I work for a certain transcription company as an independent contractor. The company pays me to produce transcripts of audio recordings the company provides. A pay rate is given for each assignment. If I produce a good transcript, I get paid all the money I was promised, but if I produce a less-than-decent transcript, I only get paid half of the promised pay.
One time, they cut my pay even though my transcript captured the majority of the content. The reason they gave for this is because I worked offline instead of using the Google document they give me the link to to create the transcript. They did this on one or two other occasions.
Is this legal? Can a company use pay to control how its independent contractors perform the work?