New York State is Cracking Down on “On-Demand” Employees. Will this Effect ODMS Startups?

Ali Hamed
1 min readApr 14, 2015

New York’s Attorney General Sent Letters to 13 retailers, telling them that their on-call schedules for employees was abusive.

Many of these retailers currently send workers home if their stores get too quiet. They also call employees in last minute if there is a sudden surge in business.

I’m less concerned about asking employees to come in last minute as I am with telling employees to go home. Many of these employees work paycheck to paycheck, and telling them to go home creates serious cash problems for them.

While I disagree with the state’s consideration of last-minute work to be abusive, I do agree that scheduling employees only to send them home without work and pay at the last moment, with no opportunity to find other work so quickly is abusive.

It also makes me think about how this may affect ODMS’. If the service providers on these marketplaces end up getting classified as W-2 employees, will they suddenly start getting protected if the demand-side of the marketplace ends up canceling last minute?

In New York State, employers are responsible for a minimum of four hours of pay if they send an employee home early. Would marketplaces need to cover costs to a service provider on the platform who got screwed?

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Ali Hamed

[5'9", ~170 lbs, male, New York, NY]. I blog about investing. And usually about things I’ve learned the hard way. Opinions are my own, not CoVenture’s