obvious is an important metric that many companies ignore, i.e. the percentage of jobs going on hold for non-technical reasons such as poor audio, etc. If I am not forcing my company to handle jobs 2 or 3 times because I'm willing to research ambiguities, etc, why should I be paid the same line rate as someone who performs otherwise?
There are numerous other issues pertaining to compensation such the allocation of PTO, the minimum hours needed to qualify for benefits, etc. that are grossly mishandled and always to the benefit of the MTSO and/or the disadvantage to the MT.
In short, the MTSO wants to have their cake and eat it too. What's particularly disgusting about this is that today there is no reason not to base compensation on hourly job attendance just like any other job, even when people do not happen to work locally. In the early days of the Web, yes, but not now that the time clock is in the cloud.
The Council would address inequities pertaining to the mismatch between hourly schedules and production-based compensation, would present its recommendations to the MTSOs and - IF AND WHEN NECESSARY - would file complaints on behalf of MTs with the Department of Labor.
If approved by a majority of the Council membership, there may even be the possibility of job actions instituted to encourage compliance with the Council's compensation recommendations. The membership would make that determination, so I cannot say more about that.
The Council would be established legally and properly as a nonprofit organization. Membership on the Council would be strictly limited to verified medical transcriptionists, and would be prohibited to any supervisory, QA, technical, management or ownership personnel of any transcription company, or any employer of medical transcriptionists such as a hospital or clinic, insurance company, etc.
There are far too many MTSO's today that have taken grossly unfair advantage of MTs. It's time for it to stop...and way past time.
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