New Weapon in Day Laborers’ Fight Against Wage Theft: A Smartphone App

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/nyregion/new-weapon-in-day-laborers-fight-against-wage-theft-a-smartphone-app.html

by rdl • 10 years ago

78 43 10 years ago

rdl• 10 years ago

This is amazing. Technology being used to directly empower otherwise-very-powerless individuals, without adding regulation or inefficiency.

10 years ago, this would have been crazy, given the cost of devices. Now, it's a great idea. In a few years, it will be obvious.

There have to be a lot more tech solutions out there to help with societal problems.

tacon• 10 years ago

This kind of idea crossed my mind a few years ago, but I thought smart phones and data plans were still out of the price range of day laborers. I was thinking along the lines of SMSing the license plate of any car driving up and getting back a rating via SMS. I also wondered about the blow back from "aiding illegals" in more conservative locales.

Someone should write the companion app to prevent wage theft from time clock workers. My understanding is that that problem dwarfs the theft from day laborers. The app would log GPS coordinates as a shadow time clock, and a back end that can ingest a time sheet and validate that the recorded times are correct.

learc83• 10 years ago

When I worked retail back in college, after the store closed a manager would have to unlock the door to let you out of the store. Letting employees out was never a high priority, so you often had to wait a while.

Multiply that times 10-20 employees a night at ~1,000 stores and you've got a good chunk of change.

api_or_ipa• 10 years ago

This is an easy weekend project with Twillio and anyone with basic knowledge of how to build an API. It's incredible what we can do with so little work.

DanielBMarkham3• 10 years ago

Plenty of room to grow in this market also. This same app could facilitate getting paid. Or timekeeping for the folks hiring the day laborers.

When we think about SV perhaps going through a downturn, we must remember that there are still hundreds or thousands of opportunities to write apps to help the extremely poor and vulnerable. This is great territory for app-writers who have teams of 1,2, or 3 -- but it'd make no sense at all to pursue if you were an established startup with a ton of overhead.

pc863• 10 years ago

Do you have any other ideas about apps to help the poor/vulnerable that a single developer could write?

danielvf2• 10 years ago

So we have an app that tracks on an hourly basis the following: people who hire against the law, people who work against the law, people who don't withhold income tax on wages, and people who don't report income to the IRS. All in a beautifully supeanable electronic format.

hga• 10 years ago

Yeah, I can imagine a YUGE use case for this data starting in slightly less than one year.

Eridrus• 10 years ago

These day labor spots are well known enough for employers to find them, I don't think this will add significant exposure to these people.

flashman• 10 years ago

I'm not certain that any crackdowns that drive up the price of labor, and cost votes from the immigrant community, will get off the ground.

Then again, Donald Trump could get elected.

bruceb• 10 years ago

It depends if your labor is going up in demand/price.

cheese17562• 10 years ago

Since the developers have been working on the app for three years, I'm sure that they've built in safeguards. One simple fix that comes to mind is to store all data locally, except for the database of abusive employers. If people want to contact lawyers to recover lost wages, all of the information in the app is kept private since attorney-client confidentiality kicks in. With something like that, there is no additional risk to using the app.

P.S. This is not a criticism of you or your comment, danielvf (I think that the point you brought up is valid). One thing that does bother me about Hacker News, though, is that the top comment is almost always a rejection of the innovation at hand. The hacker part of Hacker News should be about improving imperfect systems, not instinctively criticizing and rejecting them. I feel like HN would be a much more interesting site and much truer to its culture if every critical comment had to include a potential fix for the criticism. If someone can't come up with a potential fix to add, then they haven't done enough research to justify making the comment in the first place.

GauntletWizard• 10 years ago

The flaws (or potential flaws) in a given system are almost always more interesting to discuss than the ways in which it has succeeded. Praises ring soft, criticism is fun to debate.

moonshinefe3• 10 years ago

"Since the developers have been working on the app for three years, I'm sure that they've built in safeguards."

In my experience assuming people are competent in their security is usually a really really optimistic view point and very often untrue.

Zikes• 10 years ago

Additionally, both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store have clauses against using apps that are intended to enable illegal activity. Their best hope to ensure it doesn't get taken down is to make it a web app.

mc32• 10 years ago

That's exactly my thought. It's like a submarine way to rat people out. You hook them on one pretext and then you can turn around and sell the data to the IRS so they can get the tax cheats and on the other hand sell data to ICE to get people who jump in front of the immigration line in trouble. Win win win, for them, lose for the cheaters, and the cheated.

xbmcuser• 10 years ago

Well they are getting away with not paying as the worker won't or can't complain. Now the worker will have his own leverage so will cancel out cheating.

sigmar• 10 years ago

people who hire against the law, people who work against the law

Day labor is not illegal.

danielvf2• 10 years ago

You are correct, it's not illegal, and it serves a very useful purpose, however it's highly correlated with not paying taxes on both sides, and with hiring people who cannot legally work.

x5n1• 10 years ago

Whatever, I have no sympathy for employers who exploit people like these or actually any people. More reason for them to play nice.

pc863• 10 years ago

Day labor is not illegal.

And I think the point was that this data is potentially one subpoena away from getting a list of illegal immigrants (who themselves would be very susceptible to exploitation).

Matt3o12_2• 10 years ago

It should not be an issue if the data is stored Mexico and all traffic is going through HTTP.

I don't think law enforcement is able to extract data for illegal immigrants from Mexico. They aren't terrorist after all.

EliRivers• 10 years ago

I expect that the argument they're terrorists could be made if that's what the authorities required.

SilasX• 10 years ago

Yeah I think it misses the core problem with day labor, which is that the victims of any such shenanigans are themselves unwilling to report it because they are breaking immigration and taxation laws. Reporting it -- via this app or otherwise -- can make them much worse off.

Animats2• 10 years ago

This is great. More apps to fight wage theft are needed. Geofence your workplace, and when you enter and leave, record that automatically. Compare with pay stubs. Report to labor law enforcement.[1]

Wage theft laws are becoming tougher. Some states allow triple damages. Some make it a crime. California has been sending employers to jail.[2][3]

[1] http://www.wagetheftisacrime.com/ [2] https://www.dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2015/2015-133.pdf [3] http://www.alcoda.org/newsroom/2015/feb/convictions_in_wage_...

Pamar• 10 years ago

I am already doing that even if it is just for my convenience (I work flexible hours and the monthly time report is compiled by the employee on a purely trust basis). I use an app called Moves (iOS) and once every ten days or so I just check in-out times from the pinpoint location that identifies my office.

specialist• 10 years ago

More apps to fight wage theft are needed.

What would disrupting Labor Ready look like? An app matching employers with employees?

App processes payments, right? Maybe some sort of escrow.

As for deterring wage theft, there's got to be some good strategies. Maybe both sides enter hours worked. If values match, the payment is processed. If not, the disagreement is escalated somehow.

Each sides could rate the other (up or down). Leading to mutually assured (ratings) destruction if either sides cheats/rats.

Animats2• 10 years ago

"As for deterring wage theft, there's got to be some good strategies. Maybe both sides enter hours worked. If values match, the payment is processed. If not, the disagreement is escalated somehow."

In a union shop, that's what happens. The worker files a grievance and it's settled or arbitrated. This happens all the time; it's no big deal.

In Germany, there are workers councils to which such problems can be brought.

In the US, the worker gets fired for raising the issue, and can then sue for damages, maybe getting paid years later.

PhasmaFelis2• 10 years ago

Looking forward to the hit pieces about how this is a tool for criminals, layabouts, and Mexicans to slander and sabotage upstanding American employers.

moonshinefe3• 10 years ago

Sounds like a great way to document illegal immigrants and employers who hire them. I'd be very concerned about this info falling into the wrong hands (or if I were of a different political affiliation, I'd be very glad).

The article unfortunately has no info on what if any measures are taken in the app to anonymize/potentially encrypt this info. I'd be highly skeptical, especially as the US government has no problem twisting the arms of companies to make them give up users' personal info.

Let's not forget one of the two presidential front runners is quite the outspoken critic of immigration. This could have real consequences if it isn't done right (otherwise I think it's a good idea).

te_chris• 10 years ago

I've often wondered about a blockchain based union for shared-economy workers. Some kind of verified, distributed way to restrict supply of labour and push prices and costs up in the worker's favour.

New Weapon in Day Laborers’ Fight Against Wage Theft: A Smartphone App

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