contract-law breach-of-contract
Can a company use pay to control their independent contractors?
<p>I work for a certain transcription company as an independent contractor. The company pays me to produce transcripts of audio recordings the company provides. A pay rate is given for each assignment. If I produce a good transcript, I get paid all the money I was promised, but if I produce a less-than-decent transcript, I only get paid half of the promised pay.</p>

<p>One time, they cut my pay even though my transcript captured the majority of the content. The reason they gave for this is because I worked offline instead of using the Google document they give me the link to to create the transcript. They did this on one or two other occasions.</p>

<p>Is this legal? Can a company use pay to control how its independent contractors perform the work?</p>

<p>An independent contractor is paid to produce the outcome contracted for. If you didn’t produce what your contract requires there is no obligation to pay you.</p>

<p>There maybe a dispute over if the contractor did or didn’t prodoce what was contracted but if they didn’t, they don’t get paid.</p>

<p>An employee is paid per unit of time irrespective of outcome. That is pretty much the difference. Again, there may be dispute over if a person is a contractor or employee, however, if they are a contractor they are paid for performance not time (unless time is a measure of performance under the contract).</p>
