The Yelp-Like Website Helping Migrant Workers Avoid Bad Bosses

We’ve all seen groups of day laborers congregating on a street corner, hoping to be hired for a job. These workers, as well as those in this country on temporary work visas, are taking a big risk: They have to trust that the people who hire them will pay them as promised.
A new social media site, Contratados.org (the name roughly translates as “hired hands”), aims to offer some insurance against dishonest employers to day laborers.
On the website, workers can look for a job, write and read reviews of companies, bosses or recruiters, learn about their rights and read about news developments of relevance to them. For those who don’t have Internet access, there’s even the ability to leave a review via the telephone.
These Yelp-like reviews can help workers avoid bad work situations and find fair ones. For instance, one man who regularly employs undocumented workers recently received two one-star ratings. One reviewer says that this man had him working without a salary for two months, and in exchange for his work, promised a tourist visa. Instead, he gave him a fake visa, which resulted in deportation. On the other hand, another reviewer employed by a seafood market in Louisiana praised his bosses in a five-star review. “It’s a good company and a pure good thing,” the anonymous reviewer writes.
The reviews can be anonymous (which could, of course, result in the posting of falsehoods and exaggerations), but as with Yelp, the more reviews that accumulate, the more the consensus can be trusted.
Michelle Chen of The Nation spoke to Alissa Ecarce of Contratados, who says, “The beauty of the Contratados.org employer review feature is that it does not rely on any legal mechanism — the point is for workers to share information with one another so that they can make more informed employment decisions. Both guest workers and undocumented workers work within a system where they are at a power disadvantage due to their status, and we hope that Contratados.org will be a tool that all workers can use to increase their power in the labor market.”
This website, which offers a contemporary solution to an age-old problem, could prevent a lot of low-income workers from experiencing needless misery.
MORE: Here’s A Smart Solution That Stops Immigrants From Being Robbery Victims

A Software Program Yelps About NYC Restaurants That Violate Health Code

The five boroughs of New York City boast a wide range of food options — from halal street food to world famous culinary cuisine. With help of online review sites like Yelp, residents can navigate the overwhelming number of dining options.

And as it turns out, these user-generated commentary sites can be used for more than figuring out where to book a table on a Saturday night.

As New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene figured out, these online reviews are an important source in discovering restaurants violating health code.

Using a software program created by experts at Columbia University, the city mined 300,000 Yelp restaurant reviews (between July 2012 and March 2013) where patrons complained of vomiting, diarrhea, or other details following a meal that could signal food-borne illness, according to the New York Times.

Their findings? Out of 893 possible cases that needed further investigating,  56 percent illustrated an incident akin to food-borne illness, according to a recent federal Center for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

MORE: Will Philly Be Known for Healthy Produce Instead of Cheesesteaks? 

Though the method is not entirely accurate — there’s no way to tell if the food poisoning came from somewhere else — health inspectors were able to find three restaurants in violation of code.

One eatery was discovered to have bare-handed contact with ready-to-eat food, while another failed to properly clean work surfaces and was found to have cross-contamination of ingredients in the refrigerator. Health inspectors found evidence of cockroaches and mice at a third restaurant as well.

“With food-borne illnesses, it’s much better to reach people sooner,” medical epidemiologist Dr. Sharon Balter told the New York Times. “When investigating an outbreak, we want to know what people who got sick ate, who else was with them and what items they all ate together. If you wait, people forget.”

During the pilot program, officials culled potential cases using a week’s worth of Yelp data at a time, but now experts are combing through the data daily in attempt to prevent future outbreaks. Officials are encouraging other online review sites to contribute to the project to benefit public health.

And while the innovative, cost-effective experiment is fair from perfect, it goes to show that social media can be used for far more than just to #humblebrag or #tbt.