From the Washington Post, Emily Badger discusses the approach in a recently released boo, “The Sharing Economy: The end of employment and the rise of crowd-based capitalism,” by Arun Sundararajan. She writes:
Part of his argument is that we shouldn’t lament that Uber drivers don’t get full-time benefits; we should reconsider why benefits and security come attached only to full-time jobs. The challenge, then, is much harder than making Uber treat its drivers as “employees.” It entails dramatically redesigning the safety net and how we classify workers and companies.
That might mean finding ways to fund portable benefits that would cover workers who piece together freelance jobs and Instacart runs and Uber rides. It might mean allowing independent workers to collectively bargain with the platforms like Uber and Etsy. It might mean considering something like a universal basic income, which would counteract the insecurity of self-employment and gig work.
Sundararajan also envisions creating “safe harbors” for these platforms to experiment. Today, a company that offers training classes or tax withholdings to gig workers risks tripping over the legal distinction between having “independent contractors” and “employees.” So current labor law actively discourages them from offering more benefits to the workers who use their platforms.
Sundararajan is convinced we’ll solve these problems, eventually. “We will because individuals aspire to it,” he says. “Individuals want stability.”
But there is plenty of room for skepticism here, too. Freelance and gig workers make up a small minority of the labor force today. Even if their numbers rise, will they really amass enough power to force broad changes to the safety net? Americans spent years waging a bruising national debate over how to reform health care. But even with the Affordable Care Act, we still didn’t manage to substantially sever the link between insurance and full-time employment.
Related posts:
- An economist’s dreams of a fairer gig economy Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist, review the recent proposal to create a new category of worker — an “independent worker” — and recommends severing the connection between employment and the safety net employment current provides. Tim writes: So here is a far more radical approach: we should end the policy of trying to offload the welfare…More →...
- Tech companies, labor advocates, and think tankers of all stripes call for sweeping reforms to the social safety net From the Washington Post, Lydia DePillis discusses a movement to provide portable benefits to gig workers that has support from both liberals and conservatives, but not certainly not all liberals or conservatives. It’s an intriguing approach that could both require employers to properly classify their workers and provide non-empoyees with benefits. Lydia writes: It’s a…More →...
- Are Uber Drivers Employees? Gigs with Benefits From The New Yorker, James Surowiecki discusses the challenges of classifying Uber drivers as either employees or independent contractors in light of legislation that protects workers. James writes: “Much worker-protection legislation takes the view that, when there’s a tough call like this, we should put workers’ interests above corporate ones. But it’s not clear that…More →...
- Creating A New Kind Of Safety Net For The Gig Economy From Fast Company, Steven Hill proposes a solution to the issue in the gig economy in which some workers do not have the safety net that is available to employees. Steven recounts stories of workers who do not have a safety net and recommends a portable “Individual Security Account” to which employers contribute and which follows…More →...
- How can we protect workers in the gig economy? From Marketwatch, Laura Tyson discusses the changes to the labor market with the increase in digital labor platforms and how it changes the relationship between the hiring party and the worker. She says that there need to be new policies to provide a safety net for workers. She writes: New policies are needed to provide…More →...
- The gig economy is only good for some workers—but it doesn’t need to be that way From Quartz, Allison Schrager discusses the challenges of the gig economy and offers solutions to some of the problems. For example, the government could support a market for wage insurance to help independent contractors during periods when they do not have enough work. Allison discusses how all non-employees are not the same. Shje writes: But in…More →...