Callcenter world9/1/2023 LISS-RIORDAN: Arbitration is a very effective means of companies keeping their workers in the dark about their legal rights.ĪRONCZYK: So people like Yvonne Corder who took those calls for Disney dining had no idea that some of her fellow Arise customer service agents had filed complaints against the company.ĬORDER: I didn't know there were so many other people that were going through the same thing or feeling the same thing.ĪRONCZYK: And based on ProPublica's reporting, many of the agents who fought Arise won their cases. Basically, what happens in private court stays in private court. LISS-RIORDAN: It's basically like a private court.ĪRONCZYK: You go to a private decision-maker, not a regular judge. She's not allowed to say exactly how many, though, because deep inside the contracts that the agents sign, it says if you have a problem with Arise, you have to go through private arbitration. She says misclassification is increasingly common, and she's fought a series of these kinds of cases against Arise. SHANNON LISS-RIORDAN: So misclassification is the umbrella issue here.ĪRONCZYK: Liss-Riordan is, like, lawyer famous for fighting cases against Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other gig-economy companies. They're really more like employees than contractors. In reality, she says, Arise maintains a lot of control over these workers. But labor lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan argues that's not quite true. TOBIN: What you hear them say is we, quote-unquote, "squeeze the wastage" out of your employment costs.ĪRONCZYK: Arise told us in a written statement that they've built a platform where agents can choose when, where and how often they work. A lot of the time, it's just one person.ĪRONCZYK: Arise shifts a lot of training and gear costs from, say, Disney dining on to the customer service rep. Arise only will contract with what they call an independent business. Ariana Tobin is a ProPublica reporter whose team spent over a year investigating work-from-home call centers.ĪRIANA TOBIN: Arise doesn't hire agents. And I'm like, what? It makes no sense.ĪRONCZYK: Corder is not the only one wondering about all this. They're like, well, you need to schedule time off. She was an independent contractor, so she wasn't entitled to things like paid sick days.ĬORDER: There was one point I was so sick, I had to hang up on one of my Disney guests because I had to throw up. And she didn't exactly work for Arise either. And by the way, Disney did not respond to our requests for an interview. And for a few years there, if you were calling up Disney dining.ĪRONCZYK: Now, Corder didn't work for Disney dining. She bought herself a headset, computer, installed a new phone and fax line. Corder had to pay for a three-month training class. YVONNE CORDER: To me, it just really sounded like it was fun and an easy way to make money.ĪRONCZYK: Maybe not quite so easy. It's been around since the late 1990s, and it offers the opportunity to get paid to do customer service work from home. Amanda Aronczyk of NPR's Planet Money reports on a potentially illegal business model.ĪMANDA ARONCZYK, BYLINE: When Yvonne Corder first heard about Arise Virtual Solutions, she was trying to find a way to homeschool her kids. They classify customer service workers as contractors and have them work from home. Many of America's best-known companies figured out a way to cut customer service costs.
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