Equifax monitored 1,000 remote workers and fired 24 found juggling two jobs

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Hundreds of thousands of Americans juggled two full-time jobs in September, and nearly 4 million more were working full-time and part-time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. This trend of "overworking" has become so popular during the pandemic that Wired reported that some workers have described working two jobs as the cure for job burnout by having only one job. For telecommuters, in particular, the ability to generate extra income by working two jobs at once has become so normalized, The Washington Post reported last week, that some telecommuters consider it "fair" to hide a second job to their main employer.< /p>

Some remote workers have learned the hard way that not all employers see this as fair. This week it was reported that credit reporting service Equifax had been unwilling to sit idly by as its employees tried to keep second jobs on the sly. According to Business Insider, Equifax "used one of its own products, The Work Number, to help determine who was working multiple jobs simultaneously," and then fired 24 of the 25 remote workers its investigation uncovered. Some Equifax telecommuters juggled up to three jobs.

For its investigation, Business Insider reviewed company emails, spoke to current and terminated Equifax employees, and reviewed internal Equifax documents. Insider found that Equifax used The Work Number to comb through “work history and activity records of over 1,000 employees and contractors” and see overlapping payment periods reported by others businesses. This information, Insider reported, is typically only provided to people seeking their own reports, while third parties would typically receive a different version that doesn't provide as accurate information. terminated, the company reportedly reported 283 contractors also suspected of being redundant, but Business Insider was unable to verify whether these contractors were also terminated.

"Equifax recently investigated a number of employees who were suspected of working dual full-time jobs that conflicted with their role in our business," Equifax spokeswoman Kate said. Walker, to Ars in a statement. "As a result, several employees who violated our company's Code of Conduct and External Employment Policy, which were in effect at the time of the investigation, were recently terminated."

Equifax used other employee monitoring methods to determine which workers violated its Employee Code of Conduct. Walker told Insider that employees "should always disclose and discuss outside employment with your supervisor." Some workers were suspected of calling in for interviews with Equifax from their other work sites, and Equifax began noticing any employee showing "abnormally low VPN usage", below 13 hours per week, as a signal of alarm.

Equifax employees were notified of the layoffs in a company-wide email that unsettled some. A laid-off worker who spoke to Insider said he was unaware of Equifax's code of conduct when he took his second job. A current employee told Insider that Equifax shouldn't use the data it collects for The Work Number to "spy" on its own employees.

The Work Number collects employment records from 2.5 million companies, Insider reported, and when two Insider reporters published their own reports on the service, payment periods for "almost all jobs that 'they had both occupied were listed in the report.

Although Equifax's investigation, which it at one time dubbed "Project Home Alone," targeted employees with two or more jobs, the company said the breach was not the only one why 24 employees were laid off.

"Equifax followed all applicable laws in its handling of this situation," Walker told Ars. "These employees were terminated due to multiple factors, including in many cases their own admission that they had a secondary full-time position, which prevented them from fulfilling their full-time obligations to Equifax." p>

In its article on overemployment, Wired reported that people attracted to the crazy trend...