It’s hard not to to be afraid of the ways in which the gig economy’s least pleasant innovations, and the technology that enables them, could seep into more and more industries and jobs – a future where the “Uberization of everything” does not mean mainstream employment becomes eliminated, just forces it to work in increasingly giggly ways. David Weil — who worked in the labor department under President Obama and later served as dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University — sees the expansion of gig work as part of a bigger story, one he “gorges” ‘ calls. When companies started offshoring production in the mid-20th century, they did so in part to access cheaper labor in other countries, he says. Soon they found ways to do something similar at home, outsourcing tasks that would have belonged to their own pool of employees in the past. For example, the janitors at a technology company like Apple may have once been direct employees, entitled to benefits similar to those of their colleagues. Now they can be employed by a cleaning service with its own labor policy – breaking or at least loosening the legal ties between them and the company whose offices they will be cleaning.
Weil considers companies like Uber and Lyft to be “hyper-gap”. They minimize labor costs by categorizing all their drivers as independent – people with theoretically different jobs and different access to benefits – and setting themselves up as mere management systems for those employees to work with. However, given their power over almost every aspect of that work, many see these brands not as management systems, but as employment systems. “So much of the platform world wants to have things two ways at the same time,” says Weil. “They want as much control over the product and service as possible – regardless of the goals associated with product innovation, service and delivery – but they don’t want to be the messy employer’s trouble.”
The depth of this particular divide—the obvious way these platforms maximize control over workers and minimize their obligations to them—has led to multiple battles over how the law should categorize workers. In courts and in legislatures, workers and labor advocates have taken a stand against technology companies and business interests. The latter has won many victories. Legislation has already been passed in 34 states that specifically exempts “Transportation Network Companies” (TNCs) from certain state and local labor standards. The gig work platform Handy, which has since been bought by Angi Inc., has supported legislation that would make it easier for those who found jobs on apps or platforms to be considered independent workers; 10 states now have such “marketplace platform” laws on the books. And a growing, well-funded lobby for platform work, the Coalition for Workforce Innovation, has advocated for a third labor classification, alongside employees and independent contractors. This category would be created simply by having employees sign a contract called an “Employee Flexibility Agreement” in which they trade protections such as a minimum wage for the ability to take on remote work – giving platforms, the argument goes, the freedom to offer little by little. selections of perks and benefits to entice labour.
The strongest alternative to all of this is a standard called the “ABC test,” which gained notoriety in a class action lawsuit against a California courier and delivery service called Dynamex Operations West. In 2004, Dynamex converted all of its drivers from full-time employees to independent contractors. After many lawsuits, the California Supreme Court finally relied on the ABC test — which sets a high bar for considering workers independent — to uphold a lower court ruling for the plaintiffs, sparking a wave of political backlash. action. The state legislature passed a measure that codified the ABC test into law. In response, TNCs including Uber, Lyft and Instacart pushed for a state ballot measure, Proposition 22, that would place their drivers in a category of employees entitled to only limited benefits. The proposal was passed in 2020 but has been hampered by legal challenges. Versions of this battle have taken place in states across the country, and even nationally. The House of Representatives has twice passed the PRO bill, a law aimed at union organization that also applies the ABC test at the federal level; both times, in 2019 and 2021, it languished in the Senate. It was introduced for the third time in February.
At the same time, the sheer variety of performance work arrangements has continued to grow, outpacing most movements to regulate or define it. Many of the newest platforms in the field actually bill themselves as attempts to bridge the gap between flexibility and security – using the tools of gig work to solve the problems of gig work. Yong Kim, the founder of a platform called Wonolo, told me he hopes to build a new model for worker protection. Kim came to the United States from South Korea as a teenager and has memories of walking into stores with ‘wanting help’ signs only to be rejected: “I couldn’t get a job at a gas station,” he told me, “because of the the way I looked and the way I spoke. His platform connects employees with companies in need of on-demand staffing. “Most gig economy-based platforms connect workers with consumers,” he says. “If someone needs food delivered to their home, they use that. In our case, one side is actually businesses. There are companies such as Hello Fresh and Coca-Cola that also have to think about the well-being of the workers. Can we design it in a new way and innovate around it?”
