An experienced Access developer for $4.50 an hour (1 Viewer)

[Catalina]

The other day I visited Elance.com and I noticed a post by a business owner from (supposedly) New York City.

He wants to hire a full time, experienced Access developer for no more than $4.50 an hour.
Obviously he is looking for someone from India, Pakistan, or some other low wage country.
And while he has the right to look for cheap help, it still bothers me that he is going that route.
If it was just a simple typing job, OK may be. But a software developer?

He got several offers, the lowest being $3 an hour. That should make him happy.
And may be he cares more about saving money than quality of work.

Am I the only one getting irked by this?

Catalina

 

[Rx_]

Of course it is a violation of the minimum wage laws.
If anyone else is getting paid this, they should
1. take the job - just to wast thier time (lol)
2. keep a record of the advertisement and the offer
3. report this to the authorities (wage and hour division)

If the work is supplied from overseas there is little can be done.
However Elance is located in the US, California.
It never hurts to copy the advertisement, the Elance Contact Us info and file a complaint with the California labor division.
Let the authorities write a letter to Elance asking for an explanation.
If you get the links in place to do this, please post it.

 

[Fifty2One]

Global market - global wages. No harm in the person looking for someone to do work for $4.50 an hour, they might get what they pay for, never the less I am more then sure that everyone domestically is not getting the federal $7.25 an hour (or $2.13 if they are getting tips).

 

[GSSDevelopment]

It never hurts to copy the advertisement, the Elance Contact Us info and file a complaint with the California labor division.

I know Cali has some killer labour laws, but I'm not sure this course of action would be very fruitful.

Elance (and other freelancing companies such as Freelance, which also acquired vWorker, formerly Rent-A-Coder, etc.) all work very similarly in that they serve as little more than an escrow system + a posting service.

Since the coders
1) don't work for Elance,
2) Elance isn't paying them as an employee, and
3) the workers are independent contractors

Elance can't be charged for violating wage laws. Particularly since independent contractors aren't protected under minimum wage laws.

 

[Rx_]

The intent of the law does constitute the law.
However, we all realize now days that the law only applies to the little guy. It sure does not apply to Wall Street, Financial, and many other sectors out there.

Lets pretend that someone took the contract listed in the advertisement under discussion. Lets pretend that the person went to that company, downloaded the company's databases. Databases such as vendor list, customer list, and anything else not nailed down. (O.K. Nailed down is an old term, for today it would mean "not secured".)
Then for the sake of argument lets pretend that "contractor" sold all that company's information to groups in Pakistan for a fair amount of cash. It gets used for ID theft, credit fraud, ...

Typically, the CEO of the company that let the contractor in the door and failed to have things "nailed down" would not ever be held responsible for failure to safeguard and protect the corporate assets. The Stockholders take the real loss.
We can argue that it is wrong to steal. My argument is that "If I give my banker some cash, when banker doesn't lock his front door and doesn't lock his safe at night; the Banker is fully responsible if my money does get stolen".

Data is a corporate asset just as is the equipment, cash, and patents.

As for the company CEO allowing this situation: Substitute the words
"they serve as little more than an escrow system + a posting service."
To:
"they server as little more than an Escort Service + a Pimping service "

So in make-believe-land, if Elance pimps workers -the escorts don't work for Elance, Elance isn't paying escorts as an employee, and the escorts are independent contractors.
If a CEO named John, hires a very cheap escort from Elance, and after the CEO roger the cheap escort just as they intended, the Escort steals the CEO's wallet (ID, credit, and so on) ...
Humm. Seems like we have all heard this story before? LOL

Who is the person really at fault here:
() CEO
() Elance
() Escort
() All of the above

My choice is to hold the CEO (John wasn't it?) fully responsible for much more than the missing wallet.

Now, don't be shy. Who is going to make a case for John?

 

[GSSDevelopment]

I'm not terribly sure how this went from "someone is trying to hire a contractor at sub-minimum-wage" to "a cheap escort working for a pimp stole a CEO's wallet".

1) Hiring a contractor for an hourly rate below minimum employment wage is not illegal (That was the entire point of my first post) because a contractor is a contractor (not subject to minimum wage laws), not an employee.
2) Any work done through Elance, regardless of the stated terms of the advertisement, is contracted work.
3) There's almost always some degree of negligence involved when dealing with someone stealing property, but I generally blame the person that stole property for stealing property.