Public Service Opinions February 2026

Staten Island the morning after the February 23, 2026 blizzard

There’s a weird split in the way people think about public sector work. I’ve noted that those that are familiar with the work involved in any particular agency tend to acknowledge it where they can. I certainly do. Apart from court reporters, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know just how hard all sorts of people that come through the courtroom work. I have great respect for the people I work with and work for.

I have no illusions about how some people see us, though. Overpaid ingrates living off the hard work and toil of the private sector.

I’m reminded of that this morning.

Christopher Day says more private sector people should unionize

Maybe therein lies the answer. Maybe public sector workers should use our free speech protections to encourage private sector people to unionize. As unionized private sector working conditions improve, it becomes more commonplace for working conditions to improve across the board, and we can all ask for the things we need.

Tax revenues would probably go up too. More money in more hands means more opportunities, no? Look at me, I had a little money in my hands and first thing I did was employ people. Multiply that by a few million New Yorkers. Yes, some people are tax cheats, but that’s inherent to the system as it is.

All I know is you have some really smart people out there who are restrained by the lack of resources the birth lottery granted them. Gotta get more money in their hands somehow. And the American right to unionize, and discuss pay and working conditions, is the legal structure to get them there on a systemic level.

And some folks view union as anti-market, but it’s all part of the market. Our labor is like all goods and services, and we have a legal right to push for more profit. This is, again, something the wealthy seem to inherently understand, as throughout my lifetime since the Citizens United ruling, there have been forces at play exerting control over our federal government, sometimes legally, sometimes not. And to the extreme detriment of working people and the poor. And the mega corporations that own our news do what they can to avoid coverage or slant coverage.

FDR saved capitalism with the New Deal almost 100 years ago. But we don’t necessarily have to wait for a great man to save us. We already know that a high concentration of the U.S. economy is in corporations. By some estimates, 20% more than they had in the 1930s. And we already have a legal vehicle with which to demand more of our corporations — the union.

Put it this way.

What could you do with 20% more?

A Gentle Reply to Steno Imperium on Digital Pay Parody

As many know I don’t generally censor comments on my blog. I generally welcome discourse and disagreement. To be quite honest, one of my long-term goals was to attract bloggers to the space that would disagree with me and give people things to think about.

So, with plenty of love, I’m going to share Steno Imperium’s “Digital Pay Parity A Pipe Dream of Unbalanced Benefit.” This relates to my post “Digital Pay Parity Would End The Shortage.”

“How can digital parity shift a system that thrives on mediocrity, not mastery?”

Because the simple truth is that most human beings are within relatively the same range of intelligence. The people we deride and derogate as low skill are, pound for pound, about as smart and resourceful as we are. By approaching the scenario as equals and challenging corporate power, we stand a much better shot at winning any given fight. Again, we’re expected to compete with each other. Competing with each other takes attention off how bad we’re being screwed by the corporate players. If we all turn around and demand, particularly through union contracts, that people are paid the same, the corporate players’ only option will be union busting.

“…the digital device will never emulate the essence of experience.”

I more or less acknowledge this where I talk about our communities making our people better trained.

“Day dances through his supposed ‘reality’ with a hasty hand…”

You bet I did. I learned long ago that shorter pieces get more attention. Any time I forget that, my readership levels drop.

“Digital’s rise, in truth, is but a product of a market manipulated by money, not merit.”

Precisely. They have the capability to outspend us 100 to 1. Probably 1000 to 1. And I’m being optimistic there. Those dollars shape perceptions. Those perceptions shape reality.

Consider our entire system of law. Two sides, presenting facts to a judge or jury whose perception alters the reality of the outcome for the two sides. If one side runs out of money, their facts may never even make it to a courtroom before they’re forced to settle.

Similarly here, we’ve proven, over many years, that we do not have the cohesion to mount an effective public perception campaign, while the digital sellers have been spending time and money on shaping public perception for over half a decade. We could, in theory, outspend digital. I’ve covered that on the blog before. We do not. We will not. Our so-called adversaries can break the law with impunity. It’s time to start considering the alternatives to losing.

“…the ‘reality’ Day speaks of is the same reality that leads to layoffs, loss of livelihood, and the lowing of laborers in long-standing lines of work.”

Exactly. I’ve openly published about the fact that corporate consolidation of the United States has started to threaten the livelihoods of doctors and the quality of patient care. If the nature of corporate consolidation is that more and more workers are subjected to the whims of fewer and fewer corporate executives over time, and this is true for some of the smartest people there are, then what’s going to save you from loss of livelihood? Banding together to put rules on the corporate executives! This can happen through legislation or unionization, but it must happen. Corporate power must be checked. Unchecked, the reality is, they do what they want to you, and you are an expense they’d really like to cut.

“Reality isn’t about corporate convenience, it’s about the craft’s value.”

I feel this is addressed by all the above. Yes, we’re valuable. But when you’re being outspent 1000 to 1 in the land of public perception, it doesn’t matter much. Let’s take AI, where the public perception spending is probably 1 million to 1. How many people have heard “AI is the future” versus how many people have read the studies Testifying While Black and Racial Disparities in Automated Speech Recognition? How many people have read that over 80% of AI business solutions fail? Even though those studies and that fact collectively clearly point to humans being better at transcribing a specific dialect, or being better at certain tasks, investors proceeded to dump billions dollars more on AI and AI companies. Perception changes reality.

Our craft ceases to exist without some money behind it. The people with the money think digital is the future. The Pygmalion Effect tells us they’ll do what they can to make digital the future. Their perception of what the future looks like must be altered for us to win out, and digital pay parity would alter it forever.

“The divide isn’t between positivity and anti-digital; the divide is between those who understand the value of real work and those who let digital devices dictate their worth.”

Let’s be clear. When I’m talking pay parity, I’m talking raising them up, not pushing us down.

I had to include the above portion in its entirety because I really take issue with it.

I’ve never made the claim corporations are victims. And again, our decentralization and lack of cohesion are a problem for us, not them. Digital pay parity is NOT a corporate strategy. Notice that it’s always been absent from the “unity” and “equality” corporate crowd’s vocabulary. It would not benefit the people on top, it would squeeze them. And damn, would it be nice for us to be doing the squeezing just once in my lifetime. I dare STAR to start featuring pushes for pay parity. I dare them. Unity Summit my ass.

The end is about being irreplaceable and about faith.

And in the end, I’m not here to shake anyone’s faith, but I can give you the science, the numbers, the psychology. If you want to choose “just believe in our skill” over all of that, it’s cool. But it’s not going to maximize the outcome for the largest number of stenographers possible. In my view, it’s about understanding all the systems we operate in and acknowledging that no matter how many of us believe in our skill, there are a lot of customers — lawyers, litigants, court systems, so forth, that do not care. They want a transcript and could not care less how it’s produced. In reality, cost might be their deciding factor. Want to give up all those dollars to digital? That is shortsighted. That will be the end of us. Equalize our pay and suddenly digital loses its demand. Game, set, match.

Bulletin: Why We Can Discuss Rates

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.

Jackie Mentecky: It’s Deception. It’s A Bait and Switch…

(CDA stands for Christopher Day Annotation in this text.)

“We need antitrust monopoly. We need an employment lawyer.”

Cheri Marks speaks to FL stenographer Jackie Mentecky

ME: Where are you from and are you currently working as a stenographer? And how did you get started in that field?

JM: I’m originally from England, but I grew up in the states, I lived in Pittsburgh for a long time. I moved down to Florida 28 years ago, and I’ve been reporting for since 1998. My entire career has been in Florida.

ME: How has the work been going recently? And can you tell me about when and how you started working with the reporters in Florida?

JM: I’ve always worked for the big boxes, but it was more recently I started asking myself, ‘what’s going on with our career?’ And I started nose diving and down rabbit holes, pulling up lawsuits, pulling up billing. And it was when I saw the writing on the wall that I decided to open my own agency.

ME: Could you give me some examples of things you were finding, what the bad practices entailed? I’m also curious where you seek out news, sources and information about abuses in the field of stenography. Is there good communication within the field?

JM: I can tell you this. Going into a job, attorneys were very vocal in asking, ‘why is my bill so high? What is going on?” And I would talk to my girlfriends, and again– more and more attorneys are complaining about their invoices. I’m like, ‘sir, I haven’t seen a bill since 2006. I don’t know what they’re billing you’.

We never got a copy of the bill. We never knew what they were billing. Attorneys, law firms, whatever it was, everything was kept in the dark, hush hush. Nothing. Nothing. We used to get copies of the bills that went out to the law firms–

ME: The bills were coming from who?

JM: The big boxes. So we used to get copies of the bills when they invoiced their clients, but then they stopped. Looking back, that’s kind of when things started going south.

Everything was hidden behind a back door, don’t ask questions, you know? And it was very, you could sense it. You knew it. You would bring it up once in a while, but, God, you were so busy! You just kept working, right? We were busy. You knew something wasn’t right, but you think, well, I’m still making good money, so leave it alone.

ME: Don’t make waves.

JM: And then you’d forget about it, until somebody else would bring it up..

JM: About six years ago, my son started having really bad seizures. And I stopped going out on live jobs, so I was working from home. I was working for a big box, already either appearing by phone or transcribing audios, before it was even cool.

So the first year of COVID I ended up going back to one of the big boxes because Zoom was now popular. It was a lot easier for me to go back to being a stenographer that was doing hearings and trials and depositions. We were having, oh, gosh, two, three jobs a day during COVID when people finally learned how to use Zoom, and we were slammed. Like, even if you tried to get a day off, they were blowing up our phones:

“Open job”, “do this”, “we need that”, “we need help”, “help. I understand you’re off tomorrow, but can you please take this job?”

I mean, we were slammed. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t so slammed anymore.

But attorneys were like, oh, my God. We’re still on backlog, we’re busy, busy, busy, busy. We gotta go to trial. And the court stenographers were saying, ‘what’s going on?’ Our two jobs a day are now, if we’re lucky we got two or three a week.

So, what is going on?

Covid was the perfect opportunity for these firms to do this to us, because we weren’t in the office together. We weren’t seeing each other all the time. Everybody was working by zoom now. So this was their big chance to cry ‘shortage’ and hire digitals, get them trained, and then try to get rid of the court stenographers. For them to say, we’re too slow, and then come to find out that they have digital reporters in Texas taking Florida work.

I started doing some research. I knew something was up. I knew that this had got to be over profits. I mean, they’re paying these typists $20 an hour. I did legal transcription for over 20 years at a big box firm. I know what AI software they’re using, and how much they’re paying their typist, everything.

Because that’s what it is. They get these digital court reporters, they’re paying them $20 an hour, but they’re still billing the law firms as if a professional stenographer showed up. And then they bless them with this title, ‘court reporter’.

ME: No way!

JM: It’s deception. It’s bait and switch, you know? You hear ‘court reporter’, you’re thinking, court stenographer. And there’s someone sitting there with a machine just pressing ‘record’. And then they input it into a system.

ME: Geez. Is there a Stenography Union?

JM: Well, Florida’s not big on unions. We have the Florida Court Reporters Association. And I always thought it was funny that the big box companies always had people on the board, right? The same people that have tried to strip us of our profession were on the board making decisions on whether we should get legislation to protect our careers. Weird, right?

ME: Yeah.

JM: And it’s so funny because they were all on the FCRA, and they would be big sponsors for conventions and stuff. Then Covid comes and they’re no longer doing that. They’re part of the AAERT, which is the electronic 8th-grade-comparable test to become a court reporter.

(CDA: In full disclosure, I’ve actually read AAERT’s best practices manual, and I believe if best practices were followed all the time, decent transcripts could be made. Best practices are not followed all the time and some of the transcripts I’ve seen over the years have been atrocious. But I suppose that’s not entirely unlike our own field, where some of us do not join into the “excellence culture.”)

ME: Wow.

JM: They were on the board, but they’ve been playing this for years. Covid was the best thing that ever happened to them.

ME: Right. Do you feel like there’s potential for individual court reporters to unionize as a way to push back against this? I don’t know If there’s much conversation between states, or if you’ve done any kind of organizing?

JM: Well, it’s still getting out. At all the agencies, all the managers would always tell us, ‘your job’s protected. We wouldn’t be an agency without the court stenographers’. But behind our backs, they were training digitals. I don’t know how much you know about Veritext, but they buy out to small agencies. They have a school to pump out digitals.

(CDA: BlueLedge.)

ME: Wow.

JM: And then especially, with Zoom, they’re able to get away with using a digital, and they’re billing clients as if a professional stenographer showed up.

I don’t know how New York does it, but down in Florida, we have an appearance rate, which is just us showing up, as an hourly rate. So, I’ll give you an example of a trial. For a court reporter to show up, let’s just say $1,100 for the day. The court reporting agencies would pay the court stenographer anywhere between 65% to 70%. So you’re looking at, you know, $650-700

So they made, like, you know, what, 400, $500 up, sending the court stenographer there.

‘Shortage. Shortage. Let’s send it digital!’. And we’re gonna pay the digital $20 an hour to hit ‘record’.

And then when I started doing the deep dives and the rabbit holes, and I’m seeing how much they’re telling us ($5 a page), versus how much they’re charging them, ($60!) I was going into courthouses and looking up lawsuits. Agencies were suing attorneys for non-payment, and they have to attach the bills– they’re charging them for litigation packages and storage fees and reads. And, you know, this poor court reporter probably only made a third of that bill.

So when I came across Chris and https://stenonymous.com/ I reached out to him. But a lot of the reporters just didn’t believe us.

ME: Really?

JM: Because the agencies kept saying, oh, no, your job is secure. They didn’t want to believe it. It’s denial. I’ve talked to Chris a couple of times. We should really unionize and try to get this going, but it’s also true that the perpetrators have a lot of money.

(CDA: I have spoken to an attorney and have extensive knowledge on this. Unionization, especially unionization alongside digitals with contractual ratios would change the game forever in our favor.)

ME: Yeah.

JM: And they have big dollar investors, millions and millions and millions of dollars. And if you even type ‘court reporter’ into Google search, all you see are the big box names. They bought up so much advertising.

You have to sort through so much to really find out really what’s going on. Though, the law firms are beginning to become educated. They’re like, what do you mean, ‘there’s a digital’? What’s a ‘digital’? They don’t know. The companies think the law firms don’t care, but they do care.

(CDA: Some care, some don’t.)

ME: Maybe if there were some kind of team effort between the stenographers and the law offices? Maybe my next interview should be with a lawyer, to see what their take on this is…

What’s the state of your work now?

JM: Well, now I’m busy. I’m making more money now than I ever have. But I hustle and I work for a couple small firms that take good care of me, and I have my own clients.

I keep telling every single court reporter, leave the big boxes. Go back to the boutiques, they have great clients. In that way, I’m doing well. But it makes me angry when I find out my friends aren’t busy. I’m like, you’re a real time reporter. How are you not paying your rent?

ME: Have you thought of starting a class action lawsuit or anything?

JM: I mean, they monopolized our market.

I started going on LinkedIn, and I started following some of the big law firms and other court stenographers, and I started posting the truth about what’s going on. And it was shocking, to find out how many lawyers did not know that a digital reporter doesn’t actually type the transcript or ever look at it, that they just make the audio.

They tell the lawyers, ‘this is a digital court reporter who’s making a recording, it’s transcribed by stenographic means’. But it’s not!

They don’t tell them that it’s going through AI. They don’t tell them that if it’s a 100 page transcript. There could be five typists that go through it. That’s why it’s all messed up.

I’ve consulted with a few lawyers in a small court reporting agency. She called me and said that she needed a stenographer. She had called to the big boxes, and they’d said, oh, yeah, we have a stenographer. Well, they end up sending a digital. And it was expedited. It was an all day export. And when they got the transcript back– 150 pages were duplicated!

ME: Oh, my God.

JM: And the transcript was trash. She called me up, and I explained to her exactly what happened. And what to say to the big box agency that did it, and what to say to the judge.

And they won!

So, I think we need to educate the lawyers about what’s really happening with the digitals and what the agencies are doing with their audios– how they’re being charged to expedite. They’re getting charged $16 a page, but they’re paying somebody $2 to do it. And then saying, ‘it’s because there’s a shortage, and we were trying to save money’.

So, when a court reporter shows up, in Florida, they don’t have to order. They can say, I don’t need that yet, so they don’t order it. But if they order it, that’s where the money is. But it depends how many attorneys are there. So usually it’s like two attorneys, plaintiff and defense.

But you could have two attorneys or you could have ten attorneys. You can see on the notice how many parties are on a lawsuit.

So when a court reporting agency goes, ‘Oh, look at this lawsuit. There’s one plaintiff and five defendants. That’s six copy sales right there. Yeah, let’s send the digital– because we’re gonna make a ton off the per diem. We only have to pay somebody $2 a page to do the audio and fill in the gaps’ (which are wrong, by the way).

And then they have five copy sales. And in Florida, a copy sale can range anywhere between $4-6. Up to $30 to 100 page transcript. That’s 100% profit margin to them. If there was a court stenographer, a real professional court stenographer that showed up, it’d be 70% of the entire amount that went to the court stenographer.

ME:Yeah.

JM: Digital is 100% profit margin. It’s not a shortage. It’s corporate greed, and profit margins.

ME: Totally.

JM: And then, once again, they don’t even tell the lawyers.

ME: It’s like, they’re taking advantage of this complex exchange. They’re exploiting it for profit. And it’s subtle.

JM: Yea. I want to say it was 2017 that Veritext, US Legal, and Esquire all got bought out by private equity firms. Like, within three months, all the big boxes got bought out. And it was so weird, too, that I was also finding newspaper articles and stories stating there’s a shortage of court stenographers.

(CDA: My memory differs here. I believe at least Veritext was already owned by private equity. It may have changed hands around that time period though. I have no memory of the status of U.S. Legal Support or Esquire.)

Isn’t that weird? All these articles started popping up, right when all these biggest private equity firms were buying up the big box companies for millions and millions and millions of dollars. Why would a private equity firm buy a company when they were crying shortage?

(CDA: I remember this being more like 2019 when all the articles were popping up. But it hardly matters. It was happening.)

And then I found Veritext’s patent, their big AI software and recording devices, and that the plan was to just get rid of stenographers altogether.

It went through during COVID last year, and I posted it. And I thought, is it just me, or does it seem like Veritext is really trying to make us all quit?

They’re really rude to us on the phone. They’re starving us. And then the work that we do get, it’s paltry, and there’s no write ups. It’s like they’re purposely giving us the jobs that they know aren’t going to write up, and we’re just getting a bad per diem.

And then, we started talking on Facebook, posting stuff. And then people were like, yeah, me too. And I’d preciously had stenographers reaching out to me at Facebook, I would take overflow for them. I would call them and ask, what’s going on? And they’d say ‘We’re fully staffed. We don’t need you anymore’.

We need antitrust monopoly. We need an employment contract lawyer.

ME: Yes.

JM: Because in 2011, Veritext, US legal, and Esquire all got sued. There was a class action. Did you know about this in Florida?

ME: No.

JM: There was a class action lawsuit because attorneys were very upset that the word indices at the end of their [transcripts]. They were getting charged per page, like it was a regular transcript from the court reporter.

And the word index is all at the end of the transcript. If you said the word ‘the’ 100 times, it’ll tell you every time in that transcript where you said the word, ‘the’.

So, you know, it could be a hundred page transcript, but it could be a 30 page word index. And they were getting charged page rates, and they were fighting it. So they filed a class action lawsuit saying this is unethical. This isn’t part of the transcripts, it’s not part of the record.

And they ended up losing.

ME: What?!

JM: Because the court reporting agencies went in, and they said, this word index is part of the court reporters word product. It’s part of the transcript.

(CDA: In actuality, it’s more like tying a product under the antitrust laws. You can, and court reporters absolutely do, create transcripts without word indices.)

And that’s how they lost. Now, it’s funny because when that lawsuit came out, it’s running rampant in the office. We were all hearing about it. But, the court reporting agencies were like, don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about the clients. It’s an ongoing litigation. And then we just never heard about it again.

ME: Right.

JM: So when I started doing my deep dives and I was trying to find out what’s going on and what are the real rates, I happened to ask my friend, ‘whatever happened with that?’

ME: That lawsuit?

JM: Yeah. So I googled it, and I read the order when it was dismissed, and I was like, oh, my God. It got dismissed because they’re saying it’s part of our work product. It’s part of our official transcript. And she was like, wow. So why aren’t they paying us for it?

We have never gotten one penny for a word index. Yeah. I think somebody owes us a lot of money.

ME: Yeah!

JM: So, I was just finding out so much. So I called a lawyer. And I asked, was this dismissed because they were saying the word index is part of the court reporter’s work product? And he said yes. And when I told we never got paid for that, he said are you serious? I almost had a heart attack.

ME: Wow

JM: What a mess. Yeah. It’s so shady. I do believe there’s handholding. I do believe these agencies are in it. There’s no doubt. I believe there’s handholding because the AAERT, the two biggest big boxes are on the Association’s membership boards.

I mean, come on.

ME: What are your next moves? What are your hopes for the future of this community and for communications across the board?

JM: Definitely to get more information out. I think what’s going to save us is educating the lawyers. They need to know that if they want to protect their record, they need to have a stenographer.

ME: Yeah.

JM: If they’re gonna go with the digital, then you get what you pay for. When you’re paying for a professional, you should demand a professional.

ME: Yeah.

JM: You know? It’s very overwhelming. Chris and I were sending stuff back and forth all the time. I got very busy with work. I’m hoping we can get back on it. I would love to get a Florida court stenographer association up, and a campaign to educate the law firms and lawyers and really just bring everything to light.

ME: That sounds like a good path forward.

JM: Here’s my favorite example: this is from a trial transcript and appeal transcript out of Broward county, which is in Fort Lauderdale.

I live 20 minutes north of there. And the guy was charged with “lewd and lascivious molestation”.

The digital transcript says he was guilty of “ruining the gas”. The city’s gas station.

The transcript is on my LinkedIn page.

ME: Oh my god, so wild. Okay, I’m gonna end your interview with that amazing quote. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

JM: Bye.

The Billionaire Brigade Declares War on the National Labor Relations Board*

*This musing is not very court reporting related. I do mention us a little. But insofar as I am a writer for the labor movement, here goes.

Amazon has joined the companies declaring the National Labor Relations Board unconstitutional.

Fortune writes that an attorney for the Amazon Labor Union stated “since they can’t defeat successful union organizing, they now want to just destroy the whole process.”

Highlights from the event? The NLRB is over 80 years old and other companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Trader Joe’s have made similar arguments.

This one has a special place in my heart. I think of Christian Smalls, AKA Chris Smalls, who was able to unionize Amazon in New York City’s only “red” Republican-voting borough, Staten Island. My hometown. This is a surprise because the Republican political class is staunchly against working people. Right-to-work laws, for example, give a great name to something fairly insidious. The laws don’t actually provide a right to work or any working rights. They’re meant solely and exclusively to weaken union power. Unions raise pay for non-union workers, so unionization is a victory for all working people. But Republican voters are mostly working people who don’t have time to stay up on the politics and the societal impacts of these laws, so this kind of stuff flies under the radar. Chris Smalls broke through that and unionized anyway.

It’s very much like our field in a sense. Many reporters I’ve spoken to are anti-union. They think that being an employee means 9 to 5. They think that being an employee means less freedom. There are very few in the field who have the kind of free time they’d need to understand and conceptualize an employment contract that would give them all of the freedom they enjoy today and more. Thanks, in part, to my own success, I have that kind of time, at least at this moment in my life. I use it to promote discussion about the underpayment of educated working people. As I told a friend that recently accused me of being envious of the wealthy, my salary is more than 3x the median wage of the United States. I got mine. I’m trying to help everybody else get theirs. And I do mean everybody.

We don’t get there until we stop the systemic squeeze on the average Joes and Janes of the world and start talking about how to spark a brighter future in the face of all that we are facing. Don’t ever think I’m not grateful for the rich conditions I’ve grown up in, that is to say, I could have been born in a much poorer country or to a much poorer family. Many around the world struggle daily worse than I will ever struggle. But what can I say? I’m a writer. My ideal is one where I use my position of privilege to advocate for and inspire others to advocate for political and economic conditions that will allow America to do what it has done for hundreds of years and lead the world into the future not through military might and weapons of war but by invention of the technologies that will uplift all of us. It starts at home, folks. More money in more hands means more issues see funding. It’ll mean the market really will decide & provide rather than our current system where wealth concentrates at the top and leaves the bottom of the pyramid crumbling from habitual not-my-problem culture.

Traditional news doesn’t publish what I’m about to write because it’s not in the business of informing people, it’s in the business of clicks and views. That’s why, when I took to the internet to publish about the ongoing fraud on New York and Staten Island jobseekers, pretty much all the outlets I wrote to ignored it. It’s okay to swindle 30,000 people as long as you make the swindling complex enough that a newsroom editor says “let’s run with another story.”

Artwork Commissioned to Expose BlueLedge, digital court reporting training.

Artwork Commissioned to Expose the Speech-to-Text Institute. Months after its creation, the organization was sued and shut down its website.

Back to the Billionaire Brigade. This is the dumbest thing that these companies could do to America.

To understand why we have these laws, you have to go back in time and read about the history of the American labor movement. It was violent. Employers squeezed their employees, didn’t pay enough, and in some cases let them burn to death thanks to how bad the working conditions were.

In turn, some members of the labor movement blew up their employers with bombs and shot at people employed by union busters. What a surprise! When you create unfair conditions for people under the law, they start fighting back in ways that are outside the law. People must abide by the law. But we must address the truth of human nature. Unfair laws lead to revolution and the only way to stave that off is to have fair laws or crush people that would oppose the unfair laws. We allegedly have a mental health crisis in America. If these folks want to turn back the clock back a century and relive what was going on back then with the benefit of modern weaponry and deteriorating medical care for the chronically unwell while social media algorithms fill them with rage bait, we are going to live with the consequences. We have to make a choice on whether we want to live in that kind of environment or if we’d prefer the billionaire brigade to pay a little bit more and treat people a little bit better. Does everyone understand why I’m willing to write mean words yet?

As luck would have it, New York is a state that seems to understand that fair laws matter. It recently increased the statute of limitations for illegal employment discrimination from 1 year to 3 years under the New York State Human Rights Law, also known as our New York State Constitution. This is juxtaposed against the federal law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gives employees 6 months. I think this is a good move. I recently had correspondence with a New York City jobseeker from our field. We both believe she was discriminated against on the basis of race. But that decision to go to a lawyer and exercise her rights is a hard decision to make. And, in fact, I know a thing or two about looking for an employment discrimination lawyer. Even after you’ve made the hard decision, if there are bad facts or low damages, law offices might turn you away without giving you an honest reason why, even if they’re rumored to have phenomenal lawyers.

Those that fail to study history are doomed to repeat it. And you don’t have to look far back into America’s history to live in an America that most of us want no part in, and that our predecessors were smart enough to pull us from inch, by inch, by inch.

Are we all just another gradient on the ruler?

P.S.

For the Staten Island court reporters in my audience, feel free to check out r/StatenIslandPulse. I find the moderator to be much more accepting of news and content than r/statenisland. It’s a small group, but they’re pretty cool. Not my group. r/PatriotsAgainstCorps is mine, but it’s more a conversation starter than a group at this point in history.

I also started a Facebook group Staten Island Progressive. I figure I understand the laws well enough and can generally read up on what I don’t understand. With some likeminded friends we could probably make some real differences. For example, a campaign to codify more rights into our constitution or amend our criminal laws to be pro-people or even streamline the court process. That is, find the balance that keeps our Staten Island businesses safe and our criminal justice system reactive to the needs of our population. McMahon seems to be addressing the mental health thing. But will our next district attorney if our voters are perceived as being ignorant about these issues? No joke, I have a friend that was injured in 2018. His case is still open! Six years. Imagine waiting six years for a resolution to an injury case before the trial has even happened and the appeals have even started. I can barely remember what I did yesterday (Factorio)! I learned recently that all a company has to do is say it’s buried in subpoenas and needs 60 days to respond to delay a felony case by two months.

These are things that society needs to talk about, as under our current economic conditions, wealth concentrates at the top, people have less money for their innovative and vital spending. That is, if people cannot afford doctors, lawyers, and professionals of all shapes and sizes, the pay of those professionals may not increase commensurate with the cost of living, which will then create a sort of negative feedback where those white collar professionals can’t hire the blue collar professionals while the people who play with companies, credit, and people’s lives like they’re toys and video games pull even more money from the population and ultimately have more resources to play more games with companies, credit, and people’s lives.

If nothing else, just know that my message is the same as it’s always been. You have the power to make a difference.

And if anybody wants to lay down the funding for a political media company, I bet we could make a return. I know a man who has a voice for podcasting. I know a strong singer. And my ability to think outside the bounds of conventional companies makes me a candidate for directing the thing and managing the payroll, insurance, and all that good stuff. Even something like a for-profit think tank could benefit local businesses and our population in general by pushing alternative media that captures the attention and imagination of powerful people. Say what you want about people like Alex Jones, he made a lot of money. Now imagine if you had someone with morals that was willing to be just as zany and draw just as much media attention for the purpose of benefitting small businesses and the country as a whole, and making sweet returns for the investors that believe in it? I’m just not in a financial position to take a serious go at it. There’s definitely money in this stuff. Why couldn’t I help an investor, or even many small investors, to some of it?

A writer can dream, can’t he?

Thanks for reading.

Breaking News Covers Stenonymous’s 2024 Unionization Report*

*What you are about to see is not real.

Stenonymous 2024 Unionization Report covered by Breaking News

February 2024 NYC Deposition Reporter Unionization Report

In my “Chaotic Good” post I floated the idea of unionization for “freelancers.” I also provided a form that people could sign up if they were interested in the idea, which I urge my fellow New Yorkers to share and sign on for.

After my post, someone I love very much urged me to seek guidance from a lawyer on this issue. If you want your name here, just let me know.

Another court reporter insisted that my “Chaotic Good” post was filled with supposition and put together by hope and duct tape. I have now spoken to a lawyer whose life mission is worker organization. Let’s just say my supposition, hope, and duct tape is more like the concrete foundation on which we build a better tomorrow for you and your families. Take it or leave it.

As it turns out, much of what I wrote in the aforementioned post is true. As told to me by the attorney:

There are many factors balanced or viewed by a fact finder when deciding if someone is an independent contractor or misclassified employee. What the parties call the relationship does not matter. So, for example, Lexitas’s Independent Contractor Agreement means jack shit. I wonder who could have predicted that.
There are two tracks reporters could take to push the issue. The first would be some kind of class action that could be pushed all the way to the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court. The second would be finding enough reporters from a specific New York City office and filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
No matter what track is selected, the organizing workers would have to decide whether to form a new organization or form under an existing organization. It is probably better to go with an established union.
Misclassification class action track. This option would take years and quite a lot of money in legal fees. Given the facts I expressed to the attorney, he commented that the misclassification route would probably be better.
NLRB track. This option would be quicker and is more attractive in that sense. In the event of an NLRB petition, the employer will likely say that the petitioners are independent contractors and not employees. the NLRB will hold a hearing to decide the issue. The NLRB is more favorable to workers than many courts, including New York’s courts. The company being unionized may attempt to withhold work from the petitioners, but if it’s found that petitioners are employees (and there are good reasons to believe they would), such action would be illegal union busting, and those retaliated against could be compensated for it. The NLRB track would require dedicated campaigners. This would be smarter to do at a smaller agency first, because it requires a majority of workers at the agency.
Digital court reporters and voice writers. Where agencies use a mix of court reporters, it would make sense to unionize all together. After unionization, a contract could be put in place that sets ratios of reporters, and that contract would have to be followed by law.
Contracts generally. Anything that can be put inside an enforceable contract is fair game. So, again, the right to work from home and refuse jobs, some kind of system could be put in place to allow for that. Many of the “benefits” court reporters enjoy from being “freelancers” can be secured contractually. The lawyer noted something like “it sounds like you are all getting all the drawbacks of being an independent contractor with none of the benefits.” Meaning we take on the self-employment taxes and so forth, but we have little to no customer control or independent branding, and are generally not allowed to subcontract our jobs to others as we would be if we were true independent contractors.
This will take a lot of perseverance no matter what. It may also take a lot of time. Organizers and campaigners must be ready for a fight.

I want to stop and pick on point 6 a little, because court reporters are probably like “no, no, no, no, no.” Let me give you reality. Veritext has been advertising for digital court reporters every day for years. The larger companies of our field are, without any doubt whatsoever, slowly siphoning us out for digital court reporters. If you do have any doubts about this, feel free to reach out to Jackie Mentecky and ask her how things are going in Florida. To summarize: Stenographers cannot get work and are having trouble affording their bills because digital court reporters are being sent on the jobs they would have had. I have personally corresponded with people that are having trouble paying their bills because of agency mistreatment. So if you do nothing, you will be replaced. And even if you are not replaced, the constant influx of court reporters from both our stenographic recruitment drive and Veritext’s cash-dump strategy will create a worker glut that will reduce or freeze your rates. To understand why this is, you have to look at supply and demand. Demand for court reporters is forecasted to pretty much remain the same, with 3% job growth currently forecasted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So if the demand is remaining the same, and the supply is going up, eventually our gentle shortage will become a deluge of workers who will all be competing to get the same jobs. This is why New York City is 30 years behind inflation. And that was with stenographers competing with each other, not with a combined workforce.

And if stenographers do not do this, then digital court reporters might do it after our numbers thin out a little more. Who do you think gets to set the ratio if that happens?

Special note to the rest of the country: What’s happening in New York City and Florida is just an accelerated version of what’s coming for you. I know you don’t like to read that, but this is the nature of corporate consolidation of the country. MEDICAL DOCTORS are having difficulty and pay disparity is causing massive worker shortages in pretty much every field. How long do you think your licenses are going to protect you? They barely do now.

I am taking steps to obtain records from the defunct Federation of Shorthand. If obtained, they will likely be shared with the lawyer, and may be shared with this audience. If anyone would like to assist me in this endeavor, please reach out to contact@stenonymous.com. It seems that either we will need to pay for reproduction of the records OR visit in person at 70 Washington Square South.

Real talk. I got mine. You can look my salary up online. I don’t need to help you. I don’t need to care about you. I don’t need to spend time writing blogs or publishing information for you. I didn’t need to save your job from the Speech-to-Text Institute propaganda machine. I didn’t need to make a forum where you could discuss rates freely. You can spend your days whining on Facebook about how the agency won’t pay your rates or you can unionize and lock them into a contract where they have to pay your rates from now until the end of time.

On one end, you have a guy who uses a considerable amount of his free time to help people he’ll never know. On the other end, you have corporations that are factually doing everything they can to create market conditions that reduce your income. I don’t think this is a difficult decision, but I’ve been wrong before.

The Speech-to-Text Institute is an organization that was accused of fraud and illegal anticompetitive conduct, was subsequently sued, and shut down its website in 2023.

Conclusion

Unionization for New York City deposition reporters is possible but will require action on the part of court reporters. You can use me as a shield to organize by filling out that form I linked at the top.

ADD-ONS

A union is not the only course of action that can be taken. We can also push for a New York City or New York State price transparency bill where companies would be required to tell court reporters what the consumer is being billed and tell the consumer what the court reporter is being paid. A second option, suggested by another lawyer, is creating something of a cooperative agency that competes directly with the big box brigade. All of these options are preferable to doing nothing. All of these options require organization, so quite frankly, if you’re interested in 1/3, you should still sign up on my link.

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.” -George Orwell

Bulletin: r/court_reporting Joins Reddit & Unionization Plan Posted to Industry Times of New York!

This app ate the draft I made about r/court_reporting! Technology is crazy.

r/court_reporting now joins r/courtreporting and r/stenography as places where machine shorthand writers can ~~be chronically online~~ talk to each other anonymously through Reddit. Made by a not-me court reporter, for court reporters, it’s worth joining the discussion today!

In other news, we already have a couple of pledges and a couple hundred eyes on the post about New York City unionization from yesterday. Word about the idea has been posted to the Industry Times of New York.

I gotta say though, alternative publications like mine thrive off word-of-mouth spread from readers like you. If anyone out there would like to share the Industry Times press release or my post from yesterday, I’d be eternally grateful, even if you share it under the guise of an insult about me so that the agencies don’t catch on. I had the privilege of very briefly speaking with two figureheads from the then-defunct Federation of Shorthand over the years. I got the sense that one of the reasons it didn’t work out was it was hard to reach people. It’s still hard to reach people. But now the internet is so ubiquitous that word can travel faster and farther than was imaginable in the whole history of mankind. Surely, if we can get some shares, we can reach more people than those reporters of the past were able to.

And, you know, like I said yesterday, once this gets rolling it becomes a model that is theoretically reproducible in other states. I’ve already had a reporter reach out about the terrible treatment they’ve received in another state, the pain of doing the “freelance” thing with disabilities, and the hope that the unionization model will take off and protect new reporters.

For anyone that’s doing great in this field, I know you don’t want to let negativity into your bubble. I was the same way. But the purpose of acknowledging these negative situations is to progress toward positive solutions.

Let me remind everybody that the paragons of silence and ignorance that instinctively cling to their failing traditions are the ones that brought us to a place where we have very little institutional support, a falling median wage, and the public perception that this profession cannot meet the demands of a modern world. Yet we persist, insistent on assisting each other through a time of rapid change and artificial upheaval of our previously unchallenged prevalence. We must listen to the stories of struggle, lest we see a cascading failure and consequent erasure of our principles and paradigm.

Now say that 5x fast.

Shortage Solutions 13: Unionization

One factor I’ve identified as a reason for stenographer shortage is terrible compensation. While it may be difficult for some court reporters to learn, there are people in this field working decades behind inflation. There are reporters that haven’t had a raise for the better part of a decade or more. When it comes to reporter treatment, there’s a spectrum of treatment as wide as the reporter spectrum of skill, and the two don’t necessarily correlate.

Unionization is an interesting topic because many of us consider ourselves independent contractors. There are lots of resources out there for understanding employee misclassification and common law employees versus independent contractors. The IRS even lists public stenographers under independent contractors because we’ve become so ubiquitously associated with independent contracting. Generally, independent contractors cannot form a union, and recent federal rule changes have made that clear. In New York, we had the Federation of Shorthand for deposition reporters, but it no longer exists.

The question of whether someone is an employee or independent contractor is something of interest to many government agencies and courts, and something that is not always clear in the court reporting and captioning industry. What two parties call a relationship is mostly irrelevant for determining what that relationship is under the law. As an example of the kind of things that courts consider, let’s check out the Ninth Circuit:

Real v Driscoll Strawberry Assocs., Inc., 603 F.2d 748, 754, 9th Circuit, 1979. Independent Contractor Test

Using a test like this, one starts to see the different interpretations possible. Recent rule changes focus even more so on the right to control work of the “employer” and the profit or loss or the employee. Some may be incredulous, “we control our hours! We’re independent contractors!” But such a blanket answer does not and never will address the truth, that many agencies demand a specific layout, specific page rates, or bar reporters from sending others on jobs accepted by the reporter. There’s a lot of control that reporters give up for the “right to work,” and in some cases it arguably would make us employees if and when it were challenged in court. Companies have settled such claims in the past, probably to prevent precedent from taking hold and court reporters realizing that the “freedom” of “independent contracting” effectively silences discussions on worker pay and working conditions, conveniently placing the blame on the “entrepreneur,” who could be a 20 year old, newly graduated, with no comprehension of the business. How well can we expect them to do when instructors tell them how high the demand is for their skills and companies beat them down and deny that value in the name of the almighty dollar?

Captioners aren’t released from this discussion either. Some captioners work as employees, some work as independent contractors, and the distinctions aren’t always clear or consistent in the same company, let alone across multiple companies.

There’s no doubt in my mind that unionization can help more of us. I am a member of ASSCR, and prior to that I was a member of Local 1070. Prior to that, I was New York freelance. Nothing is ever perfect, but my job security and compensation rose tremendously when I gave up freelancing for officialship. If the two had been remotely close, I’d still be a deposition reporter. I loved it. Love doesn’t pay the bills.

The main jab that people give when discussing unionization is the right to refuse work. Reporters don’t want to give that up. But an employment contract drafted by a smart union for per diem or commission-based employees, which is essentially what many of us are, could simply include the right to refuse work. People could still be paid by page. There is not a single “right” granted by being independent contractors that could not be covered in an employment contract. A lot of the smaller gripes around unionization seem to be from thinking too deeply inside the box and assuming we’d have to conform to low hourly wages, which is simply a lie perpetuated by people afraid of the word “union.”

The main hurdle with regard to unionization, and what makes it unlikely in my view, is reporter organization and willpower. At least 30% of the reporters at a given company or location would have to come together, make the case that they were common law employees, and request a vote to join a union. Then they’d have to actually win the vote! A lot of people in the private sector don’t know who works for who. We don’t even have great data on the total number of court reporters that exist. How can we expect someone to unionize a location they never go to or confer with colleagues they never see? Even more confusing, some court reporters will easily meet the definition of independent contractor while others could be defined as employees. Some court reporters are simply afraid to discuss unionization because of potential retaliation.

Our realtimers might scoff at such a discussion, but if we think of court reporting as a pyramid where the realtimers sit on top, and we think of the exploited common law employee class of reporter as the bottom, it’s easy to see why realtimers need that bottom to be strong. How long will realtime rates remain high if the floor drops out from under you? The only “good” answer I’ve seen to this question is “well, I should be able to make it to retirement, so I don’t care.” My answer to that is “a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.” But even if a reader is a self-centered prick that doesn’t care about that, how much more money do you think realtimers will be able to ask for once the base pay is back where it should be? It’s in the self-centered prick’s interest to add fuel to this fire too.

I also believe our associations, the primary drivers for our defense currently, would never assist or support such endeavors. Unions are likely seen as a threat. Once a union exists, is an association necessary? But the very thing driving association membership into the ground is the inability of associations to directly influence rate discussions and their unwillingness to collect and distribute rate data. There’s even some chance association membership would rise, since people would likely have more to spend. If associations want to remain relevant, it may make sense to start looking out for reporters, and particularly the ones that are struggling, instead of milking the certification cow until it’s dead.

On the digital front, unionization could lead to negotiations where stenographers are given work preference by contract instead of the situation we have now, where the companies “promise” we’re number one and quietly do everything they can to push us out of the market.

I think the threat needs to be on the table for the larger companies. They will have no choice but to raise rates as unionization discussions spread. It’s working in other industries and will work in ours. In the short term, we could expect dirty tricks. In the long term, we could expect higher wages for all reporters, union and non-union. Feel free to like, comment, or share if that’s a future you want!

Addendum:

Shortly after the launch of this post, a reader sent me this TikTok. In brief, adjusting prices upward can attract a different quality of customer. So those that fearmonger pricing ourselves out of the market might be interested in viewing that.

Workers Rights

Here on Stenonymous we have explored many different things related to freelancing and stenographic employment. As a quick recap for those that have trouble navigating the site, we’ve discussed turnaround times and how they have gone from 30 days to 5 with no extra money involved. We’ve discussed the Beginner’s Trap and freelance loyalty, which is all about how you must be loyal to yourself to earn a better income. We’ve brought out the need to build skills that make you marketable. We have admitted the power of a contract and thought about what should go into a rate sheet. We’ve gotten into billing, antic o ntracting, form SS8, and what it means to be an independent contractor. We have explained why we can’t discuss rates, and then we have discussed rates. We even put out other people’s rates.

Now it’s time for something a little different. I would like people to seriously consider a dilemma the field finds itself in. As independent contractors, we are consistently in a bind of being afraid to discuss rates thanks to antitrust concerns. This fear is probably at times a little overblown, but it causes us to be silent and to act very content even when things are not going well. Indeed, our biggest organizations, our NCRAs and NYSCRAs are trapped in the position of being unable to serve as forums for rate discussions due to liability concerns. All this is happening while some of our biggest purchasers are making a push from stenographic reporting to digital recording. I think it is time to ask ourselves what we actually get out of the independent contractor label. It’s out there that employers can save up to 30 percent by labeling employees as independent contractors. It’s out there that about 20 percent of employees are misclassified. Succinctly, the gig economy is bad for workers. Employers are doing their best to eliminate the cost of workers compensation and unemployment. These are serious benefits, worth thousands of dollars, that independent contractors do not get. Independent contractors have little to no federal protection from otherwise illegal discrimination and need to go to small claims instead of Department of Labor if we go unpaid. Employees are also entitled to FMLA leave, and in New York, family leave laws. Employees have the right to unionize and the employer is forced to enter good-faith negotiation with the employee union. Under today’s law in New York, the only way to take any of these benefits, if you are a commission employee misclassified as an independent contractor, is to dispute the issue on a case-by-case basis. How many people have the guts to do that?

We’re not even getting the benefits of being independent contractors, which would be the write-offs, the ability to hire other workers, and the ability to set our own hours. Think about it. How many of us in the freelance sector print our own transcripts or have consistent business write-offs? Yes, it is nice to write-off the occasional mailing fee, but the agencies have largely taken up any function that gets a write-off except for your starting equipment fee. Ironically, I have more write-offs as an employee with the state, thanks to my 1099 income, than I ever did as a freelancer. The ability to hire other workers? Go ahead and try sending someone who isn’t you to a deposition. See how many times you can do that before they stop sending you work. When I call my plumber, I don’t get to choose who he or she sends. Setting your own hours? Don’t know about everyone else, but I know that I got deposition forms that said please arrive early and gave me a start time. My hours were more or less set by the work, which really isn’t that much different from your boss telling you I need you at 10 tomorrow. We live in America, and people are entitled to refuse work any day they feel like, it’s not something we need the mantle of independent contractor for.

From New York to California independent contractors are beginning to challenge their status or realize the raw deal. California came out with a simplified three-part test for independent contractors. Maybe we should have a serious discussion about whether the title is worth keeping for most of us. Maybe we should talk about new laws and enforcement for independent contractors in New York.

It’s absolutely ludicrous to me that we box ourselves into a position where “freelancers” who are meted work, have deadlines dictated to them, are told when to arrive, what to bring, and disciplined via withholding work when deadlines are slipped, defend this model. The numbers don’t lie. Turnaround times are six times faster. Rates haven’t risen with inflation. Independent contractors save employers 30 percent. What could you do with a 30 percent raise? Hell, what could you do with a 10 percent raise? I mean, I have to go back to the article where I calculated out 1000 different rates. If you’re the breadwinner, unless you’re making at least $5.50 a page average, you’re working nights and weekends to make ends meet. The pricing structure doesn’t even need to change. The only thing that would have to change is agencies would have to pay minimum wage if your page rate didn’t give you at least minimum wage. Guess what? That’ll basically never happen. Imagine a world where you go take a deposition for an hour and only make 20 pages. Now imagine you transcribe for one hour. Your page rate is $3.25. $65 for two hours. Not a great rate but realistically what my generation was lowballed with. Way above minimum wage. We’re specialized workers, we deserve it.

Ultimately, I am of the opinion that in this market and under these circumstances the losers are the independent contractors. There are no substantial gains to being independent contractors, and anyone with private clients could just continue their private clients as a separate business entity. My opinion is malleable and I’m open to debate, but beyond the shallow arguments of we have always been independent contractors and we buy our own equipment, I’ve heard precious little that impresses me. You know who else buys their own equipment? Teachers.

Maybe it’s time for a swap. Maybe it’s time for our trade organizations to shift to labor unions. At the very least, it’s time to talk about these issues in public and consider what can be better.

EDIT. On February 11, 2019, I discovered this JCR article which appears to have a different viewpoint than my own but also talks about the issue. I feel it is important, when possible, to give as much information as possible, so please feel free to review that and join the discussion.