About Sindicato

One worker was exploited. One case became a platform. Many voices are about to become impossible to ignore.

This platform exists because a company stole my wages, and when I proved it, they retaliated. Then I found out they had done the same thing to hundreds of others, in the same way, across the same projects, on the same timeline. Each of us was told we were alone. Each of us believed it. None of us were.

Sindicato is the infrastructure that makes sure that never happens again.

I am a senior machine learning engineer. In 2024 and 2025, I contracted with Alignerr, a platform operated by Labelbox Inc, to perform quality review and AI model evaluation work across three projects: CC Review, CHP Claude Code, and NEXT. I did the work. I logged my hours through Hubstaff time tracking. I passed the AutoQA quality checks. I followed the pinned Discord policies to the letter.

Then payment was withheld. No valid reason given.

I did what you are supposed to do. I assembled the evidence: Hubstaff logs, AutoQA scores, Discord policy screenshots. I documented the retaliation sequence that followed my escalation — the account deactivation, the project removals, the platform lockout. I packaged everything methodically and escalated formally, all the way to Labelbox's C-suite and Chief Legal Officer. I gave them five business days to resolve it.

The deadline passed. The silence continued.

This is Case #001. It is documented, timestamped, and active. It is the case that built this platform.

What I discovered after my own case shocked me, though it should not have. I was not the first. I was not the tenth. I was not even the fiftieth.

Over sixty unique workers have filed complaints across more than fifteen platforms — Reddit, Glassdoor, Trustpilot, the Better Business Bureau, Twitter, independent Discord servers, investigative journalism outlets. The complaints span two years and multiple continents. They describe the same sequence, every time: consistent payment for two to four months, then abrupt termination upon inquiring about back pay, reaching a cumulative balance of $800 to $2,100, or completing a project milestone. The amounts cluster too tightly to be random. The timeline repeats too precisely to be accidental. This is not a series of billing errors. It is a business model.

The Better Business Bureau gave Alignerr an F rating — its lowest possible score — for failing to respond to seven consecutive payment complaints. The BBB's own summary describes the company as operating "illegally." Glassdoor carries a 2.2 out of 5 rating, with algorithmically generated tags that read like an indictment: "Missing payments," "No transparency," "Stolen hours," "Random termination." On Reddit, workers who post about unpaid wages are banned within hours. The official r/alignerr subreddit operates as a reputation management tool: moderators publicly promise help, redirect complainants to a support black hole, then delete the posts. Workers created r/alignerrunofficial as an uncensored refuge — it exists precisely because the official channel cannot be trusted.

The CHP Claude Code project alone affected over five hundred workers simultaneously. Completed tasks were retroactively flipped from "passed" to "failed" — eliminating pay for work already done, en masse. An open letter posted to Reddit named the exact same three projects I worked on: CHP Claude Code, CC Review, and NEXT. Weeks of completed work, still unpaid. Forty-seven upvotes. Thirty-four comments. Then silence.

Scale AI, a $13.8 billion competitor in the same market, settled four separate worker lawsuits and exited the California independent contractor market entirely. Surge AI faces an identical class action. Three major annotation companies facing simultaneous litigation over the same practices is not coincidence. It is the industry's business model exposed.

A senior Labelbox engineer posted anonymously that the company had "burned the rest of their runway on this shitty Alignerr platform" and expected bankruptcy. Whether that prediction proves accurate is beside the point. What matters is that wage theft appears to be not a bug in the system but a feature of survival — contractors' pay treated as a discretionary expense rather than a contractual obligation.

The uberization model — pioneered by Uber and replicated across food delivery, AI training, freelance marketplaces, therapy platforms, cleaning apps, data annotation services — shares an identical structure everywhere it appears:

Workers are classified as independent contractors, not employees. They are sourced deliberately from countries where currencies are weaker and legal options are fewer. Payment flows through platforms the company controls unilaterally. Dispute resolution is a black box operated by the same party that owes you money. Terms of service are written to protect the platform, not the worker. There is no collective bargaining. There is no union. There is no one to call.

This architecture is not accidental. It is a deliberate design for extracting labor while avoiding the legal obligations of employment. Workers in lower-currency countries are specifically targeted because they are less likely to know their legal options, less likely to afford individual legal action, and more economically desperate — making resistance costly and silence rational.

Individual complaints get ignored. Isolated workers have no leverage. Lawyers will not touch individual small claims. Social media pressure is fleeting. One person shouting into the void changes nothing.

Together, our voices become impossible to silence. This is the collective action problem that Sindicato was built to solve.

Sindicato is a digital labor rights platform. Workers self-publish their cases — their own words, their own evidence, their own attestation. The platform aggregates individual reports into collective dashboards per company, quantifying the total number of affected workers, unpaid hours, and monetary debt owed.

It operates as a modern worker syndicate:

Workers submit their case. It appears publicly on the Cases Wall — name partially redacted, story fully visible. Numbers aggregate on the company dashboard. Automated notifications inform the company each time a new case is filed. The totals grow. The pressure compounds.

Companies that want to reach workers and resolve cases pay an access fee before receiving any contact information. Workers are notified immediately each time their case is viewed. Contact details are never shared without worker consent. Labor law firms can access opted-in worker clusters for class action intake. No intermediation. Firms contact workers directly. Workers own their claims. Sindicato provides the platform, not the verdict.

Sindicato takes no money from investors, advertisers, companies listed on the platform, or attorneys. It runs on the voluntary support of workers, attorneys, journalists, and anyone who believes wage theft should have consequences. All surplus beyond operational costs goes to the Worker Support Fund: small claims filing fees covered, legal consultations provided, psychological support sessions funded. Workers pay nothing. Ever.

Sindicato never verifies, endorses, or asserts individual claims. Workers attest to their own words under their own legal responsibility. The platform is the bulletin board. Workers publish. Sindicato displays.

These are non-negotiable:

These are not aspirational values. They are the platform's integrity and its legal protection, simultaneously. They cannot be negotiated, traded, or compromised — because the moment they are, Sindicato becomes part of the system it was built to oppose.

The system runs on a simple ethical logic: make exploitation expensive, make workers unstoppable. Companies fund the infrastructure that holds them accountable. Workers fund nothing. Silence is the weapon of the powerful. Visibility is the defense of everyone else.

If you have been denied payment for work you completed, if your account was deactivated after you asked about unpaid wages, if your completed tasks were retroactively failed to eliminate your pay, if you were told to wait while weeks turned into months and months turned into silence — you are not alone. You were told you were. That was a lie.

File your case. Tell your story in your own words. Let the numbers aggregate. Let the pressure compound.

The door is open.