Author: Christopher Day

Self-published author and activist.

Bulletin: FTC: Independent Contractors Shielded From Antitrust Liability

I don’t know what’ll happen under the new administration, but this was issued on January 14, 2025. (Alt link)

It’s almost as if… someone… who blogs a lot…. figured this out…. a long time ago…. and made a page called court reporter rates discussion.

I’m copying the plain text so that when Emperor Donald Trump wipes away the pro-worker link, we have some memory of what it said.

FTC Issues Policy Statement Clarifying that Independent Contractors, Gig Workers’ Organizing Activities Are Shielded from Antitrust Liability

The Federal Trade Commission today issued a policy statement clarifying that independent contractors, including gig workers, are shielded from antitrust liability when engaging in protected bargaining and organizing activities—such as seeking better compensation and job conditions.

According to the FTC’s policy statement, the Commission will not challenge collective action by independent contractors and gig workers, which include rideshare and food delivery drivers, that provide labor services and are seeking better compensation and job conditions because such activities are exempted under the antitrust statutes.

“Companies increasingly rely on gig workers and independent contractors. As more of these workers consider unionizing to secure better pay and conditions, the FTC is making clear that the antitrust laws do not stand in the way of their efforts to collectively organize or bargain,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan.

“Gig workers shouldn’t be forced to accept low wages or poor working conditions just because they’re independent contractors,” said Hannah Garden-Monheit, Director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning. “The FTC’s policy statement today makes clear that the antitrust laws do not prevent gig workers from collectively organizing to fight for a better living.”

Under the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts, the ability of workers to organize and collectively bargain over wages and labor conditions is protected from antitrust liability. However, as more workers are increasingly classified as independent contractors and gig workers, they face a patchwork of cases regarding the potential application of the labor exemption.

The FTC’s policy statement makes clear that workers engaged in protected bargaining or organizing activity are not categorically excluded from the antitrust exemption simply because they do not have a formal employer-employee relationship with the firm with which they are negotiating regarding compensation or working conditions. According to the policy statement, the protection of all workers from antitrust liability when they are engaged in protected labor activities is firmly grounded in the statutory text, consistent with existing case law, and reflective of the original meaning of the labor exemption.

Categorically excluding all independent contractors from the protections of the labor exemption would give employers both the incentive and opportunity to exploit asymmetries in antitrust liability protection between workers, according to the policy statement. For example, businesses would have an opportunity and incentive to classify (or misclassify) their workers as independent contractors to suppress wages and to gain an unfair advantage against competitors who provide better compensation and job conditions to workers.

The Commission voted 3-2 to approve the policy statement with Commissioners Andrew N. Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak voting no. Commissioner Ferguson issued a dissenting statement joined by Commissioner Holyoak.

The Federal Trade Commission develops policy initiatives on issues that affect competition, consumers, and the U.S. economy. The FTC will never demand money, make threats, tell you to transfer money, or promise you a prize. Follow the FTC on social media, read consumer alerts and the business blog, and sign up to get the latest FTC news and alerts.

Bulletin: Lawsuit: The National Court Reporters Association Violated Antitrust Laws

My son is being born today so this’ll be a quick link.

The bottom line is that the tying of membership product to certification product is illegal under antitrust laws. NCRA is now being sued.

Maybe the board will realize whose watch this happened on.

Maybe it’s time for new leadership.

Wish me luck today. I will need it.

Addendum:

complaint.

NCRA later issued a statement

I just realized I was cited in the complaint thanks to my best friend.

P.S.

If ever my son should find this, mom and dad waited a long time for this day.

We love you. And we will love you forever.

I set these events you’re reading about in motion with the help of powerful people — and readers just like you.

And though I hope you will, like me, stand against injustice and the bullying of others when you are ready…

I want you to know that I will be happy no matter who you become.

I can’t wait to meet you.

Goodbye, 2024. Musing: The Dream

Stenonymous releases December 2019 to December 2024 viewer and visitor stats

Over half a decade ago I was told by multiple people that nobody would ever read my writing.

Over the last 750 posts, I proved ’em all wrong.

I have to tell you, whatever you want to do with yourself, just do it. Have fun. Don’t let other people talk you out of it unless it’s hurting yourself or others. Maybe you won’t be rich or famous, but “you do you” is wildly fulfilling. Of course, I acknowledge I write from a place of privilege. I have the time to “do me.” A lot of people don’t have the luxury. Overworked, underpaid people of all stripes.

You already know one of the reasons I write is for them. Every ounce of notoriety I gain is a step toward having the power to make a difference someday. It may be a lifelong project never fulfilled. But the same way I’m telling you to dare to dream, I tell myself, because I believe deeply in the Pygmalion Effect. Dreams can, in their own way, manifest into reality. In the words of William Blake, “what is now proved was once only imagined.” This is a part of human psychology. I’d bet money it’s how we’ve come so far as a species. As we learned from Martin Luther King, Jr., sharing dreams are a fundamental necessity to advancement.

And wow, do I have wild dreams.

One of my most recent dreams, I was one of privileged few who could have any one wish granted. In the dream, many used their wish for wealth, power, immortality. I deeply sympathized with these wishes. I thought of all the self-serving things I could wish for. But I came to a decision that my wish would be to end all suffering. A great deal of the dream was spent brainstorming the perfect wording. I wanted wording that would end all suffering without some terrible consequence, such as the end of existence. I awoke saddened that I never found the right words. It was in many ways familiar, as I have often agonized over the best way to “write for good”, sometimes taking liberties that risk repulsing the audience.

This is not to say I have my head in the clouds. I know the danger of being too entrenched in big-picture thinking, same as any human. But what of the danger of never engaging in the thought that there is a world larger than my own? Could I just tell myself I am living the dream without ever fearing that I might wake from it to find that I am chained to a bed by apathy, greed, burnout, and hatred? And what if the day comes where I realize I could’ve been a part of helping everyone live the dream, but for my own apathy? These are the kinds of things we’re all given just moments to ponder in our busy lives. Does that make them less important?

I wish all of you a happy and healthy 2025.

Bulletin: CVS Is Anti-Pharmacist

Just read a little through this. The Justice Department filed a nationwide lawsuit alleging a great many things. One of which caught my eye. CVS was, through its staffing and other policies, making it impossible for pharmacists to keep up with their metrics and legal obligations at the same time.

Who could imagine corporations putting professionals in a position where they’d have to violate their legal obligations? I’m sure it’s never happened in court reporting (sarcasm).

Another page in the book of corporate irresponsibility. In the words of Jon Taffer, you’re gonna get people sick!

Americans’ Confidence in Judiciary at Record Lows

A new Gallup poll has come out. “In this country, do you have confidence in each of the following or not? How about the judicial system and courts?”

The median of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s median is 55% yes. So in other countries, you get about half of the people saying yes. And as reported by Gallup, between 2006 and 2020 America tracked the OECD median. Now? 35%.

As confidence in the judiciary drops, perhaps people will seek new solutions and it will lose its independence. Perhaps new oversight will be put in place. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of state court confidence versus federal court confidence, as the question doesn’t specify, and America has a whole lot of courts.

Maybe it seems radical to suggest the courts need such oversight. But I no longer think so, given the Supreme Court’s love for lavish gifts and disintegration of the principles of our system of law. When a stenographer working for a state court has stricter financial reporting requirements than the highest judicial office in the United States of America, hell yes, I can see why confidence is low.

Either policy makers act or confidence in what I would consider a critical branch of government continues to deteriorate. I know which one I’d pick.

Could the Right to Repair Come to Court Reporting?

As told to me by a valued reader, the right to repair movement is coming to U.S. Industries. Simply put, it’s a demand on manufacturers to make parts and manuals more accessible so that people can repair their own devices.

The Right to Repair Movement, googled by Stenonymous.com on 12/21/24

And again, as told to me by this valued reader, United States farmers have made ground in this area against John Deere.

Apple has had pressure placed on it by consumers — and consumers want more!

There was even a bill introduced when it came to automobiles.

So could stenographers, voice writers, and even digital reporters fight for this same right to repair? I think so. To be fair, when it comes to electronics, I’ve always run into “this would be cheaper to replace.” But now, looking back, I don’t know how much of that is because of labor cost and how much of that is because manuals are not readily accessible to fix these things.

I imagine our own right to repair movement would start with our stenotypes. Sure, Stenograph could see the writing on the wall and issue these manuals and parts listings freely, but I sense it’s something we’d have to force through legislation. Since getting the federal government to do anything is nearly impossible, it would probably have to happen at a state level in states where Stenograph and others have significant business such as New York, California, Texas, and Illinois — the four biggest states for court reporting identified by the Ducker Report over ten years ago.

Let’s put it this way, it would help stop them from holding us hostage by stopping support for our older stenotypes every few years.

Maybe our associations could even team up with Right to Repair Associations like The Repair Association.

(In fact, their website mentions the state legislature too. I guess they have the same faith in the federal government I do.)

After targeting our stenotypes — or perhaps concurrently — I would target our laptops. Imagine every laptop coming with a nice booklet about how to troubleshoot and repair certain parts? Sure, this information exists out in the world, but it would be nice if it was accessible by default from manufacturers. As an example, I recently had a laptop malfunction. Luckily it was under warranty. But it needed a new motherboard and RAM. Imagine if it had been out of warranty! How nice would it have been to have a step-by-step guide explaining how to get into the laptop casing without accidentally ripping the thing in half?

(The joke is I did that while extracting a hard drive from an ancient laptop very, very recently. I was too stupid to figure out how to slide the case off even with all the screws out.)

Destroying laptops 101 by Christopher Day

The point is simple. Taking the repair monopoly away from manufacturers and putting it firmly into the hands of consumers that want to “risk it.” Life’s all about risk and reward. Don’t we deserve our shot?

After reading more into this movement, I’m in full support. This is something we can and should do — with price raise caps implemented right into the law to douse the fire on any manufacturer that thinks they’re going to use this as an excuse to significantly raise prices.

Any New Yorkers that want to get together on this, let me know.

I’d offer elsewhere, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from life it’s that you can’t be everywhere at once without burning out.

Is the right to repair worth fighting for?

You decide!

Why Failing to Raise the Debt Ceiling is Bad — Government Shutdown Threat 2024

I’m not going to get too into why a government shutdown is bad. There’s no reasoning with any anti-government goon that thinks it’s good. Critical funding to law enforcement and other initiatives stops and workers potentially go unpaid, maybe even deciding to walk off the job for an employer that will pay them steadily.

But there’s a major threat to your wallet.

When the U.S. government takes on debt by issuing bonds, it’s putting the full force of our country’s credit and credibility behind those bonds. To put this in really simple terms think of it like a credit card. You have a credit limit. The United States as a sovereign government has the power to raise its own credit limit and lenders are willing to lend more and more money because the United States is a safe bet with a strong dollar — they will get their money back with interest. Some of those lenders are Americans. Some are foreigners. All are relying on the United States to pay its debt. The faucet will pretty much never turn off as long as we keep telling people we’ll borrow some more money — or at least it’ll be a damn long time before the faucet turns off because people believe in our country’s ability to pay its debts.

Now, if we choose not to raise our credit limit and borrow more money to pay off the interest on our current debt, we default pretty quick, because the government simply doesn’t have the cash on hand. I suppose it could print money, which would cause inflation and make every dollar you own less valuable — but that’s not a great idea. So what happens when we default and stop paying the interest on United States debt?

Lenders get nervous. Interest rates go up. And again, we get inflation that makes every dollar you own less valuable — and prices go up to reflect this new reality of decreased purchasing power around the world.

So this is really a no brainer. The fact that it’s used as a political weapon is the single greatest failure of modern government. Theres no end game where failing to raise that debt ceiling is good for Americans.

Oh, and if you own a United States bond and they stop paying your interest, that’s bad too. There are many seniors that rely on the fixed income from bond interest to survive, and I don’t think I need to get into what happens when you turn older folk’s income off and potentially crash their investments. There’s just no good reason to do that. It’s evil.

If we go this route the world may no longer see us as a safe place to invest. A weak dollar means Americans lose.

It’s my sincere hope we don’t go there and that there are some adults in the room. But for the time being I’ve got all my money in brokered Certificates of Deposit because it seems like the ultra rich are trying to crash everything so they can buy cheap, cheap, cheap.

Addendum:

I just saw this. Needless to say I agree.

Company President Stabbed In Muskegon, Michigan

They’re still searching for a motive to the attack last I checked in the news. But I’ve got a theory.

One of the reasons for school shootings was thought to be infamy. Nobodies who wanted to be known for something could do something terrible and inevitably end up in the news. But school shootings are just about universally reviled, so much so that some people pretend they didn’t happen to cope with the horrible reality of our time. At least that’s what I tell myself.

With the Brian Thompson story, people were applauding — some of them — some people were happy. It was a long time coming in the words of some. To them, a system that legally kills thousands had a shot fired at it.

And again, with this stabbing, you’ve actually got people cheering the attacker. They see special treatment of the wealthy as a slap in the face to things like equality under the law.

We’ve now entered a period in history where people are realizing you can stab your boss, get a little fame and a fan club, and the state will feed and shelter you so you can escape the 9 to 5 grind. It doesn’t quite have the same evil tone as shooting kids — despite killing of kids being a lower priority problem for the United States of America and law enforcement than the killing of a CEO.

I’m somewhat kidding of course. But also just a little serious. I think we’re going to see a lot more of these attacks until the U.S. starts to bend pro-labor. People are snapping because the economic conditions created by legal action and inaction are squeezing them, or for the empathetic, others around them. What do you do when you feel you are under attack? Fight or flight, and a lot of us have nowhere to run from burnout.

Take it from someone that knows, it’s hard to snap violently when all your basic needs are taken care of and you feel you have something to live for. It takes a relatively broken person to seek violence for the “thrill” of it from my observation of the world. But humans are all pretty much capable of turning the empathy off and turning to violence if the mood calls for it. It’s the job of policymakers to create conditions that don’t inspire that mood.

You can’t tsk, tsk, tsk away the human condition. You can only create conditions where only the most depraved do the kinds of things we’ve been reading about recently, and only the most deranged cheer them on.

Do I know the motive? No. My guess is as good as anyone else’s.

But I’ve predicted things a time or two, and my prediction here stands. We need a pro-labor bend to stifle the wave of violence we are likely to see.

It’s been said that people encourage the use of proper channels because they own the proper channels and are sure proper channels won’t work. Given the federal court’s recent attack on overtime pay and the Ohio Supreme Court’s refusal to allow a straightforward negligence case to trial, even I’m starting to buy into that rhetoric.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like we’ll get a pro-people bend in government any time soon. The incoming administration has a goal to dismantle the FDIC, putting all of our savings at risk. Imagine a world where our savings aren’t backed by the United States government — just another stress point for a population that’s already overworked and underpaid. Now you’ll have to worry about whether your bank will belly flop into bankruptcy too! May it never come to pass.

I’m one of the most privileged people out there. You know what I want for this country? I want everybody to have what I have. The privileged people above me? They want what little you got.

Oh, and if it should come to light that the attack was due to mental illness…

Another three cheers for universal healthcare.