I did a lot of work on similar freelancing sites in the 2000s. While it is true that there is always more than one side to the story, there’s also a massive power imbalance with these services.
Most of the workers come from outside of the US, work for already ridiculously low fees, and they have no recourse if they do end up having their payments cancelled or their accounts frozen / locked.
You need a third party to prevent abuses, like you don't get paid. But the issue is that this third party does not want you to build a relation between developer and the employer because if you build trust then you don't need the third party.
This is how I started, I found some small projects, then me and the other person worked on other tasks, trust built and we then worked directly.
The union can act as a third party and provide a similar site. Where then the interests are more closely aligned and not affected by the profit motive. The purpose of such a union would be to get developers jobs at equitable rates for their living conditions and their home market.
Is there a legal way to create a union to represent people from different countries,that work as free lancers? I can see this attempts getting stuck in the laws that probably were not designed for such a scenario.
Some competition would help but the big ones buy the small competitors.
Not sure about actually having protected collective bargaining rights (i.e., in the US subject to the NLRA), but pooling resources to have staff attorneys, etc -- certainly possible. e.g., the IWW tries to do this, organizing "unorganizable" workforces (most recently, for freelance journalists https://freelancejournalistsunion.org/)
The only issue I see is that lawyers are expensive in US relative to how low most of the beginner developers get paid on freelancer.com (you could earn 2.5$/hour or less).
I’m not sure how you have any kind of collective bargaining when the talent pool represents hundreds of millions of potential workers. Many of those are people who will spend 12 hours a day working and commuting to earn a few hundred dollars a month.
The legal systems of the workers range everywhere from, the United States, to countries where you can get your head chopped off if someone thinks you might be gay. How does all of that get reconciled? It could turn in to something that goes in to trade agreements. Then you potentially have a situation where work is just getting subcontracted out instead of contracted directly.
If all of them collectively demanded higher wages, it would help a lot. If any of them demanded higher wages on their own, their income would drop to zero as everyone else happily eats their lunch.
Market forces will ensure that there's someone in a developing country who will do the work for less than a developed country's living wage. Usually when you have to fight the market, you do it with government, but that's tough since there's no global government setting a minimum wage. So I guess it's up to each country to adopt trade policies to restrict businesses in their jurisdiction from contracting with foreign workers. I don't think there's a good answer for how to solve this. American industrial and manufacturing workers have felt this pain for a long time.
Sure, but look at the flip side: it’s a way for people from tiny, remote countries to get access to an integrated market of software projects, and a payment platform.
The payment part in particular is lucrative for that population.
I'm strongly against tariffs, but when it comes to labor, I believe we should not allow companies to hire or contract out labor in countries which do not follow US labor laws. It's a race to the bottom otherwise, an unfair competition which hurts US workers and doesn't truly solve the problems faced by those in the other country.
For US businesses, US labor laws should be the minimum standard for hiring workers overseas.
The biggest companies will just form overseas business units and employ now "local" people in order to avoid these restrictions. Addressing this sort abuse while keeping the flow of capital reasonably free is a bit more of a challenge.
There are two assumptions here that I’d like to point out: that the US labor laws are the best worldwide, and that there is an inherent problem in other countries that would be solved if they just adhered to the US laws.
US historically had, and still has a large number of cases (either legal or just public discourse) of employers treating their employees unjustly, unfairly or with malice, despite all of the legal protection that US provides. There are always edge cases and loopholes. That said, I do believe that to an extent, the precedent based legal system of US trumps European style jurisprudence systems.
Secondly, there is no evidence that by and large the workers are treated better in the US, or that other counties are clearly inferior. International employee engagement is pretty close to the world average in most modern countries.
How is not allowing US companies to exploit workers in developing countries "colonialism"? If anything, exporting work to cheaper countries with less worker protections is the modern day version of colonialism.
As another commentator said, the US can have fewer worker protections than Europe and still more than developing countries. I assume that the OP meant that US labor laws would be a minimum standard chosen because that's what US companies would have to follow if they didn't outsource, not because it's objectively the best labor standard.
No one pays taxes and it is obvious. The infrastructure is horrendous to non-existent.
Meanwhile, I have to pay taxes and fees to support my community. From the school teachers to the street workers.
Companies here benefit from it to. Companies can feel free to move their headquarters to New Delhi if they don't want to do any business in the US. Contribute or GTFO.
Freelancer.com and similar are enabling companies to escape their social responsibilities. You can't blame them but.. there should be costs/fee or tariffs associated with outsourcing.
The OP is not claiming US labor laws are the best. The OP is saying that the US has decided that these are the laws it wants for itself and so if you want the output of your work to be sold in America, then these are the standards that should be maintained.
It’s similar to a Kosher or halal restaurant demanding that any meat that they purchase must adhere to the standards they have.
The foreign workers are free to provide their services to non-American companies, just like a non kosher butcher is free to sell their meat to a different restaurant. It’s just not the rules that the US meets.
And in fact, this is true if nearly everything you purchase. Ivory cannot be sold in the US. Blood diamonds cannot be so,d there. A whole host of products need to meet certain standards to be sold in the US. The OP is suggesting the same sort of laws apply to services that apply to goods.
Neither assumption you describe is necessarily present in the position you are responding to. The US could have below average labor protections and still legitimately be worried about outsourcing labor to countries with even lower labor protections.
This is precisely what globalization agreements don't just say "ok, no tarrifs guys". Those low tarrifs are tied to mandated regulations to out a floor on "races to the bottom".
Thus globalization is necessarily a trade off between economic performance and regulatory autonomy.
Most of the workers come from outside of the US, work for already ridiculously low fees, and they have no recourse if they do end up having their payments cancelled or their accounts frozen / locked.
It’s not the easiest way to make a living.