Moderation company refusing to pay for extra work done due to a bug.

[AdamD]

Hi all,

So I work for a company who offers a review service for large companies, whereby customers can review products and/or services and the reviews appear on the companies own site
My job, along with roughly 10 others, is to moderate those reviews.
We're all on a zero hours contract, so we do work as and when it's available.
The way the system works is for every 120 reviews we moderate, we get paid the equivalent of the basic minimum wage, so £11.44 per 120 reviews.
If this were a steady supply of reviews, it could be a decent income, but it's not, so you end up spending a lot of time doing nothing and not being paid for it, such is life

For the last 3 months or so they've had an issue whereby a lot of reviews were duplicated up to 15 times and we were told to moderate those as we would normal reviews, so you can imagine how many reviews we've been having to moderate, my moderated review count was probably around 4x the number I normally do, almost throughout the entirety of June this was going on for.

So being quite excited about the prospect of a boost in income, to my and other mods surprise and shock, we're not being paid for all those extra hours and work done, for the past 3 months when the issue started..
We're only being paid for the non duplicate reviews, plus 5% on top.
So in my case, instead of receiving around £1500ish for the month of June, I'm only receiving around £500
I mean, I get it, marking each of these duplicates was very quick/easy, as it was a repeat decision from the previous 14, but to let us do all that work and not pay us for it?

[ULA]

Have you raised this with anyone at the company?

[AdamD]

Have you raised this with anyone at the company?

Hi Ula,

Thanks for replying, I did write an email back to say:

Hi (manager),

I emailed (supervisor) about the duplicate issue back at the end of April and was told twice to moderate those reviews as per normal and until further notice.

You may remember I also queried what the pay rate was based on the number of items moderated at the end of May

There was no mention in any of those email exchanges that this work would be unpaid.

Regardless of how much easier moderating the duplicates was, it was work done and we should all be paid for the time spent doing them

Offering 5% on top of our base pay for what is essentially hours of extra work, is to put it mildly, quite shocking.

Adam

No response yet.
This isn't the first issue where they've done something I'm sure isn't legal.
When I first started, I was paid by the hour, as the website we used to moderate the items, logged the time spent doing the work and we were paid by the hour each month.
Then they came out with a new moderation website, claiming it to be faster, easier and with more work, but what they didn't tell us (or make us sign a new contract for), was that 60-70% of this extra work was now automated
And to make matters worse, we would no longer be paid by the hour, but by the number of items moderated
So I could spend 5 hours refreshing the page and waiting for work and only be paid for 1 hours work
This new issue is just another low for this company (they are a big company too).
They basically waited until it was fixed, 3 months after the problem started, told us to continue moderating as normal, then sent that email saying sorry, you aren't being paid for it.
And it's not like we could skip or ignore the duplicate items either, you HAD to do them.

[AdamD]

Ah wow, well I got a response and it was basically a slightly edited copy/paste of the original email.

Thank you for raising your concerns.
We acknowledge the duplication issues with the reviews, which have been an ongoing challenge since April. We have requested to proceed with the reviews, but duplicate reviews are a matter of repeated acceptance/rejection.
Given that this issue has persisted since April, we have not applied any reductions to your pay for May and June. We have taken this into account while processing your payment for July. Your initial pay for July was calculated as £xxx. To recognize the additional effort required due to this issue, we have added an extra 5%, bringing your adjusted pay to £xxx. The 5% is equivalent to almost 7 hours of additional pay.
We appreciate your understanding and patience during this period. If you have any further questions or need additional clarification, please do not hesitate to reach out.

[ULA]

My concern thinking this through is that you are being paid against moderating a number of reviews. If it takes more than 1 hour and you are being paid minimum wage to moderate 120 reviews then you are effectively being paid less than minimum wage, if that makes sense.

Does the system you have log the time you are working for rather than just the number of reviews you moderate?

[AdamD]

My concern thinking this through is that you are being paid against moderating a number of reviews. If it takes more than 1 hour and you are being paid minimum wage to moderate 120 reviews then you are effectively being paid less than minimum wage, if that makes sense.

Does the system you have log the time you are working for rather than just the number of reviews you moderate?

Hi Ula
That's correct, there's not enough reviews to moderate to make the minimum wage, no where near I'd say
Ah so I can download a report which shows how many items moderated by hour, so for instance, yesterday I was online from 7am till 11am
I came back at 2pm and was active until 7pm, then back at 10pm
7am-8am I moderated 26 items. (120 required for minimum wage payout)
8-9 = 68
9-10 = 87

And so on, not once in those hourly blocks did I make minimum wage.

[ULA]

Thanks for that clarification. So in total yesterday you moderated 180 reviews and would have only be paid for 1 hour or 1 and a part hour for the 60 reviews moderated and yet you were online for more than that time?

Am I correct? If so for the time that you were online were you moderating reviews for that whole time?

[AdamD]

Thanks for that clarification. So in total yesterday you moderated 180 reviews and would have only be paid for 1 hour or 1 and a part hour for the 60 reviews moderated and yet you were online for more than that time?

Am I correct? If so for the time that you were online were you moderating reviews for that whole time?

Hi Ula
Thanks again for the advice and help
So in total, yesterday I moderated 435 items.
2024-07-18,06:00,2024-07-18,07:00,adam,26,manual
2024-07-18,07:00,2024-07-18,08:00,adam,68,manual
2024-07-18,08:00,2024-07-18,09:00,adam,87,manual
2024-07-18,09:00,2024-07-18,10:00,adam,80,manual
2024-07-18,10:00,2024-07-18,11:00,adam,5,manual
2024-07-18,13:00,2024-07-18,14:00,adam,54,manual
2024-07-18,14:00,2024-07-18,15:00,adam,49,manual
2024-07-18,15:00,2024-07-18,16:00,adam,17,manual
2024-07-18,16:00,2024-07-18,17:00,adam,21,manual
2024-07-18,17:00,2024-07-18,18:00,adam,11,manual
2024-07-18,18:00,2024-07-18,19:00,adam,9,manual
2024-07-18,21:00,2024-07-18,22:00,adam,8,manual
We basically have to grab work as and when it comes in, otherwise another moderator, if they're on, can take it
So it's like fighting over table scraps.
So for those periods of time, I am constantly sitting there with an automatic page refresh running every 15 seconds.

I think I mentioned earlier, when I first started and as per our original contract, we were paid by the time spent doing the work, not the number of items
It was only recently they decided to change that to £11.44 per 150 items (since reduced to 120).

After speaking with the moderators, it turns out only the people who did the most work, received the email about not being paid.

[ULA]

Even as a zero hours contract worker you should be paid the hourly minimum wage.

So if you have to be available for work for say 1.5 hours to grab 120 reviews to moderate, I cannot help thinking you should be being paid for1.5 hours of time.

I just feel something is not right but I would need to do more research into the law in this area to see if there is something buried in legislation that covers this.

[AdamD]

I just feel something is not right but I would need to do more research into the law in this area to see if there is something buried in legislation that covers this.

Yea I don't know, I can't help but wonder how they get away with it, considering our original contracts says we'd be paid for the time worked, not the amount of items moderated
A new contract was never issued when they changed that either.
Sent you a donation as a thank you.

[ULA]

Thank you so much for the donation.

So you have not received the updates to your contract in writing. How long has this change been in place?

I will do some research over the next few days and come back to this thread.

[AdamD]

Thank you so much for the donation.

So you have not received the updates to your contract in writing. How long has this change been in place?

I will do some research over the next few days and come back to this thread.

Just checked my emails, we started moderating on the new site on the 12th of June 2023.
Yep no new contract was issued, just a note in the powerpoint training slides saying the payment system was changing

[ULA]

Just coming back to you and sorry for the time taken.

I still hold the view and I have checked, that even on a zero hours contract you are entitled to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) which is based on the hours you work. So if it takes you 1.5 hours to moderate 120 reviews then you should be paid for 1.5 hours not one hour.

It may be worth you considering taking this up initially on an informal basis with your manager / HR to see what their response is.

[AdamD]

Thanks ULA, no worries about the delay.
I don't think I'm going to check into it anymore, because given the reviews I've been reading about the company on glassdoor etc, I suspect I will just be let go if I keep pushing the issue.
I wish we had better protection(s) in place for stuff like this.

[ULA]

I am sorry to hear that about the company you are working for and that you feel unable to take this issue further with them.