This is a helicopter view article, but it neatly enough addresses an issue that's only going to worsen:
https://newrepublic.com/article/1562...-its-nightmare
Considering solutions, I see the passage of new laws to convert gig workers into employees as a blunt fix doomed to fail. People will just find new ways to get around it.
I think the fix may lie in tax policy.
The article fails to note that gig workers enjoy certain tax benefits employees do not. Gig workers can write off all sorts of expenses and "live through their businesses" while employees cannot. This provides a great advantage for someone looking to use a gig to supplement income. We shouldn't punish the guy making $50k in his day job and $30k in revenue driving an Uber by recharacterizing his Uber work and forcing him to receive a W-2 from Uber, which would eliminate the deductions that allow him to pocket most of that $30k for himself. That's just diverting money from the real economy, and people who need it, to Uncle Sam's coffers.
Currently, the govt's strongest and most often used device for addressing companies' use of independent contractors rather than employees is an audit followed by a reclassification. This is time consuming and as noted above, punishes workers as much as employers. What if, instead, the govt applied an "independent contractor tax" on any employer with independent contractors in excess of, say, 3000 workers? Slap a 20% tax on Uber, Lyft, and all the rest.
Now, of course, they'll pass along the cost to consumers. But you know what? As a consumer of Uber, that's fine with me. Uber's best feature is its convenience, not its cost. It's so crazy cheap relative to what you get from it, I feel guilty using it. I'm not going to notice if the ride costs an additional few dollars. Nobody is going to notice that. When you need or want an Uber, you're going to get an Uber, cost be damned. I think it'd also make some of the other car services that are being destroyed by Uber competitive again.
This could also be applied to Amazon, of course. And any other entity that uses a huge amount of independent contractors. It'd also apply to those "body shops" that lease out labor and allow companies to avoid being flagged for using independent contractors as employees by saying, "Oh, well, we're not the workers' bosses... We lease them from a TPA that provides workers."
Just a thought. Might even out the playing field a bit and take away the unfair competitive advantage these gig operating firms enjoy.
