(This story has been updated with comments from the plaintiff's attorney.) 
 
 A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 
 
 Plaintiff Myrna Arias, a former Bakersfield sales executive for money transfer service Intermex, claims in a state court lawsuit that her boss, John Stubits, fired her shortly after she uninstalled the job-management Xora app that she and her colleagues were required to use. According to her suit (PDF) in Kern County Superior Court: 
 
 After researching the app and speaking with a trainer from Xora, Plaintiff and her co-workers asked whether Intermex would be monitoring their movements while off duty. Stubits admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she installed the app on her phone. Plaintiff expressed that she had no problem with the app's GPS function during work hours, but she objected to the monitoring of her location during non-work hours and complained to Stubits that this was an invasion of her privacy. She likened the app to a prisoner's ankle bracelet and informed Stubits that his actions were illegal. Stubits replied that she should tolerate the illegal intrusion….. 
 
 Intermex did not immediately respond for comment. 
 
 The suit, which claims invasion of privacy, retaliation, unfair business practices, and other allegations, seeks damages in excess of $500,000 and asserts she was monitored on the weekends when she was not working. 
 
 Arias' boss "scolded" her for uninstalling the app shortly after being required to use it, according to the suit. Her attorneys said the woman made $7,250 per month and that she "met all quotas" during a brief stint with Intermex last year. 
 
 "This intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person," the filing said. 
 
 Arias' attorney, Gail Glick, said in a Monday e-mail to Ars that the app allowed her client's "bosses to see every move the employees made throughout the day." 
 
 The app had a "clock in/out" feature which did not stop GPS monitoring, that function remained on. This is the problem about which Ms. Arias complained. Management never made mention of mileage. They would tell her co-workers and her of their driving speed, roads taken, and time spent at customer locations. Her manager made it clear that he was using the program to continuously monitor her, during company as well as personal time. 
 
 Listing image by Xora ||||| 'Timecard' App Tracks Workers, Woman Says BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (CN) - A money-transfer company fired an employee for refusing to install an app that would track her location even when she was off the clock, the woman claims in court. 
 
 Myrna Arias sued Intermex Wire Transfer LLC in Kern County Superior Court on May 5. 
 
 Headquartered in Miami, Florida, Intermex describes itself on its website as " a leading processor of money-transfer services in the U.S. to Latin America corridor." 
 
 It has 30,000 locations worldwide and offers services in 45 states and 16 Latin American countries, the website adds. 
 
 Arias says she worked for Intermex as a sales executive and account manager from February 2014 to May 2014. 
 
 She was still working for rival NetSpend Corporation when she was hired. Her boss, Intermex's regional vice president of sales John Stubits, agreed to let her work for both NetSpend and Intermex for three months until she qualified for Intermex's medical insurance because she was suffering from a severe vitamin B-12 deficiency and did not want to lose her treatment, according to the complaint. 
 
 Arias says she did well at her job, meeting all her quotas and earning around $7,250 a month. 
 
 But everything changed in April 2014, when she claims Stubits told her and several other employees to download an app from Xora onto their smartphones that "contained a global positioning system function which tracked the exact location of the person possessing the smartphones on which it was installed." 
 
 Xora Inc., now ClickSoftware Solution, is not a party to the complaint. 
 
 According to a September 2011 press release, the app enables employees to create electronic timecards on their phones to track when their shifts start, when they take breaks, and when a shift ends. 
 
 Plaintiff attorney Gail Glick told Courthouse News that Arias was one of the first employees asked to put the app on her phone. 
 
 "They were guinea pigs," Glick said. 
 
 Arias says in her complaint that she researched the app and asked Stubits if Intermex would be tracking her whereabouts when she was off the clock. 
 
 "Stubits admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she had installed the app on her phone," Arias says in her complaint. "Plaintiff expressed that she had no problem with the app's GPS function during work hours, but she objected to the monitoring of her location during non-work hours and complained to Stubits that this was an invasion of her privacy. She likened the app to a prisoner's ankle bracelet and informed Stubits that his actions were illegal. Stubits replied that she should tolerate the illegal intrusion because Intermex was paying plaintiff more than NetSpend." 
 
 Stubits also told Arias she had to keep her phone on "24/7" to assist clients, and "scolded" her when she uninstalled the app to protect her privacy, the complaint adds. 
 
 Arias says Intermex fired her a few weeks later. 
 
 Glick said that an employer can legally monitor employees at work if there is a "legitimate business interest" to do so. 
 
 "But if an employee can't stop it, then that is a complete violation of California and federal laws against invasion of privacy," she said. 
 
 Arias objected to the app because there was no way to turn it off when she was at home. Even if she shut down the app on her phone, it would still be running in the background, Glick said. 
 
 "She found it very offensive that they were treating her like a felon," she added. "She was not underperforming, so there was no reason to monitor her." 
 
 To make matters worse, Glick said, Intermex was so angry at her objection to the app that it went "above and beyond a normal wrongful termination and interfered with her ability to earn a livelihood." 
 
 Arias says in her complaint that Robert Lisy, Intermex's president and CEO, "telephoned John Nelson, vice president of NetSpend, and informed Nelson that plaintiff had been disloyal to NetSpend and was employed by Intermex. As a result of Lisy's intentional and malicious interference with plaintiff's contract with NetSpend, NetSpend fired plaintiff promptly. NetSpend specifically cited Lisy's phone call as the reason for the decision to terminate plaintiff," the complaint states. 
 
 Lisy, Nelson and NetSpend are not parties to the complaint. 
 
 With two black marks against her and a gap in her employment record, Arias has had a hard time finding a new job, Glick said. 
 
 Representatives for Intermex did not respond to comment requests by press time. 
 
 Arias seeks an injunction and general, special and punitive damages for invasion of privacy, retaliation, labor code violations, intentional interference with contract, wrongful termination and unfair business practices. 
 
 Her attorney Gail A. Glick is with Alexander, Krakow & Glick of Santa Monica. "We intend to pursue this aggressively and get her the justice she deserves," Glick said. "What we have here is a really egregious situation, and we are hoping to right that wrong." ||||| Who delivers Amazon orders? Increasingly, it’s plainclothes contractors with few labor protections, driving their own cars, competing for shifts on the company’s own Uber-like platform. Though it’s deployed in dozens of cities and associated with one of the world’s biggest companies, government agencies and customers alike are nearly oblivious to the program’s existence. 
 
 
 
 In terms of size, efficiency, and ruthlessness, Amazon has few equals. The least publicly accountable of the big tech companies—Google, Apple, and Facebook face considerably greater scrutiny—Amazon’s stock is one of the most valuable on the market, it’s among the fastest-growing companies in the United States. Atop its vast empire, CEO Jeff Bezos commands the single largest personal fortune on the planet. Estimates place Amazon as the recipient of approximately one third of all dollars spent online. Control over the manufacture, storage, sales, and shipping of an extraordinarily diverse set of products has led the company to expand into film and TV production, web hosting, publishing, groceries, fashion, space travel, wind farms, and soon, pharmaceuticals, to name just a few. It’s a new kind of company, the likes of which the American economy has never before seen and is legislatively ill-prepared for. 
 
 Ingenuity alone doesn’t account for Amazon’s dominant position. The company’s Economic Development Team works hard to secure state and local subsidies, which research from watchdog group Good Jobs First indicates surpasses $1 billion, a figure which the advocacy group’s executive director, Greg LeRoy, freely admitted to Gizmodo is far from comprehensive. Infrastructure in the company’s home base of Seattle has strained to keep pace with Amazon’s meteoric growth, and the city has experienced massive increases in housing costs. While North America’s metro areas—including Seattle—scramble to offer attractive incentives to host Bezos’s second headquarters, research indicates that when Amazon comes to town, it might be killing more jobs than it creates. 
 
 The majority of consumers, however, either don’t know or don’t care. Strip Amazon to its most familiar elements, and it’s a devilishly simple everything-store with limitless stuff-supply. You buy it. It shows up. Fast. 
 
 Demand for those blocks and the desire to finish them quickly led to what one driver described as “physical fights [...] when someone tries to jump the line.” 
 
 Near the very bottom of Amazon’s complicated machinery is a nearly invisible workforce over two years in the making tasked with getting those orders to your doorstep. It’s a network of supposedly self-employed, utterly expendable couriers enrolled in an app-based program which some believe may violate labor laws. That program is called Amazon Flex, and it accomplishes Amazon’s “last-mile” deliveries—the final journey from a local facility to the customer. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 While investigating the nature of the program, we spoke to 15 current or former independent drivers across nine states and two countries whose enrollment spanned between a few weeks and two years, as well as three individuals attached to local courier companies delivering for Amazon. Their identities have all been obscured for fear of retribution. 
 
 A great opportunity to be your own boss 
 
 To understand the issues faced by the independent contractors handling last-mile delivery for Amazon requires some knowledge of how Flex works. 
 
 When Amazon selects one of its facilities—what drivers refer to as a Fulfillment Center* (FC)— for participation in Flex, it blankets Craigslist and other sites with local ads describing Flex as “a great opportunity to be your own boss,” sometimes as many as twelve ads a day. Each FC is distinguished by three letters and a number—DLA5, for instance, refers to Riverside, California—and many of the over 50 cities Flex operates in have more than one. 
 
 An interested driver goes through a preliminary screening online and finishes their application through the app, passes a background check allegedly administered by a company called Accurate Background. Accurate Background did not respond to multiple requests for comment and Amazon declined to comment on which companies or services it uses for this purpose, but claimed the check pulls from, among other signals, court records, the sex offender registry, and data analysis from US and global organizations. One driver told Gizmodo he was approved in under four hours. Others wait over a month. According to a Flex contract furnished to Gizmodo, the only requirements to entry are modest: be 21 or older, pass Accurate Background’s vetting, own a smartphone with Flex installed, and have access to a car, bike, or public transportation. No company cars. No uniforms. Just a non-photo ID badge. 
 
 The training is similarly minimal. One driver attended an optional hour-long training at an FC. A veteran driver alleged he was asked to participate in a conference call. The consistent element reported to Gizmodo was being made to watch approximately 20 videos which fresh Flexers view from the comfort of their phones. “Watch videos of their expectations of you and their rules, agree to the rules,” a Georgia-based driver said. “That’s about it.” No drivers reported being trained on matters of workplace safety, and as one UK-based driver succinctly put it, “honestly it seems they take on anyone.” Amazon declined to describe its Flex driver training except to say that videos were among the materials used in onboarding. 
 
 Work is secured by grabbing “blocks” through the app, measured in hours, with an associated route and payout. Flex’s blocks cover multiple local arms of Amazon—including Fresh and Restaurants—but the two most common, based on individual testimony and online posts, are Logistics, which covers standard packages, and Prime Now which handles same-day purchases. Regardless, the procedure is largely the same once a driver lands a block: get in line behind the other cars at the FC, check in, receive a pre-sorted rolling cart or shelf of goods for the route, scan and pack them into the car, then follow the Flex app’s “suggested” driving directions to each stop. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 A driver sharing his experience with and tips for Flex on YouTube 
 
 Block length and package count vary considerably between Prime Now and Logistics: Prime Now blocks can be as little as two hours, while five hour blocks have reportedly been offered to Logistics drivers with larger vehicles; 15 packages for a slim Prime Now block and as many as 90 on a Logistics run. Amazon’s own Craigslist ads show compensation varies by location, but among the drivers Gizmodo spoke to, pay averaged $20.50/hr—not bad by the standards of the gig economy. And similar to Uber’s “surge pricing” in the rare event that blocks go unclaimed, Amazon will sometimes increase to incentivize drivers to accept it. Still, all but three drivers we spoke to did not consider Flex their primary means of income, and of those who did one also contracts with UberEats and Grubhub, another was seeking additional work, and the third alleged to have been deactivated by Amazon despite delivering through floodwaters in the wake of Hurricane Irma. 
 
 
 
 Arguably Amazon Flex, like Uber, is best used as supplemental income, and for many drivers it works well for that purpose. For others it’s a necessity. In major cities like New York and San Francisco—coincidentally located in the states that employ the largest numbers of couriers—Uber can be a living. Flex can’t. 
 
 A difficult road 
 
 Despite being able to fulfill hundreds of millions of orders per year, drivers report Amazon’s data at the local level can be lacking, leading to misalignments between block times and package numbers. “The block that I signed up for was four hours, but when I got to the facility they were struggling to find something for me to do, so I only ended up having three packages to deliver,” a driver told Gizmodo of a recent block picked up from a newly-opened FC. But according to a more veteran driver, Amazon’s bad bets cut both ways. “They won’t pay you for working over your allotted block time,” he told Gizmodo. “They said it evens out because when you work a three hour block and finish in two they still pay you for three, but it doesn’t even out.” Another alleged that Amazon’s systems struggle to estimate door-to-door time or handling large apartment buildings, leading to a “99% probability that you will exceed your block end time.” 
 
 
 
 Additionally, two drivers in completely different regions of the US both claimed Flexers’ hours are capped at 40 hours per week. “As [independent contractors], we should be able to work as much as we wish since we take the blocks we want to work. It used to not be this way when I first started working for them,” the San Antonio-based driver bemoaned. But lately, drivers at a number of FCs have found it harder and harder to secure enough hours for 40 hours to be a meaningful limitation. A Philadelphia-based driver told Gizmodo, “Last year when I started it was easy to secure two four hour blocks a day and I was complaining that they would put us on payroll locks so I wouldn’t exceed 40 hours a week. How times have changed!” Demand for those blocks and the desire to finish them quickly led to what one driver described as “physical fights [...] when someone tries to jump the line.” 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Amazon would not comment on whether it caps drivers’ hours, but characterized the program as a part-time opportunity. It claimed, in a statement to Gizmodo, that it “received overwhelmingly positive response[s] from drivers participating in the program.” The company also suggested that workers seeking more traditional full-time arrangements are encouraged to apply elsewhere within Amazon. 
 
 A number of drivers have alleged they’re reprimanded by FC workers if their vehicles are unable to fit all the packages for a block, and fear being “ticketed” for returning packages they weren’t able to deliver. One reported getting written up by one FC employee for following the explicit instructions of another. 
 
 While in and of themselves these incidents tend not to have serious repercussions, as little as two incidents have led to drivers being deactivated. Amazon told Gizmodo that it has performance expectations for its contractors which it expects them to meet or exceed, and sometimes those metrics are used to justify a termination. Other times, being notified your time with Amazon Flex has ended comes as a vague boilerplate email about violating the program’s terms of service. 
 
 
 
 A Flex contract provided to Gizmodo states that drivers “may provide Amazon with data about your use of such Licensed Materials, your geo-location and related tracking data, including your location, movements, speed at which you are traveling, and other personally identifiable information,” and that “ if you choose to deny Amazon access to this information, this could affect the availability and functionality of the Amazon Flex App and your participation in the Program.” Presumably, this data is used to increase the company’s own routing efficiency. While Amazon does not pay drivers for work if it exceeds a given block’s time, it’s unclear if Flex continues to track drivers while off-hours. 
 
 
 
 Lack of oversight and scarcity of work through Flex have caused cheating to proliferate. Drivers turn to auto-tap applications like FRep and Repetitouch to scoop up blocks much faster than human fingers are capable of, and once these practices become widespread at an FC, more scrupulous drivers either stoop to these methods or accept that regular hours won’t be possible. Though nearly every Flexer we contacted was familiar with the use of these types of software only one admitted to using it personally. “Most drivers at my warehouse are using some form of bot or macro to secure blocks, including myself,” he wrote. “Though Amazon recently sent out a threatening email regarding their use (threatening to terminate us for using them). That email is the main reason why I’ve cut back on my own use of them.” Video uploaded to YouTube even appears to show one such app running on an iPhone left charging inside inside a Fulfillment Center, screen blinking away at a feverish pace. Amazon told Gizmodo such software violates its Terms of Service. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Neither FRep or Repetitouch were built specifically for Flex, according to their respective creators. “From what I heard, there are people who heavily rely on it for their income and apparently there’s a lot of competition for jobs in general. Thus, I’m not surprised that some Flex drivers try to get an edge,” Erwin Goslawski, the German student behind Reptitouch told Gizmodo. “I can imagine that this makes it rather difficult for other users to grab jobs, however, which makes it more likely that more and more users decide to use such tools.” Despite the enormous amount of access Amazon is afforded to its drivers’ phones, “botting” remains popular and poorly policed. At least one device was built specifically to increase the likeliness of landing blocks—the Flexbot. It’s creator, a former driver named Tim McDaniel who suffers from arthritis, claims to have made it “just to level the playing field to able-bodied folks,” though certainly some of the customers who have paid $130 for the contraption—a pair of Arduino-controlled mechanical fingers—do so to avoid detection by Amazon’s software. Unlike software alternatives, Amazon told Gizmodo that Flexbot does not violate its terms of service. McDaniel originally sold Flexbot 6 on Amazon, but had his account shut down after he “fell behind on customer relations.” 
 
 Add to this a general sense of disorder, from simple issues of whether or not Flexers are allowed to drive with passengers, to integral aspects of the gig like when new blocks become available. “When Flex first started all blocks were released at 10 PM. Then they changed to all blocks being released exactly 24 hours in advance. Now they have changed to completely random times,” one driver told Gizmodo. “This causes us to have to constantly use our phone to look for blocks and waste time that we are not being paid for just to find work.” 
 
 There’s no easy way for this disposable workforce to have their problems addressed. While drivers are given a support number, Flexers claim its only purpose is to assist during the course of a block—to get the door code to an apartment building, for instance. “There’s no liaison, just hot-headed warehouse managers that will terminate a driver for anything they want,” a driver reported. And from other testimony, terminations occur frequently and with little explanation. Boilerplate emails reprimanding drivers for supposedly missed packages contain little information: only the date of the infraction, but not the package or address. Whether the package was stolen or an unscrupulous customer merely took advantage of Amazon’s willingness to offer refunds, it’s the courier who takes the fall. “It’s frustrating because Amazon will always believe the customer,” a driver claimed, echoing the sentiments of many others. “Even with photo or bodycam evidence. We have no support. And one customer too many and we’ll get that termination email.” 
 
 To combat confusing rules—due both to changes in the program over time and quirks of individual FCs—drivers tend to share information over closed Facebook groups, Reddit, and gig economy forum Uberpeople. The largest of these boasts a membership of over 20,000. According to a moderator of one such community, a change in the Flex program takes place approximately every six weeks, sometimes buried inside a Terms of Service update. Many of the posts in these digital break rooms can be summarized as: Here’s what happened to me. Is this normal? But no matter how experienced, the advice of other, equally powerless people can only go so far in certain situations. 
 
 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 So where can a driver go to resolve an issue or dispute their termination? That leaves one final option: Flex’s reviled support email line. 
 
 “It’s as if they scan it for keywords and then have a copy-and-paste type response to everything,” a Detroit-based driver told Gizmodo. “Literally I got the same email twice.” Unfortunately this appears to be a common occurrence. 
 
 Flex, as part of a pilot program Amazon is rumored to be using to take on UPS, Fedex and others, is a constantly shifting set of systems with a number of redundancies. Besides drivers, some cities also employ motor scooter couriers and—in Manhattan at least—“Johnny walkers” who gather around delivery trucks and roll their packages to buildings on foot. But by far the biggest threat to self-employed Flexers (and vice versa) are “white vans”—third-party local couriers Amazon also contracts to do last-mile work. 
 
 Joining the fleet 
 
 The arrangement is virtually the same as Flex, only scaled up to accommodate bigger vans and larger package counts—as many as 270 per run, according to one source—and with pay going to the company to distribute as it sees fit, rather than to individual drivers. The major draw for Amazon—though it declined to comment on most aspects of these local business arrangements—appears to be the ability to count on a reliable number of couriers all capable of hauling an equally reliable volume (300 cubic feet or large is the required van size) of parcels. 
 
 Amazon considers these companies, just like individual Flexers, to be contractors, though drivers still have to run Amazon’s software while working, and still have to pass a check from Accurate Background. “We have to background check the guys [that deliver Amazon packages]. We have to use their background check company. They won’t even tell us what the criteria is,” a California-based courier business owner said with clear frustration. A dispatcher for another last-mile courier claimed that applicants who don’t pass Accurate Background’s vetting simply aren’t hired by the company he works for. UPS spokesman Dan McMackin told Gizmodo that Amazon is not a threat to UPS—whose drivers are both full employees and the single largest contingent of long-lived Teamsters labor union—because “ecommerce is bigger than one customer.” In his opinion, good courier work requires a skilled, consistent workforce, and retaining that pool of labor means providing solidly middle-class wages and benefits. However much he claims to dislike doing business with large, often pushy customers, the California courier said he finally agreed work with a company like Amazon because, “the writing’s on the wall that Amazon’s gonna take over the whole delivery industry in the next ten years.” 
 
 “The writing’s on the wall that Amazon’s gonna take over the whole delivery industry in the next ten years.” 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Worryingly, courier company owners allege their drivers can be individually deactivated from using the Flex app. “They tier people out, it’s called, because you get a tier one offense, you cannot log into the app anymore,” the California boss claimed. “Amazon does fire people.” But deactivation is only the most extreme action within a larger scheme of control. “Fulfillment center managers control [...] what drivers can come, what can’t,” a New Jersey courier company owner told Gizmodo. “If you make a mistake in there, if you have a mouth on you and use curse words, they don’t allow that whatsoever, and they’ll take you out in a heartbeat. They’ll even take out the whole company if they want to.” 
 
 That capriciousness, coupled with having significantly more at stake, also explains why, of the many dozens of courier companies advertising for Amazon route drivers, only three spoke to Gizmodo about working with Amazon. One company owner, who did not agree to answer questions about his relationship with Amazon, wrote back in an email that “anything Amazon related is really not up to me to accept on interview or not.” Asked if such companies are under non-disclosure agreement, Amazon declined to comment. 
 
 Worse still, Amazon has a history of contracting courier services that themselves subcontract their drivers, which led to it being named in lawsuits in 2015 (against Scoobeez) and 2016 (against Courier Logistics Services.) The complaints in these suits included failure to pay minimum wage, failure to compensate overtime, failure to provide meal periods, employee misclassification, and violations of the unfair competition law. Still, at least one recent hiring ad on Craigslist from a courier company explicitly sought independent contractors to run Amazon routes. 
 
 Technically, all drivers in these arrangements are required by Amazon to be full employees of those local delivery outlets, not contractors like individual Flexers. Yet Amazon’s background check policy insinuates itself into the hiring decisions these companies are able to make—especially if Amazon is provides the lion’s share of work for these local outfits—and testimony around pushy FC workers and app deactivations suggests Amazon also wields the power to functionally fire drivers as well. Amazon declined to comment specifically on any facet of its arrangement with third-party couriers, except to confirm that they are subject to the same background checks. 
 
 Over the limit 
 
 “I do think that Amazon is breaking the law. I think it’s breaking the law in a pretty widespread way,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney well known within courier circles for representing drivers from Lyft, Grubhub, Uber, and more recently few Amazon Flex, told Gizmodo. Though Amazon would likely disagree, the legality of the relatively new mass-contractor model remains an open question. 
 
 “I do think that Amazon is breaking the law. I think it’s breaking the law in a pretty widespread way.” 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 The way Liss-Riordan sees it, the issue at hand is labor misclassification: Amazon and similar companies pay drivers to do the work of employees, but treat them as independent contractors, denying them basic amenities like health care, benefits, and workers’ compensation in the event of an on-the-job injury—something which two of the drivers we spoke to reported experiencing. As Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel and program director for the National Employment Law Project, explained, the determination of whether a worker is doing the job of a contractor or employee comes down to a few key factors: among them, the right to control how the work is done, its permanence, the level of specialization required, and how integrated it is into the business paying for it. 
 
 Some of the drivers we spoke to had run deliveries for Flex for up to two years, which suggests continuing rather than gig-based work. And where integration is concerned, the Prime Now arm of Flex is particularly suspect, in Ruckelshaus’s opinion. “If Amazon’s promoting one-day delivery, that’s likely to be found to be integrated to Amazon’s overall products or services that it’s providing to customers,” she said. 
 
 Most damning though is Amazon’s apparent level of micromanagement. “If something’s relatively low-skill, you don’t have to show that the company, like an Amazon, told them exactly ‘take a left here, take a right there, drop this package off first,’ they mostly just want you to go from A to B, get this thing done, they don’t tell you how to get the thing done,” Ruckelshaus said. “So if Amazon is actually taking that amount of detailed oversight and control, that’s very powerful, strong evidence that it has the right to control because it’s actually exercising control over pretty minute details of the job.” 
 
 If Amazon has been engaging in misclassification on a massive scale, why haven’t there been lawsuits? Beyond the expense of retaining legal representation, Flex’s terms of service also include an arbitration agreement which waives drivers’ rights to a class-action lawsuit against Amazon. It’s a common practice for comparable gigs, affecting some 25 million contracts. And though the version of the Flex contract made available to Gizmodo gives drivers the ability to opt out within two weeks of signing, it seems few do. Individual drivers looking to escalate an issue can’t bring it to court, keeping whatever ruling might have resulted from becoming valuable case law. 
 
 “These companies have been very effective at wielding their arbitration clauses,” Liss-Riordan said. The result, in Ruckelshaus’s view, is that “the company doesn’t feel the heat because it doesn’t have to pay off all of its drivers, it only has to pay off the ones that bring their claims, and then nobody else knows—Did that guy win? What happened? It’s harder to change the practices across an entire company when it’s individual private arbitration.” While drivers are free to opt in to Liss-Riordan’s current Flex suit, the class-action gag keeps her from sending notice to driver who might benefit from joining. 
 
 Compounding the difficulty of driver going up against a powerful and well-insulated company, of the governmental and regulatory regulatory agencies Gizmodo reached out to for comment on Amazon’s business practices, few seem to have ever heard of the Flex program or have an official stance on it. Even the National Labor Relations Board, which by its own description “acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices,” declined to comment on Flex, and further declined to comment on whether or not Flex even fell under the purview of the agency. Mounting regulatory pressure against Uber may have led Instacart to start walking back it’s contractor model, but no such outrage is directed at Flex, one imagines, because so few people even know it exists. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Both lawyers seemed most troubled to see these practices employed by a company of the size and wealth of Amazon. “It’s too bad that Amazon is continuing to pursue these structures, because it doesn’t have to. All it has to do is pay the minimum wage, that’s all,” Ruckelshaus said, sounding defeated. “It seems like they’re jumping through a lot of hoops to avoid being an employer for not really a good economic reason.” Similarly, Liss-Riordan, pointing to structural legal issues, said that “difficulties in enforcement are leading a company like Amazon, which is a major player and obviously could afford to do it right, to lead it to shift to a system where more and more of its drivers don’t have the benefits of employment.” 
 
 “It’s too bad that Amazon is continuing to pursue these structures, because it doesn’t have to.” 
 
 Flex is indicative of two alarming trends: the unwillingness of legislators to curb harmful practices of tech behemoths run amok, and a shift towards less protected, more precarious opportunities in a stagnant job market. Under the current administration, it’s unlikely either will receive the attention it deserves. There is a glimmer of hope for Liss-Riordan and the scores of Flexers she hopes to help though. On October 2nd, the US Supreme Court’s new term began. Among its cases is one which will determine the legality of arbitration clauses like the one Amazon uses to shield itself against the drivers it refuses to acknowledge as employees. 
 
 The constantly shifting, secretive nature of Amazon makes it difficult to report its activities to the public. If you have information about company, we’d like to hear from you. Reach out to the author via email with tips or to request secure communications through Signal, Wickr, or SecureDrop. ||||| An average of 1,200 men claim sexual harassment every year in American workplaces 
 
 Buy Photo A Wayne County sheriff's office has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit. (Photo: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo 
 
 When Wayne County Sheriff's officer Philip Kozlowski Sr. complained at work that a female boss was sexually harassing him, his male supervisors allegedly laughed it off. 
 
 When a Genesee County Sheriff deputy made a similar complaint against a woman, his male boss allegedly told him: "take one for the team." 
 
 Both men took their claims to court. The Genesee County man won nothing from a jury in July. 
 
 Kozlowski is taking his chances. 
 
 In a salacious employment lawsuit that's unfolding in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Kozlowski, 53, claims a female boss sexually taunted him for a year with raunchy comments, inappropriate behavior and unwanted advances, including: offering him oral sex; suggesting he get his wife drunk and have a threesome with her; giving his partners fake assignments so that she could be alone with him; frequently driving by his house, and texting his personal cell phone. 
 
 Kozlowski, however, isn't suing the woman. He's suing his employer for allegedly ignoring his plea for help, joining hundreds of men nationwide who are debunking machismo stereotypes every year in filing complaints about sexual harassment. 
 
 On Freep.com: 
 
 According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the percentage of sexual harassment complaints filed by men has more than doubled over the last 25 years, from 8% in 1990 to 17% in 2015. That year, 1,165 men complained about sexual harassment, compared to 5,656 women. 
 
 Although the number of men filing claims has leveled off over the past five years, an average of 1,200 men claim sexual harassment every year in American workplaces. Legal experts believe the number could be higher because there's still a stigma attached to men complaining about women's sexual advances. 
 
 "People are surprised that men would complain about this, and that could be a mistake," said Ernest Haffner, an EEOC attorney in Washington, D.C., who tracks harassment in the workplace. "Employers should take harassment seriously, regardless of whether it's a man or a woman. They all need to be treated the same." 
 
 On Freep.com: 
 
 Haffner said that one mistake employers sometimes make is assuming — and sometimes even arguing, as has been done in some lawsuits — that men shouldn't be offended by women's sexual advances. The law doesn't look at it that way, he said, noting that federal employment laws cover any kind of sexual harassment, whether it's man on woman, woman on man, man on man, or woman on woman. 
 
 Employment law experts note that what's not clear is whether more men are being sexually harassed at work, or whether men are just more willing to come forward about it now. It's also not known how many men are complaining about sexual harassment by women versus men. The statistics don't break it down that way. 
 
 Haffner notes that in the eyes of the law, the only thing that matters is whether sexual harassment occurred — not the gender of the accuser or the accused. And no one — man or woman — should be mocked or ignored when complaining about sexual harassment, he said, stressing: "An employer shouldn't engage in stereotyping when it looks at sexual harassment claims." 
 
 That's what Kozlowski claims happened to him. 
 
 'Where's the harassment?' 
 
 At the heart of Kozlowski's lawsuit is a claim that the Wayne County Sheriff's Office did nothing to stop the harassment. That's a common theme in sexual harassment cases — employers turning a blind eye to bad behavior in the workplace. But what's perhaps unique in this case is the alleged misbehaving happened in a male-dominated workplace that isn't used to this scenario: a sheriff's department. 
 
 "Before he filed a formal complaint, he went to his supervisors, but they laughed it off," said Bingham Farms attorney Scott Batey, who is representing Kozlowski. "That's one of the problems you have in these reverse cases. A lot of men might think, 'Well, where's the harassment?' " 
 
 Read more: 
 
 That makes it even harder for men to come forward, Batey said, adding: "We're supposed to be men. We're supposed to be tough. The public's perception is, 'You should be so lucky to be harassed by a woman.' " 
 
 Kozlowski felt anything but. 
 
 According to his lawsuit and his lawyer, here is what happened for nearly a year at the Wayne County Sheriff's department, where the 53-year-old Kozlowski worked for more than two decades before a female superior allegedly turned his life upside down. 
 
 In early November 2014, a female sergeant started sexually harassing Kozlowski and continued to do so until the following October. Over the year, she texted and called his personal cell phone for nonwork related issues, drove by his home several times, purposely sat close to him, pulled him off assignments so that she could spend time with him and locked herself in an office to be alone with him and turned out the lights. 
 
 Her inappropriate comments ran the gamut. They include: 
 
 "What would you do if I were to unbutton your pants and just start sucking your (expletive)?" 
 
 "You need to talk to me the way you talk to your wife." 
 
 "Did you see '50 Shades of Grey'? I bet you are just like him in bed." 
 
 "I'd love to sit in your Jacuzzi topless." 
 
 "Your wife is a ho from the ghetto." 
 
 On October 24, 2015, Kozlowski filed a written complaint alleging sexual harassment at work. When the accused learned about the complaint, she told a corporal who had taken the complaint: "Kozlowski doesn't know who he's (expletive) with. I'm going to (expletive) him, and (expletive) him good," the lawsuit claims. 
 
 According to Batey and the lawsuit, the woman retaliated against Kozlowski by claiming he sexually assaulted her. An investigation followed. Kozlowski never was criminally charged, but he was briefly suspended and eventually demoted to a desk job answering phones. The demotion cost him $10,000 a year. 
 
 The Wayne County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on the specific allegations, stating only: “The County will be timely filing its answer to the Kozlowski (lawsuit) and will have no comment on this pending litigation beyond its formal answer.” 
 
 The Free Press is not naming the woman because she claimed sexual assault. Kozlowski has declined to be interviewed. Both he and the woman still work at the sheriff's department. 
 
 "It's been devastating to his career. The very fact that he had to file a lawsuit is devastating to his career," Batey said. "What a lot of employers don't get is that they can have an employee who is harassing someone, and all they have to do is take prompt remedial actions and stop it." 
 
 But that didn't happen in Kozlowski's case, Batey said, so he filed a complaint with the EEOC, which issued him a right-to-sue letter on Sept. 1. 
 
 On Nov. 28, Kozlowski filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit, alleging sexual harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation by the Wayne County Sheriff's Office. The suit claims that the sheriff's department mishandled his case from the start, ignoring his plea for help, mocking him and then retaliating against him when he finally spoke up. Not once, the lawsuit claims, did the employer do anything to stop the harassment. 
 
 "He was left with no alternative other than to file a lawsuit," Batey said, adding sexual harassment victims typically don't want to file suits. "They just want the harassment to stop and to keep working." 
 
 Smaller awards for men 
 
 Kozlowski's lawsuit seeks economic damages for, among other things, "humiliation, embarrassment, outrage" and "loss of income." 
 
 Similar lawsuits filed by other men have yielded six-figure awards and settlements, but nothing compared to the multimillion-dollar verdicts that women win in sexual harassment lawsuits. 
 
 For example, a Texas jury in 2014 awarded $567,000 to a male deputy who claimed his female boss at the Galveston County Sheriff's Office sexually harassed him to the point where he was forced to quit because he felt humiliated and embarrassed. 
 
 That same year, a jury in New York awarded a Queens man $40,000 in a sexual harassment lawsuit involving allegations that a female company president demanded sex from him if he wanted to keep his job. 
 
 In Michigan, a former male lab technician at Lens Crafters won a $192,500 settlement in 2011 after accusing the optical company of allowing a female coworker to sexually harass him and ignoring his complaints because he was a man. 
 
 In comparison, a Chicago jury awarded $80.7 million to a former female United Parcel Service manager who said UPS retaliated against her after she accused a driver of sexual harassment. The jury agreed that the shipping company fostered a hostile work environment when it failed to listen to her complaints of harassment and punished her for them. 
 
 In 2012, a California jury awarded $168 million to a physician's assistant who claimed she was constantly asked for sex by doctors at the hospital where she worked, but that her employer did nothing to stop the harassment. 
 
 Why such bigger verdicts for women versus men? 
 
 Unfortunately for males, society still doesn't seem ready for it. 
 
 "There are clearly cultural barriers for men to come forward with those sorts of allegations," said New Orleans employment law expert Scott Schneider, who noted that more sexual harassment could be going on against males by women than we know about. 
 
 "But for a variety of reasons ... a substantial percentage of those men probably don't come forward with it," said Schneider, of the national Fisher and Phillips employment law firm. "There's a social stigma for a man to come forward." 
 
 But, Schneider noted, men appear to be less shy about reporting sexual harassment by men. In his ... years practicing employment law, Schneider said he has seen sexual harassment lawsuits filed by men against men, and women against women. But he rarely hears about men suing over the conduct of women. 
 
 Schneider said one problem in the workplace that gives rise to sexual harassment claims is supervisors getting into relationships with a subordinate. This, he stressed, should be avoided. 
 
 "I’ve seen this a number of times. There’s a consensual relationship between a boss and subordinate. Someone breaks it off. The boss is a jilted lover and retaliates," Schneider said. "Sometimes they end up in wonderful marriages. But typically they end up really poorly. And that's why we tell people, 'Not a good idea.' " 
 
 Editor's note: This story has been updated to note that the comment 'take one for the team' happened in a lawsuit involving the Genesee County Sheriff's Office, not the Wayne County Sheriff's Office. 
 
 Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @Tbaldas 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2hM5zCw
– Myrna Arias didn't like the GPS app on her phone that constantly tracked her, so she uninstalled it. The problem: Arias' iPhone was issued by her employer, which required her to run the app constantly, and after she removed it, the California woman was fired. Now she's suing her former employer, money transfer service Intermex, for invasion of privacy, unfair business practices, and retaliation, among other things, Ars Technica reports. Arias started researching the app, then called Xora—its website touts the app's ability to let employers "instantly see where their employees are and where they have been"—and eventually she and some of her colleagues asked a trainer from the app company to clarify. Boss John Stubits then, per the suit, "admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments." Arias says she has no problem being monitored while at work, but she complained to Stubits about being tracked in her free time; he was unsympathetic and said she should have no problem because of how much she was being paid by Intermex. "Her manager made it clear that he was using the program to continuously monitor her, during company as well as personal time," the complaint states, noting that he told Arias she needed to keep her phone on at all times in case a customer called. Arias' attorney tells Courthouse News that there was no way to turn the app off, as it would constantly run in the background. "She found it very offensive that they were treating her like a felon," the attorney says. Arias says her boss "scolded" her for uninstalling the program last year, and fired her soon after. (Elsewhere, a woman got fired over a text mistakenly sent to the boss.)