Meet the Customer Service Reps for Disney and Airbnb Who Have to Pay to Talk to You

Airbnb, battered by the pandemic recession, announced in May that it would be laying off a quarter of its workforce. In a post hailed for its empathy and transparency, CEO Brian Chesky wrote , “We will have to part with teammates that we love and value.” He outlined a generous severance package. Departing employees would receive 14 weeks of pay plus an extra week for each year at the company; help from professional recruiters to land new jobs; and 12 months of continued health insurance. Around the time Chesky made this announcement, another group of people working with Airbnb also lost their jobs. But these weren’t called layoffs and weren’t accompanied by a compassionate note from the CEO. And the workers, who handle the day-to-day tasks of bookings, cancellations and keeping the peace between guests and hosts, got no severance. There was no health insurance plan to be extended. These American workers — cheap, disposable and isolated — worked through a company called Arise Virtual Solutions, a little-known business that has helped some of America’s best-known businesses shed labor costs. You may not have heard of Arise, but chances are, you’ve talked to an Arise agent — perhaps when you thought you were talking to a Comcast employee about a bill or a Disney employee about a reservation. Arise lines up customer service agents who work from home. It then sells this network of agents to blue-chip corporations. Arise and most of its corporate clients consider preserving the secrecy of this arrangement to be vital. An Arise company manual says, “The confidentiality of information related to Arise and its clients must be maintained forever.” Arise’s agents are forbidden from publicly identifying the brand-name companies whose customers’ calls they answer. Even commiserating in a private Facebook group, they avoid typing out Airbnb, opting instead for rather flimsy code. The “bed and breakfast client,” some write. One used “sky bnb.” Arise’s workers not only don’t work for its clients, they also don’t officially work for Arise. Like Uber drivers or TaskRabbit gofers, they are independent contractors. To get gigs, they first absorb substantial expense, paying for their own equipment and training, and then have fees deducted from every paycheck for the “use” of Arise’s “platform.” Arise has faced, and lost, legal challenges alleging that its arrangements with agents violate federal labor law and cheat workers of what they are rightfully owed. One judge called the arrangement an “elaborate construct” created by Arise to get around labor law. Nevertheless Arise has been able to avoid altering its model in any significant way, aided in part by a 5-4 ruling from the Supreme Court, written by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch. Arise not only creates separation between its corporate clients and individual agents, it also allows those companies to quickly add or subtract workers. In March, Instacart needed all kinds of agents. By May, those jobs had largely disappeared. “I was there for a week. We’re disposable,” one Florida agent dropped from Instacart assignments told ProPublica. The “biggest benefit” Arise provides is to help companies “squeeze wastage out of a typical workday,” as John Meyer, a former Arise CEO once explained to a trade publication . Meyer, who has remarked that “business is sports for adults,” said that “a typical employee has a utilization rate of 65 percent because you’re paying for their lunch, breaks, and training.” Without that…