A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Wage Theft, post on main board. - sm

Posted: Sep 02, 2014

I read with interest the article contained in the post on the main board because it occurred to me that this is the only industry I know where as an employee, for most companies today, Nuance not excepted, you accept a job and then you, the employee, provide your own equipment, you pay the expense to have your computer repaired and when it is down you are not paid for the downtime, you pay your ISP internet charges (which can be costly if you are running extra turbo charged service to meet minimum upload speeds), and you pay your electric bill to run your computer, sometimes 7 days a week, and you are not even making minimum wage. LOL, we are paying them to work for them! The employee/employer relationship is upside down. I had a mental picture of someone newly accepting a job, going to the office in a suit, with a computer under the arm, and then when the computer goes down, putting it back under the arm and off to computer repair and then told not to report back to work and expect to be paid until the computer was up and running again. Am I missing something here? I expect to do all that as an IC, which I was for years; but as an employee, I am still responsible for the same things but with less pay, lots less pay. Sure, I didn't have benefits when I was an IC except what I paid for myself, but LOL, I still don't have any benefits either if what is offered by Nuance can be called benefits. How about paying us for all the internet searches, the looking up of physician names? Better yet, why don't you pay QA more to do it so we can keep producing, adding to your bottom line? Oh, that's right, you have that bottom line covered in off shoring our work to India and the audacity to have those folks in India QA American MTs when they haven't the foggiest idea of what constitutes subject/verb tense agreement. Sad to see what has happened to a once great field in which to work, all in the name of greed.

Wage Theft - NuanceConfused

[ In Reply To ..]
Not sure if you did or not, but I also had to foot an almost $200.00 bill just in programs to go to work for them and never got my last check either, was told I actually had to pay for my benefits and by the time I had taxes taken out of my little $400.00 check for two weeks of work, I simply couldn't afford the benefits. At least when I was IC, I could afford to pay for my benefits.

Wage theft.. - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
I did not have the amount of expense you had, although I had some, and I am compassionate towards your situation. Been there, done that, got nothing in return. Been promised the moon, only to find out too late that it was all deception. In the end, it is the bottom line for these companies, period. Not the client, not the patient, not the employees. End of story. Judgment day is coming.

Yes, wage theft is multiplying - and Nuance is a major offender

[ In Reply To ..]

The link to the article (from the NY Times) is below. Interesting that the Fedex drivers won their bid to be classed as employees after they sued because they felt they were only made contractors so they could be required to work 10 hours a day without OT.

From the article:

"David Weil, the director of the federal Labor Department’s wage and hour division, says wage theft is surging because of underlying changes in the nation’s business structure. The increased use of franchise operators, subcontractors and temp agencies leads to more employers being squeezed on costs and more cutting corners, he said. A result, he added, is that the companies on top can deny any knowledge of wage violations.

“We have a change in the structure of work that is then compounded by a falling level of what is viewed as acceptable in the workplace in terms of how you treat people and how you regard the law,” Mr. Weil said."

(Bold added by me)

________

It seems like anything goes as long as they don't get caught basically. Nuance no doubt have teams of lawyers who first figure out how to legally rob us of income, then are prepared to fight any kind of complaint at any expense at the drop of a pin. We, on the other hand...

I wish I knew some way to fight the erosion of our income, it is simply not fair that they are able to keep picking away and it and have already succeeded in making many of us minimum wage workers. We must keep trying to get our wages back, but I'll be darned if I know how.

Just the idea of filing for partial unemployment seems difficult and scary to me, since I really cannot afford it first of all and it is scary to alienate your employer with them still able to control your work environment.

Anyone had any success with anything like this, or any suggestions of where we could complain to? I don't know about you, but I definitely cannot afford a lawyer, I don't even have a will (have nothing to leave basically anyway), but would there be someone who would do this pro bono? My brain hurts.

Read some of the comments - Readers picks

[ In Reply To ..]
We are not alone. There are other testimonials about how wages are stolen. The most striking to me was the classifying of employees as salaried instead of hourly, hence not having to pay overtime. It just makes me sick.

Thanks so much for drawing my attention - to the comments

[ In Reply To ..]
Wow! Amazingly well written stories across all spectrums about how easy it is to commit wage theft and how much it is happening!

Not ONE comment defending the companies perpetrating the wage theft, probably because it is simply indefensible. Even if you think unions are the devil's work, it is simply NOT good business practice to steal from your employees. It's not just money, either. It's dignity, pride, independence and self worth that we have been robbed of, just so they can brag at a shareholder's meeting how much they managed to skim off our wages to make a profit. Disgusting.

wage theft - BOBO

[ In Reply To ..]
Maybe I'm crazy here, but Nuance, these other large companies and our government ALLOWING these guys to offshore our work is why our field is dying. I think the problem is stateside and lies with our government allowing this to happen. The industry is dying only here in the US. Canada's transcriptionist's still make 26-32 an hour and are unionized, England transcriptionists and Australia all pay $25 an hour as well and none of these countries are "offshoring"--not to India and not to US citizens. AND transcription is alive and thriving there. We wonder what will happen when minimum wage increases as we know WE won't be getting any raise. More stuff will go offshore and they are going to ride us into the dirt blaming our failure to produce as to why we aren't making minimum wage.......and the only thing we can do at that point...........is go flip burgers at McDonald's as they already pay more.... most of us started this career as the money was good and there was flexibility for our kids/families---we no longer have that or it might be worth sticking around, but why stick around for beggar's wages that require an education, when every single job in the want ads for unskilled labor is paying more than our job that requires good grammar, spelling, basic latin and the medical/pharmaceutical knowledge we're required to have. Our government needs to close some major loopholes like these other countries have or we might as well kiss it all goodbye and put a bow on it for India when minimum wage increases. We're so toast.

Minimum wage/offshoring - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
If the established line count is 186 before minimum wage, I do not believe they can change the required line count after a minimum wage increase. That said, we all know that your line count is affected by the number of accounts, quality of dictators, worktypes and schedules.

As far as it being "government's fault," I do hope you voted in the last election as "the government" is made up of representatives elected by us. Also, you need to understand how a law is made. The House of Representatives and Senate have to submit a passed bill to the president to approve. One political party has repeatedly blocked any legislation to discourage the offshoring of jobs. When deciding who to vote for, you cannot go by political advertisements, because they are just that, advertisements, designed to sell you something that may or may not be true. You need to check actual voting records and/or why a candidate voted the way they did.

That said, there are changes in every industry. You have noted that you are now probably checking out your own groceries and pumping your own gas. What happened to those employees? I recall reading that UPS was going to require their employees to buy their trucks and become independent contractors. Hmmm. Now they would have to supply expensive equipment and upkeep as well as working OT if needed to get their jobs done without being compensated. (Edit: Sorry, there was a previous post about FedEx that I did not read prior to writing this). As you can see, this degradation of the US employee is happening across all sectors.

Just saying . . .

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