Moreover, the subject matter of many prompts, some of which involved suicidal ideation and violence, among other disturbing topics, coupled with restrictions from Scale AI around break times and outside research, created a grueling, authoritarian workplace in which workers could be terminated for complaining about working conditions, payments, or company processes, the complaint said.
Additionally, the suit says that McKinney and the many others in his position were misclassified under California law as independent contractors, rather than employees. Generally speaking, employers have fewer legal responsibilities to independent contractors than they have to full employees, who are more likely to be subject to state and federal laws about overtime payment, among other things.
California’s legal standard for deciding which workers are independent contractors and which are employees is fairly strict, and is referred to as an ABC test, for its three-pronged nature. According to the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, workers are employees unless they are free from the control and direction of the hiring entity, are doing work outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business, and are “customarily engaged” in an independent business of the type they’re being hired for. None of those standards, the lawsuit argues, are met in the case of McKinney and the other Scale AI workers in his position.