Freelance | Working Stiffed

A Casualty of the Gig Economy: My Life in the Brave New Workplace

A lot is written about the trendy, flexible perks of the gig economy. Sure, it can be “liberating,” if you have a husband or wife who is a high-powered lawyer or doctor and you can “gig” with abandon between sessions of binge-watching “Orange is the New Black,” but for those of us in single-income households, these new “alternative work arrangements” are nothing short of a nightmare that keeps us on the constant brink of financial disaster.

The gig economy is even harder on people over 50; we’re less likely to be able to slide into consecutive contract positions as effortlessly as workers who are in their 20s or 30s.

Last week, my latest “gig” ended prematurely, because the multi-billion dollar medical device company that had hired me just three months earlier decided to dump all the contractors in my business unit. This was the “first wave” of their third reorg in six months.

This was supposed to be a one year assignment…so much for honoring our contract. I didn’t see this one coming, because several managers had sent my manager unsolicited compliments about my work and I really liked it there.

I actually thought I had a shot of staying on and eventually becoming an FTE (full-time employee). My hiring manager even dangled that possibility during my interview. Huh…foolish mortal. At the end of the day, I was just another anonymous blip on some overcompensated executive’s spreadsheet.

Health care or wealth care?

This scenario was déjà vu all over again for me; the gig I had before this one — this time with a multi-million dollar health care system that is owned by a multi-billion dollar global chemical company (chew on that alliance for a while) — ended exactly the same way after only four months. Again, I was told this was a one year assignment, and again, I was caught under the wheels of a budget-cutting reorg.

It’s not just small- or medium-sized budget-conscious businesses that treat their workforce like the girlfriend they like to sleep with but will never marry, its billion dollar health care conglomerates, and equally flush Wall Street and Silicon Valley mega-employers.

If they can’t afford to hire people at a decent wage and provide benefits, who can? Of course they can; they just don’t. And they have our government’s blessing to treat us like disposable napkins…wipe and toss.

After a lifetime of steady, salaried middle-management employment, it’s hard to find yourself unprotected as an independent contractor. Gone are jobs that pay a living wage that increase with time for work well done, humane work hours, job security, health insurance, pensions and other traditional benefits.

We no longer have rights or unions to protect us and keep us steadily employed. In fact, the globalist-owned media has been waging a successful propaganda campaign to demonize unions for years, while our politicians (beginning with Ronald Reagan) have been simultaneously gutting the rights of unions and union members.

This is a tragedy, especially since gig workers can go weeks (or months) without work and we live in fear of getting sick or injured, because if we can’t work, we can’t earn money. Frankly, I could use a strong union right about now.

And when we do find work, it’s usually through temp agencies we’ve never heard of (some are offshore). They place us and pay us (while taking a piece of every hour we work). All we can do is hope that, since they have our social security number and all of our proprietary information, that they don’t sell our identity to some cyber criminal or exploit it themselves.

What’s to stop them? I’m not aware of any protections in place. Again, this is not a priority for our “representatives” in government.

The curse of NAFTA

The table was set for our growing transient workforce with the passage of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). We have Bill, and yes, Hillary Clinton to thank for this travesty. NAFTA gave greedy corporate chieftains access to unlimited cheap, offshore labor and officially placed the middle class American worker on the extinction list.

The post-NAFTA war against the middle class began when companies started getting rid of our pensions; phase two involved outsourcing tech support and customer service to countries that provided cheap offshore labor for U.S.-based companies.

Eventually, with the assistance of bought-off members of Congress, greedy corporate titans started bringing in foreign workers through H1-B visas. The rationale was that there weren’t enough qualified people in this country to fill the many “jobs” they were creating.

This is a lie, as the recent Disney IT employee fiasco proves (they let go of their U.S. IT team, imported foreign workers to fill the positions at lower wages, and forced the displaced workers to train their replacements or forfeit their severance packages).

Other companies have, and continue, to follow Disney’s example. Mainstream media has (surprisingly) covered this issue, and still not a peep from Congress or Obama.

Elizabeth Warren did recently mention the need to address this issue, but to date, she hasn’t introduced any legislation to remedy the situation, so who cares what she thinks? She’s paid to fix these things. So, get to steppin’ Betty.

To make things worse, our taxes are used to provide these companies with subsidies. So, essentially, we’re paying for our own funeral.

More than half of all jobs created since 1995 were non-standard jobs, which include part-time workers, contract workers or self-employed people, according to a report published in May 2015 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

While our politicians hammer us with wedge issues like gun control, whine endlessly about the “humanitarian” need to let in an an endless stream of unvetted refugees and pat themselves on the the back for enforcing the “Dreamer Act,” they ignore the plight of their constituents, the American worker.

The American middle class is dying, and while Congress and Obama administer the last rites, it’s becoming obvious that there won’t be anyone left to attend the funeral.

At my most recent “gig,” I worked with some people who had been employed for anywhere from six to 18 years. The only three people “hired” within the past year, including me, were contractors…not one FTE.

One of the “vested” employees often griped about the threat of her bonus being sub-par this year. She knew that I had a solid career as a salaried management employee until recently and that, despite being good at my job, I couldn’t find a similar role in this economy.

She sympathized with my circumstances, but I could tell she didn’t think she was at risk of experiencing a similar fate…after all, what happened to me only happened to “other” people, not her. I wish I could tell her that she’s right, but I know better. The reality is that if we all don’t push our representative to fix this now, my gig worker misery will have a whole lotta company soon.

Yes, it’s true. Obamacare has sentenced me to death…and financial destitution. I feel it’s important to address this issue on this, the last day we are told to register for Obamacare without incurring an unconstitutional tax penalty.

I have been without health insurance, which I cannot afford, for a year-and-a-half and I live in a state that does not extend Medicaid to people in my position. As a result, I am one serious disease or accident away from certain death.

After dutifully paying taxes for close to 40 years, helping to send other people’s kids to school (I don’t have kids) and funding food stamps and benefits for thousands of people, my government is repaying me by turning its back on me during my hour of need…and penalizing me for my new-found destitution, to boot.

How did this happen? I am a 52-year-old woman who was last employed in a full-time position with benefits four years ago; I was part of a group purge after my company was acquired by a competitor. This scenario is familiar to most of you, I’m sure. I thought I’d find another job with benefits easily, but I was wrong.

As The New York Times recently reported, women over 50 account for half of all long-term unemployed people. After remaining steadily employed in good, white collar lower management positions for more than 30 years, I was suddenly an unwilling participant in the trendy new gig economy out of necessity.

For this I owe a big thanks to Bill Clinton and NAFTA, which destroyed the American middle class by allowing companies to ship jobs overseas and import H1-B visa “guest workers.” Now, many of us find that we’re unemployable more than 20 years before we can collect a pension (if we even have one) or Social Security (if it will still exist by then).

My new reality involves going months without work, or “contracts,” and even when I do get a temporary contract position, my “clients” periodically cut my hours without warning. As a result, I made less than $10k last year.

Needless to say, I can’t afford the so-called affordable insurance Obama promised. According to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health care exchange marketplace, I’d need to pay $550 a month for a policy with an $8,000 deductible. And what good is a subsidy when you go months without any income?

A low-cost, pre-Obamacare catastrophic insurance policy would be helpful right about now. Unfortunately, Obamacare-less forces me to buy an overpriced policy with a high deductible, so that I can share the privilege of paying for some dude’s Viagra prescription and pediatric dental insurance (like I said, I don’t have kids).

To make things worse, I’m about to get hit with the Obamacare penalty…and this is on top having to drain my savings and take hardship withdrawals from my 401(k) (which I am also about to be unfairly penalized for) just to survive in our “new normal” transient, gig economy that mainstream media finds so hip and trendy.

I’ve decided that if something happens to me health-wise, I’m just going to die, because if I am hospitalized, I stand to lose my home and what little I have left, so why bother sticking around?

If you like Obamacare, it’s probably because you don’t need it

I am so tired of brainwashed Obamacare defenders crowing about the 12 million Americans who couldn’t get insurance before now having coverage. Frankly, in a country of 330 million people where close to 100 million are out of the workforce (many not by choice), that’s a drop in the uninsured bucket, so bragging is totally uncalled for. Maybe they’re promoting this “success” because they know that math-challenged Common Core students are easily impressed by any number you throw at them.

Obamacare supporters are also quick to blame states that don’t extend Medicaid. Why? Should citizens of states that aren’t on board with Obamacare be penalized? There wasn’t a Medicaid referendum in any state that I am aware of.

And, if Obamacare is supposed to mandate affordable insurance for all, why didn’t it nationalize Medicaid? At the very least, it should exempt those of us who live in Medicaid-deprived states from Obamacare.

And then there’s the pre-existing condition clause. Sorry, Obamacare defenders, but I’m not down with being stuck with the rest of this ugly baby just for that one benefit. Besides, a single-payer health care solution would take care of pre-existing conditions just as effectively. As it stands, the insurance companies are offsetting their pre-existing condition “losses” with double-digit rate increases each year.

Not surprisingly, I find that the strongest supporters of this crony capitalist screw job are people who have employer-paid health insurance or at least make or have enough money to overpay for their insurance.

I know a couple of people who used to sing the praises of Obamacare….until they lost their jobs, were forced to join the gig economy, and had to actually rely on Obamacare for coverage. Needless to say, both have now joined the repeal Obamacare bandwagon.

It’s unconstitutional

The lie Obama sold us (among many) when he was promoting this travesty was access and affordability…and, of course, we couldn’t keep our doctors, after all (not that we can afford them now anyway, so I suppose this is a moot point for those of us who inhabit the Obamacare penal colony). I admit that I bought the spin. I even voted for the lying clown. What we got instead was a gun to our heads forcing us to purchase an overpriced product from PRIVATE companies or face hefty, escalating tax penalties.

No income limits were set; whether you make $10k (or less) or $100k a year, if you don’t buy insurance, you get taxed. Seriously? How is that legal? Or fair? First of all, people who make less than $30k shouldn’t pay ANY taxes, never mind have tax penalties imposed upon them.

And if Obama was so hell-bent on insuring us, why didn’t he mandate maximum premium amounts that insurers could charge? Say, $200 a month? Let’s call Obamacare what it is: a blank corporate welfare check to the insurance companies.

Not a peep from presidential candidates

NOT ONE presidential candidate has addressed this travesty. Several running for president are sitting members of Congress. They’ve taken a two year paid vacation on our tax payer dime to attend fundraisers and campaign for an office most don’t stand a chance of winning. Must be nice.

NOT ONE of them (including our socialist man of the people, Bernie Sanders) can be bothered to spare a moment to introduce legislation NOW to at least waive the “Cadillac tax” penalty. No, instead of nuking the toxic provisions of Obamacare, Congressional members voted to repeal the whole thing, knowing that the president would veto the resolution….pure theater…or political masturbation.

As a member of Congress you have a unique opportunity to demonstrate your leadership abilities through legislation, and there’s no time like the present. That’s probably the ONLY advantage you have over Donald Trump. Talk is cheap. So, why not lead by example? Because, frankly, too many of us don’t have a year to wait for action…nor do we trust empty campaign promises.

Speaking of leading by example, I invite Obamacare defenders to show me how great it is by contributing funds to pay my Obamacare tax penalty and/or my monthly insurance premiums. On second thought, the way our economy is going, maybe you should hang on to your money…you’ll probably need it to pay for your own “affordable” Obamacare insurance someday.

Being a freelancer these days has a lot of perks: you make your own work schedule and you can work from the comfort of your home, thus you can avoid messy office politics, getting stuck in commuter traffic and blowing your ever-shrinking “gig economy” earnings on a “business casual” wardrobe and workplace lunches.

Sure, there are some challenges to freelancing, like convincing clients that your rates are reasonable while they plead poverty or hide behind budget cuts, or getting them to pay you on time (or at all), or having to diplomatically push back on their requests for additional revisions or input that they don’t feel they should have to pay extra for.

Still, the biggest challenge I’ve found as a freelancer is my lack of psychic ability.

If you’re a freelancer, you may have noticed that your clients tend to fall into two categories:

Small businesses that need to hire you because they don’t have the in-house talent to do what you do (e.g., marketing, Web development, etc.).

Middle managers in mid- to large-size companies that have downsized their marketing or IT departments into oblivion who need you to help them get the work done (without having to offer you a steady salary or benefits).

Champagne Dreams on a Spam Budget

Small business clients don’t like budgeting for anything outside of their company’s inventory, so when they reach the painful conclusion that they need to hire you to help increase their brand’s visibility, your biggest challenge is usually managing their expectations.

Even if you find yourself pricing their projects on the low end of your rate scale and they can only offer you a limited amount of work, some clients will expect your handiwork to deliver astounding results in record time.

This is when the fun starts. With some small business clients, you can expect one or both of the following outcomes:

(a) You will spend the next three months asking for your money.

(b) Your client will continue to ask/expect you to do more work outside of the scope of your original agreement until they feel they got an adequate return on their investment. Some of us foolishly keep feeding this beast in the hope that someday these clients will actually pay us for the original work.

If you were psychic, you could avoid a lot of aggravation by knowing ahead of time who won’t pay you or who will likely run you into the ground making you “earn” your money.

I May Not Know What I Want…But I Know What I Don’t Want

Sometimes it’s easier to work with mid- or large-size businesses, because the manager who hires you is more likely to process your invoice…unless they are so overworked that they keep forgetting to do so (which happens more often than is acceptable). Still, as long as they have the budget, you’re not likely to get any push-back or experience unreasonable haggling.

The biggest challenge of freelancing for larger companies is that the mid-level managers who tend to hire you are so overworked that even though they desperately need your help, they often don’t have the time to provide you with what you need to do the job right.

As their hired gun, you’re priority No. 59 on their long to-do lists…way below assisting their VPs and other important business stakeholders, planning the company United Way drive, booking their vacations, arranging their bimonthly date nights with their spouses, finding babysitters for their children or getting their dogs groomed.

Sometimes these clients don’t even know what they’re asking for, while other times all they know is what they don’t want. And woe to the freelancer who receives limited guidance and inadvertently submits what they don’t want.

These clients expect you to have the skill to write or develop exactly what they would, if they only had the time. So what if they’ve had months or years to become well-acquainted with their company’s business objectives, and to attend company-sponsored training and meetings on a regular basis when you haven’t? You oughta know what they’re looking for, anyway, dammit!

The Phantom Lucrative Project

Another potential pitfall of being hired by a large company is one I call “the phantom lucrative project.” A typical scenario involves you blocking out weeks to do a job after being hired by a large, reputable company. Sometimes, you’ll be so happy you got the gig that you’ll celebrate by going on a shopping spree for laptops, patio furniture…or food, if things have been tight for you financially of late.

Then, you hear nothing more from them. When you contact your client, you are given excuses as to why the project is being delayed (e.g., they were on vacation, the project still needs approvals that your client wasn’t aware weren’t in place when he or she hired you, etc.).

The fact that you turned down smaller projects to work on their mega-project doesn’t resonate with them. After all, these people get paid even when they’re working on their tans in Cabo.

Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you’ll wait for weeks to start the project only to be told that it’s been canceled (again, for any number of reasons from budget cuts, to the need to move resources to a more important project, or the project has been mothballed so long it’s actually now irrelevant…or the sponsor was terminated).

Having the psychic intuition to avoid these phantom projects would help keep you that much further away from financial ruin.

Having a pay-or-play deal in place would also help. Unfortunately, unless you have a waiting list of clients or you’re regularly profiled by the top trade media in your field, that ship won’t sail. Your prospective client will just move on to another freelancer who will agree to grant the company the option of leaving them hanging without compensation. Ah, the joys of working in the “gig economy.”

Since I wasn’t born with psychic ability, I’ve decided that the best gift I can receive this Christmas is a crystal ball that can offset my psychic shortcomings…or better yet, a winning mega-jackpot lottery ticket that would get me out from under the freelancer-client bus for good.

Merriam-Webster defines the word freelance as follows:

noun free·lance \ˈfrē-ˌlan(t)s\

usually free lance : a mercenary soldier especially of the Middle Ages : condottiere
a person who acts independently without being affiliated with or authorized by an organization
a person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer

That definition may still apply to some professions, like the aforementioned mercenaries, but a twenty-first century freelance writer or designer would probably define the word as follows:

A creative entrepreneur who pursues their profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer: frequently required to do additional work for free…often stands a better chance of being lanced by a mercenary soldier of the Middle Ages than being paid a living wage.

Of course, we don’t start out feeling that way. When I was exiled from my corporate management perch after my company was acquired by a competitor a couple of years ago, I didn’t panic.

I set up an LLC and decided that my displacement was a blessing; it was finally time for me to reap the substantial financial benefits that awaited someone with my years of communications and marketing experience. I was ready to take those recession lemons and squeeze them into entrepreneurial lemonade. The sky was the limit!

I soon realized that the sky had nothing to do with the limit; “how low can you go?” is actually the measured limit. Look, I’m fine with negotiating a fair freelance or consultant rate, but when you’re routinely offered less money than what Apple sweatshop workers in China earn, it’s hard to feel that optimistic.

Tales from the Script

Aside from having to compete with the bargain-basement freelancers found on Upwork (the cut-rate lovechild of Elance and oDesk) and the like, I have had to deal with the usual client nightmares:

* Clients that blow their substantial website redesign budget on an agency that knows nothing about creating optimized content…and then being asked to fix the mess, despite their now limited funds.

* Entrepreneurs who want to offer me an “exciting” opportunity to get in on the ground floor of their start-up…at a fraction of my rate (one guy even wanted me to work for free) with vague promises of a financial payoff down the road.

* “Prospective clients” who are really just picking your brain, so they can figure out how do the work themselves.

* Clients who hire you for one job and then casually ask you to “look over” something else, if “you’re not too busy.”

* Clients who want to barter for services. (As much as I would like a past life regression reading, it’s not going to pay my bills, unfortunately).

*Corporate clients who hire you for a sizable project with an aggressive deadline only to delay getting the project off the ground…and/or keep you hanging on for weeks only to kill the project down the road.

This can be a financially deadly situation, especially when, in your excitement at landing a profitable gig, you turn down other work to handle the promised lucrative workload.

* Then there are the “resume/portfolio builder” clients who offer the “opportunity” to work for little or no money with the promise that the work you do for them now will help you earn more money down the road.

Fortunately, my mature age and lengthy resume has protected me from these predators (for now); they typically prey on younger freelancers. Word to the wise: falling for this ruse too often will guarantee that you’ll be sleeping on your parents’ sofa well into middle age.

Pay or Play?

There isn’t an experienced freelancer or consultant alive who hasn’t been jerked around when it comes to payment.

Small businesses sometimes take a while to pay, especially when they’re having a bad month or quarter. While that can be frustrating, there’s really no excuse for corporate decision-makers who park your invoice under their donut or morning coffee; after all, these people would shriek like frightened children if their biweekly paycheck wasn’t direct-deposited into their bank accounts on time, so why do they think it’s okay to delay your payday?

We freelancers typically love what we do and take great pride in the work we create for our clients. Still, just because we’re passionate about our work doesn’t mean we expect to eke out an “all-work-no-pay” existence. Do unto freelancers as you would have them do unto you.

What do you think fellow freelance working stiffs? How would you define your profession, and what funny or frustrating experiences have you endured?

Category: freelance

A Casualty of the Gig Economy: My Life in the Brave New Workplace

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