Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #38
alex_young wrote: post #15

I worked for one such employer long ago that would “accidentally” bounce paychecks. This happened with such regularity that people would take their checks to said employer’s bank on payday and stand in line to cash them before heading to the office. You’d see a couple of coworkers in line to do this. Maintaining a list like this is probably not super useful. Any company that does this kind of stuff as a routine will…

I used to work for a tiny company where probably just due to lack of cash (and/or failure to properly manage the payroll account) this was also an issue. We'd be given our paychecks in the morning and go to the bank at lunchtime to cash them!

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#42

Post by nxm »

sigilis wrote: post #35
xhkkffbf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when those "union" bosses run off with the pension fund, who do you call? Or when they insist on the dues and then use them for something else?

A lawyer? That’s pretty obvious. It’s what you do when anyone is in breach of contract or some other civil matter. You just sue them. If it’s a criminal fraud, there’s other people who will help, we call those the authorities.

Money is already gone

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#43

Post by tux3 »

toss1 wrote: post #21
tux3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a Streissand effect waiting to happen. Besides, IANAL, but I'm sure plenty of people here could find a lawyer to file for an easy anti-SLAPP defense. Factual statements about bad employers are very much free speech. Judges aren't particularly fond of frivolous lawsuits. There are already mechanisms in place to quickly throw those away without wasting everyone's time and money.

All true, but anyone putting up a site would need the bankroll to handle such a lawsuit through to winning, and then be able to collect on the SLAPP judgement (which the non-paying employer would likely have put up obstacles to collection). That's the big problem with lawsuits — you start out in a losing position just because of the cost to defend. So a random individual without the bankroll to defend is likely vulne…

>And of course, how do you know all the postings on your site are actually fully factual and not exaggerated in any way?

You don't, but you smile and just delete the content. And then you've done your part as a platform. You're very happy to delete things when notified, and you do it promptly. Then you get to publish a very factual transparency notice.

Someone will have archived the page already? Social media is upset when they hear that the big company tried to attack the small independent site to take down this page that They Don't Want You To See? That's out of your hands, you're a neutral platform and you've done your part.

You just need to fold immediately, and you're covered by all the safe harbor neutral platform protections. Same as forums, social media, any website with user-generated content.

Now that won't stop an asshole from suing you over frivolous nonsense. But it does make it easy to throw their suit away - like you said, if you have the spite and money to follow through with a defense.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#44

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

01284a7e wrote: post #22
alex_young wrote: post #15

I worked for one such employer long ago that would “accidentally” bounce paychecks. This happened with such regularity that people would take their checks to said employer’s bank on payday and stand in line to cash them before heading to the office. You’d see a couple of coworkers in line to do this. Maintaining a list like this is probably not super useful. Any company that does this kind of stuff as a routine will…

"Any company that does this kind of stuff as a routine will not continue the routine of employing people for long." "On contracts" is explicitly mentioned. While bouncing your W-2 employees' paychecks is a big no-no, there are plenty of organizations that stiff contractors for decades.

> plenty of organizations that stiff contractors for decades

POTUS was famous for doing this - stiffing small contractors working on his real estate projects. This seemed like a pretty major character tell, but folks voted for him all the same.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-claim-donald-t...

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#45

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

tux3 wrote: post #16
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #10

An unethical company is likely would consider a lawsuit to put such private site out of business. A collection of unethical companies would be an exponentially higher risk to such site.

Sounds like a Streissand effect waiting to happen. Besides, IANAL, but I'm sure plenty of people here could find a lawyer to file for an easy anti-SLAPP defense. Factual statements about bad employers are very much free speech. Judges aren't particularly fond of frivolous lawsuits. There are already mechanisms in place to quickly throw those away without wasting everyone's time and money.

> I'm sure plenty of people here could find a lawyer to file for an easy anti-SLAPP defense.

SLAPPs are only illegal in certain jurisdictions, not including federal or even many states.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#47

Post by microgpt »

f4c39012 wrote: post #28
eqmvii wrote: post #7

businesses absolutely love not paying for things. each other, contractors, etc. employees don’t realize how good they have it with payroll protections tbh. That’s how it should be of course!

In much the same way as some HR departments exist to protect the business from their employees, some Finance departments exist to not pay the bills (for as long as possible). They may of course do this because the business itself is not being paid

I read somewhere (HN?) that a guy (an engineer who somehow got temporarily involved in running a restaurant?) got a restaurant a huge (70%?) discount on meat by buying a year's meat upfront on a predictable delivery schedule.

Your vendors hate 90 day payment just as much as you hate when your customers do it, and they are covering for non-payment, late payment, and difficult customers by raising their prices. Crucially, they have to charge you the "bad customer" price because they don't know you, and then your incentive is to be a bad customer because it doesn't cost anything extra for you.

The restaurant owner thought it was crazy but couldn't argue with the cost reduction. The moral of the story was that if you'd just communicate more you may find a mutual benefit. The restaurant loved the vendor but the vendor also felt the restaurant was their best customer even though they were getting 70% less money! - because of the predictability, less need for inventory, better cash flow.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#48

Post by sigilis »

nxm wrote: post #42
sigilis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lawyer? That’s pretty obvious. It’s what you do when anyone is in breach of contract or some other civil matter. You just sue them. If it’s a criminal fraud, there’s other people who will help, we call those the authorities.

Money is already gone

Oh, did this happen to you personally? If so, you have my sympathies.

If it's just a hypothetical, consider this:

The money doubles and everyone laughs about it in the end.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#49

Post by GrinningFool »

lemonademan wrote: post #2

I don't know of any website that lists all employers who break contracts or miss payments. I might just create one. However, sometimes past contractors or clients leave reviews warning about unpaid freelance invoices or poor business ethics on review sites like Trustpilot.

I don't know that anyone can risk running such a site. There'd need to be a long trail of proof behind each claim, and proof is getting easier to manufacture by the day.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a bad employers (who have a records of not paying) list?

#50

Post by microgpt »

matsemann wrote: post #24
lokar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US? How is it different than yelp? (Except for the extortion)

There's a difference between "I didn't like their salad" (opinion) and "they don't pay their bills" (a fact, that could be defamation if not true)

In Germany if you leave a Google review saying "the salad tasted bad" you may get sued for defamation, but probably not because they'll threaten Google first, who will take it down and ding your account. If they do sue you, they will win unless you can prove to a judge that the salad tasted bad. You will then have to pay a few thousand dollars of damages and another few thousand of legal fees (yours and theirs).
Post reply on HN