I 4 scheduling issues

[Unregistered]

Fred:

Here are two suggestions for you.
1. Tell the company you will schedule this job for free so the troopers make more money. There are good troopers out there that will schedule this job for free so they can have first pick.
2. Get together with the other schedulers and come up with a plan. Agree to charge the company $45 + 1 hr travel then tell the company you cannot get troopers to work for the old rate. When the company contacts the other schedulers, they have to stick to the same rate. Whoever gets the job has to agree to share the zones or schedulers'fees or whatever u guys agree upon.

[Unregistered]

Fred:

Here are two suggestions for you.
1. Tell the company you will schedule this job for free so the troopers make more money. There are good troopers out there that will schedule this job for free so they can have first pick.
2. Get together with the other schedulers and come up with a plan. Agree to charge the company $45 + 1 hr travel then tell the company you cannot get troopers to work for the old rate. When the company contacts the other schedulers, they have to stick to the same rate. Whoever gets the job has to agree to share the zones or schedulers'fees or whatever u guys agree upon.

Number 2 is the very definition of price-fixing. Supposedly "independent" contractors are colluding to force the vendor to pay a pre-determined price for a good or service in the marketplace, then the proceeds are split up among those involved in the scheme. That's price-fixing. Great idea. Let's allow FHP 208 system to appear more corrupt than it already does.

[Unregistered]

Federal Antitrust Enforcement
Enacted in 1890, the Sherman Act is among our country's most important and enduring pieces of economic legislation. The Sherman Act prohibits any agreement among competitors to fix prices, rig bids, or engage in other anticompetitive activity. Criminal prosecution of Sherman Act violations is the responsibility of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.
Violation of the Sherman Act is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $10 million for corporations, and a fine of up to $350,000 or 3 years imprisonment (or both) for individuals, if the offense was committed before June 22, 2004. If the offense was committed on or after June 22, 2004, the maximum Sherman Act fine is $100 million for corporations and $1 million for individuals, and the maximum Sherman Act jail sentence is 10 years. Under some circumstances, the maximum potential fine may be increased above the Sherman Act maximums to twice the gain or loss involved. In addition, collusion among competitors may constitute violations of the mail or wire fraud statute, the false statements statute, or other federal felony statutes, all of which the Antitrust Division prosecutes.

[Unregistered]

Forms of Collusion
Most criminal antitrust prosecutions involve price fixing, bid rigging, or market division or allocation schemes. Each of these forms of collusion may be prosecuted criminally if they occurred, at least in part, within the past five years. Proving such a crime does not require us to show that the conspirators entered into a formal written or express agreement. Price fixing, bid rigging, and other collusive agreements can be established either by direct evidence, such as the testimony of a participant, or by circumstantial evidence, such as suspicious bid patterns, travel and expense reports, telephone records, and business diary entries.
Under the law, price-fixing and bid-rigging schemes are per se violations of the Sherman Act. This means that where such a collusive scheme has been established, it cannot be justified under the law by arguments or evidence that, for example, the agreed-upon prices were reasonable, the agreement was necessary to prevent or eliminate price cutting or ruinous competition, or the conspirators were merely trying to make sure that each got a fair share of the market.

[Unregistered]

It is one thing to not work for a particular scheduler because another pays more. If all the schedulers agree to the same rate of pay they commit a violation of the Sherman Act.
If they all pay the same rate to stay competitive with each other as long as they did not act together and/or agree to control or set the price they are fine.
So definitely #2 in the original post is illegal.

[Unregistered]

Conscious Parallelism
The practice of "conscious parallelism," according to Legal-Explanations.com, is not strictly collusion because it does not come as a result of any actual agreements between firms. Instead, it is a situation that produces the same results of collusion without any actual consultation taking place. It occurs as a result of a general feeling among competitors that they should charge the same price for similar goods. For instance, if one petroleum company raises its prices for gasoline due to increased production costs, other petroleum companies may follow suit even if they face no increased production costs of their own This allows them to increase their profit margin without fear of being undercut by the first company.

[Unregistered]

Fred:

Here are two suggestions for you.
1. Tell the company you will schedule this job for free so the troopers make more money. There are good troopers out there that will schedule this job for free so they can have first pick.
2. Get together with the other schedulers and come up with a plan. Agree to charge the company $45 + 1 hr travel then tell the company you cannot get troopers to work for the old rate. When the company contacts the other schedulers, they have to stick to the same rate. Whoever gets the job has to agree to share the zones or schedulers'fees or whatever u guys agree upon.

Great job. You just described the commission of a federal felony. Apparently the suspensions, terminations and incarcerations of Troopers for 208 schemes hasn't changed a thing about the criminal enterprise masquerading as a law enforcement agency's off-duty police employment system. What a joke.

[Unregistered]

Great job. You just described the commission of a federal felony. Apparently the suspensions, terminations and incarcerations of Troopers for 208 schemes hasn't changed a thing about the criminal enterprise masquerading as a law enforcement agency's off-duty police employment system. What a joke.

Yes sir and dumb arse posted it on a public forum. This agency is doomed. I would bet you it was a supervisor that made the original post.
What a bunch of dummies!

[Unregistered]

Ok, so this guy doesn't know the law!
It would have been better if you had offered a solution. Do you have one?

[Unregistered]

The money for off duty is in the project budget/contract from the get go. The company gets the money and pays it out to you. It is not price fixing or bid rigging. The less they pay you the more money they get to add to their bottom line when its all said and done.

[Unregistered]

The money for off duty is in the project budget/contract from the get go. The company gets the money and pays it out to you. It is not price fixing or bid rigging. The less they pay you the more money they get to add to their bottom line when its all said and done.

I know Troopers don't get a lot of exposure to white-collar or financial crimes in between Vehicle v. Mailbox crashes or removing tire tread from the highway, but what the original poster suggested is absolutely a violation of the Sherman Act and a federal felony. It's the very definition of price-fixing: A group of people coming together to fix a set price for a good or service in the marketplace then telling the customers that there's no way to avoid paying the inflated price, then sharing the proceeds among themselves. That's a felony. And engaging in such a conspiracy would land you in jail. The fact that it was even floated as an idea or that it has been defended as proper or legal is further evidence that the off-duty system has devolved into a Mafia-like corrupt enterprise.

[Unregistered]

Ok, so this guy doesn't know the law!
It would have been better if you had offered a solution. Do you have one?

Yes I have a solution. Do not work the job until the pay is increased and they pay the mileage. Very simple solution. There is currently plenty of other jobs paying a whole lot more money. Even Disney just recently raised their pay to stay competitive after 15 years.