The Gig Economy Is Being Sued to Death

The rules, such as they are, seem fairly straightforward. If, in the case of outfits like Handy and Uber and Instacart, the "employer" is laying down rules, requiring certain performance, setting the price, and enforcing metrics, they are an employer and the person doing the work is an employee who should be treated as such.

If, in the case of outfits like Redbeacon, the site is collecting leads and distributing them while letting the two parties work out the arrangement for themselves, the site is a referrer and the contractor is a contractor. Redbeacon doesn't require that the contractor who I hire to paint a room show up in Redbeacon attire, only do work through Redbeacon, charge what Redbeacon dictates, and follow Redbeacon's rules for how the work is done.

In the former case, people don't say "I hired J. Q. Driver to take me from my office to the airport," they say "I got an Uber." It's not "Local Delivery Service, LLC delivered my groceries today," it's "Instacart brought the milk." Being a part-time or irregularly-scheduled employee doesn't make someone any less of an employee than a 40-hours-per-week office worker.

The problem is one of enforcement. Just like how Uber got its nose under the tent by bullying through existing rules, companies like these exploit the fact that state Departments of Labor are politically hesitant (can't be crushing those small businesses, after all) and the federal DoL is limited.

Re: The Gig Economy Is Being Sued to Death

#5

Post by EGreg » Tue, Feb 17, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

There needs to be a decentralized marketplace that gets out of the way and doesn't have everyone at the mercy of its platform.

But that's hard to build. Once it's built, the two sides can compete on reputation, cost, or whatever else, crafting their own strategy and the overall wealth of the system will go up. The gatekeepers often hold the system back - even the ones who built the system.

I believe that platforms should be decentralized and free, enabling wealth creation at smaller scales more in touch with the individual.

Re: The Gig Economy Is Being Sued to Death

#6

Post by mr_luc » Tue, Feb 17, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

This will not kill it.

The Gig Economy will be a thing, and it should be.

But it needs to be legitimate, and it should lead to more autonomy and freedom for the Giggers, not less.

To accomplish this, businesses that treat contractors like employees should absolutely be punished!

If we really are to replace the old "master-servant relationship with a purely economic one, between equals," (like Paul Graham said so beautifully in his fantastic 2005 OSCON talk) then autonomy is important.

Those people who worked for Handy -- they were ostensibly contractors, but only labor contractors. The value that they create is cleaning + peace of mind. But as contractors for Handy their relationship isn't with the client; it's with Handy.

Okay, so they're labor contractors. Extremely fungible.

But, as independent contractors, one of the freedoms that the law guarantees them is a certain degree of autonomy.

They get to choose (varying from state to state, and the nature of the work) where and when they work, whether to listen to music, when to go to the bathroom, whether or not to scratch their butts on the job ... or at least that should be the case.

If it wasn't, that's a problem.

Re: The Gig Economy Is Being Sued to Death

#7

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Feb 17, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

mr_luc wrote: post #6

This will not kill it. The Gig Economy will be a thing, and it should be. But it needs to be legitimate, and it should lead to more autonomy and freedom for the Giggers, not less. To accomplish this, businesses that treat contractors like employees should absolutely be punished! If we really are to replace the old "master-servant relationship with a purely economic one, between equals," (like Paul Graham said so beau…

This will never occur, as businesses employing these workers want employee level of control with independent contractor costs.

Re: The Gig Economy Is Being Sued to Death

#8

Post by nvk » Tue, Feb 17, 2015, 5:01 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #5

There needs to be a decentralized marketplace that gets out of the way and doesn't have everyone at the mercy of its platform. But that's hard to build. Once it's built, the two sides can compete on reputation, cost, or whatever else, crafting their own strategy and the overall wealth of the system will go up. The gatekeepers often hold the system back - even the ones who built the system. I believe that platforms sh…

There is a project working on true decentralized markets, http://openbazaar.org, it's already in beta.

Re: The Gig Economy Is Being Sued to Death

#9

Post by alwaysdoit » Tue, Feb 17, 2015, 5:17 PM UTC

techsupporter wrote: post #4

The rules, such as they are, seem fairly straightforward. If, in the case of outfits like Handy and Uber and Instacart, the "employer" is laying down rules, requiring certain performance, setting the price, and enforcing metrics, they are an employer and the person doing the work is an employee who should be treated as such. If, in the case of outfits like Redbeacon, the site is collecting leads and distributing them…

So if I hire someone to play Princess Elsa at my daughter's birthday party, requiring her to wear a certain uniform on a certain day during certain hours and setting a price, then she is therefore an employee?

Aren't setting prices and terms of contract a standard part of any contract?

If you are providing a marketplace for people to find contracts between parties, and you are in any way filtering what you will or will not allow on that marketplace, aren't you setting terms of that contract?

Re: The Gig Economy Is Being Sued to Death

#10

Post by shawnee_ » Tue, Feb 17, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

mr_luc wrote: post #6

This will not kill it. The Gig Economy will be a thing, and it should be. But it needs to be legitimate, and it should lead to more autonomy and freedom for the Giggers, not less. To accomplish this, businesses that treat contractors like employees should absolutely be punished! If we really are to replace the old "master-servant relationship with a purely economic one, between equals," (like Paul Graham said so beau…

This will never occur, as businesses employing these workers want employee level of control with independent contractor costs.

Bingo. What all of these supposed "gig" economy jobs have in common is the parent company's tendency to shift all the risk to non-employees / ICs while reaping most of the economic value of the reward -- taking a heftier cut than it should from the business transaction.

The value derived from being an IC that's truly independent is being able to charge more for the "temporary" nature of the work and the risk of end-client fickleness. But this chunk of value is getting eaten by the middlemen (marketplace and escrow).

As such, this is especially evident in companies that have integrated a "marketplace payments platform" directly into their systems -- AirBnB, Uber, Kitchit, Instacart (any one of the companies whose payment processor is a member of the cartel: http://ink.hackeress.com/2014/12/crowdfunding-is-too-expensi...).