No third-party recruiters. No third-party agencies. Ever.

This isn't fine print — it's a founding principle. Flor does not allow third-party recruiting firms or staffing agencies on our platform. Period.

The recruiting industry built a business model on selling nurses' personal information, spamming them with irrelevant opportunities, and inserting themselves between nurses and employers to take a cut. That model is what broke trust in the first place.

Flor exists to eliminate the middleman entirely. Every employer on our platform is a direct healthcare facility — a hospital, clinic, school, long-term care facility, or health system — hiring their own staff. No exceptions.

What is algorithmic wage discrimination?

The term was coined by Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Irvine, in a 2023 Columbia Law Review paper. It describes the use of granular surveillance data to produce unpredictable, variable, and personalized hourly pay for workers doing identical jobs.

Think price discrimination, but applied to wages instead of consumer prices. Platforms use data about a worker's bidding history, shift frequency, location, and potentially even their financial desperation to determine how little they can pay each individual.

Source: Columbia Law Review, Vol. 123, No. 7 (2023)

On ShiftKey, nurses don't just apply for shifts — they bid against each other by indicating the lowest hourly rate they'll accept. To win, they undercut their peers. Ashley, a CNA in Pennsylvania, regularly takes home less than $8/hour after fees. As an employed CNA, she'd make ~$20/hour.

Source: Roosevelt Institute, "Uber for Nursing" (Dec 2024)

Two gig nurses can work the same shift, same hour, same hospital, through the same app — and get paid completely different amounts. The algorithm decides. Neither nurse knows why. It's a total black box.

ShiftKey charges ~$6/shift in miscellaneous fees. Workers are classified as independent contractors — no minimum wage protection, no overtime, no sick leave, no benefits. They're also responsible for their own payroll taxes.

Source: STAT News investigation (March 2025)

Gig nurses get algorithmic ratings for attendance and performance. A nursing assistant worked a shift with COVID-19 rather than cancel and risk a ratings dip that would cut off future work. The algorithm punishes you for being human.

Source: Roosevelt Institute field interviews (2024)

If something goes wrong, the nurse pays

CareRev and Clipboard Health require nurses to sign agreements to indemnify both the company and the facility. If a patient is harmed, the nurse is personally liable — not the platform that sent them there.

A former Department of Labor attorney reviewed these contracts and called the arrangement "crazy."

These are not gig workers delivering food. These are licensed healthcare professionals making life-or-death decisions — and the platforms that profit from their labor accept none of the risk.

What Flor does differently

Flor is the direct opposite of algorithmic wage discrimination. We don't set wages, bid them down, or hide them. We require employers to post transparent pay ranges upfront — and we hold them to it through our Ethics Pledge.

There is no bidding. No desperation score. No hidden fees. No independent contractor classification. Every employer on Flor is hiring direct — real jobs with real pay, real benefits, and real accountability.

The system isn't broken. It was built this way. We're building something different.