A long time ago I made the Court Reporter Rates Discussion group on Facebook. Anyone can join and we do a bit of group policing to keep the spam low.
For years this wasn’t a thing. Our associations trained us we couldn’t discuss rates because we are independent contractors. And in recent years there have even been a few people who have made the claim what I am facilitating is illegal.
There are two reasons why I’m basically immune to any sort of prosecution in this regard, as best I can tell.
First of all, for the FTC to go after me, they risk bringing to light that they didn’t go after the consortium of businesses that conspired to raise prices under the Speech-to-Text Institute. They’d be arguing Christopher Day is more of a threat to the monopolization of the market than Veritext et al.
Second of all, the indisputable legal truth is that the vast majority of us are misclassified employees with an absolute right to discuss our pay and working conditions. Again, this is something companies would never come after me for, because it would blow up in their face. Imagine a judge confirming what I am saying for all of you.
There are digital court reporters figuring this out and talking about unionization. Change is coming. It may take a decade or more or it could be next year. But we each have a decision to make — lead the charge or watch the battle and hope the winner is benevolent.
Coincidentally it’s the same way fascism has been fought through history.
Depo firms try to threaten reporters into submission. If depo firm is angry with you, they don’t use you. You just stop getting work from calendar person. That’s what scares reporters and keeps them from talking and comparing. These big firms all break the employment rules. They think you have no rights because you are independent. The Department of Fair Housing says otherwise. When I retire, I’m visiting the Dept of Fair Housing. I had a friend who was an independent nurse at a nursing home. She went to Dept of Fair Housing. That nursing home had to pay huge fines. They are out of biz now. Just because we’re independent, doesn’t give the depo firms the right to walk all over us. Oh, independent reporters need to be unionized just like the officials are unionized. Whenever a big firm gets a hint of a union, they start using scare tactics. Why is it okay for officials to have union representation but not independents!?!?
The issue is that most independents are not true independents but misclassified employees. I’ve written about it many times over the years but here is a piece that might explain it better from when I spoke to a lawyer on the issue.
https://stenonymous.com/2024/02/09/february-2024-nyc-deposition-reporter-unionization-report/