Shared. The basic arguments are sound. However, this: ... it kinda made me go hmmm. $6.36 an hour at 6 cents per line doesn't seem like a lot of lines. and in digging into it, 6 cents per line sucks, but isn't crazy shitty. Let's say she's paying 20% FICA. That means her $6.36 at 6 cents per line isn't 106 lines, it's 127. Let's presume 70 characters per line and 5 characters per word; that's 14 words per line. 127 lines per hour x 14 words per line = 1778 words per hour = 30 words per minute. I'm no medical transcriber and the typing test I just did put me at 86 words per minute. And I just got a new laptop two days ago. $19 an hour at 6 cents per line is 317 lines per hour, is 4400 words per hour, is 74 words per minute. It's not my idea of a dream job but if she's been doing it for years... I dunno. There's the crushing reality of latter-day outsourcing and then there's "you aren't very good at your job."Borland soon learned that this wasn’t quite true. Nuance would pay her the same hourly rate—but for only the first three months. After that, she’d be paid according to her production, 6 cents for each line she transcribed. If she and her co-workers passed up the new offer, they couldn’t collect unemployment insurance, so Borland took the deal. But after the three-month transition period, her pay fell off a cliff. As a UPMC employee, she had earned $19 per hour, enough to support a solidly middle-class life. Her first paycheck at the per-line rate worked out to just $6.36 per hour—below the minimum wage.