independent contractor

Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy

by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle  · 12 Mar 2019  · 349pp  · 98,309 words

. Identifiers: LCCN 2018033918 (print) | LCCN 2018038179 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520971899 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520300552 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520300569 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Precarious employment. | Independent contractors. | Employee rights. | Flexible work arrangements—United States. | Labor—United States. | Labor market—United States. Classification: LCC HD5857 (ebook) | LCC HD5857 .R38 2019 (print) | DDC 331

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avoid social responsibilities, including workers’ compensation, overtime, and disability accommodations.33 A 2015 Occupational Safety and Health Administration report suggests that temporary workers and independent contractors also receive less training and are more likely to be injured on the job as a result. Although researchers have addressed how classification as an

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brought by workers of Uber, Lyft, and Handy argue that the restrictions on, and requirements for, workers mean they should be considered employees—not independent contractors. Other suits, such as one against CrowdFlower.com (renamed Figure Eight in 2018), a start-up that breaks digital jobs into tiny tasks performed

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in the midst of the service pivot and multiple other changes. In September 2015, the service announced that on-demand workers would switch from being independent contractors (1099 workers) to being employees. Workers, who had previously been paid sixty dollars for a shift of up to four hours, had their pay

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even though the right to organize and form a union was established in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, most sharing economy workers are considered independent contractors and outside the coverage of the act. As a result, as of this writing, only drivers in Seattle have been granted the right to

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having changed the world of work for the better. Yet, for all of these improvements, just eighty years later, sharing economy workers—classified as independent contractors—find themselves without any of these protections. And yet, this is only the start of the workplace troubles that gig economy workers often experience. Like

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s pain is similar to what Ehrenreich wrote about, but whereas Ehrenreich’s colleagues were hourly employees, covered by workers’ compensation policies, Emma is an independent contractor. She is not eligible for workers’ compensation, paid sick leave, or health insurance. If she is injured on the job, she has no recourse.

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disability accommodations, family leave protections, protection from discrimination, or the right to form unions. The majority of sharing economy services consider their workers to be independent contractors, or 1099 workers, named for the end-of-year tax document they receive that details their income. In addition to freeing companies from the obligation

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insurance funds or to make an employer’s contribution to Social Security and Medicare (7.65 percent of the employee’s salary), classifying workers as independent contractors allows companies to create a two-tier system in terms of benefits without facing complaints of discrimination. Full-time workers can get 401k contributions,

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. It’s no wonder that in 2011, the American Bar Association noted that a federal study estimated 3.4 million employees were classified as independent contractors when they should be reported as employees; a 2009 study by the Treasury Department’s inspector general estimated that misclassification costs the United States fifty

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do with your spine. So I’m hoping this combination of physical therapy and acupressure will allow me to not have to do that.” As independent contractors, Kitchensurfing workers are not covered by workers’ compensation. They also don’t qualify for employer-sponsored disability compensation. “We’re just the hired help

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any such injuries to themselves or their property. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Not all sharing economy companies embrace the independent contractor model. Some start-ups have made an active decision to pay workers as employees, with all of the protections that entails—and without destroying

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employees strengthened the company and its reputation by improving customer satisfaction, leading to reduced customer-acquisition costs. MyClean’s CEO, Michael Scharf, explained, “We see [independent contractors] as a legal risk. We also want, for lack of a better word, control—the ability to manage, dispatch, train, have processes in place

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or engage in money laundering. But the structuring of gig-based employment leaves workers in a precarious situation. By deeming gig economy workers to be independent contractors, companies deny them many of the protections often associated with employees. Since their work is temporary and their numbers are many, companies don’t seem

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more for labor. They’ve also received pushback from potential investors who have declined to support their company because they weren’t classifying workers as independent contractors. “There was this whole trend at the time because of Uber. ‘Uber for anything . . .’ It was like heroin for VC [venture capitalists]. . . . [T]

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plan for anything or have any benefits.” Sapone admits that their company could have gone either way in terms of hiring workers as employees or independent contractors. But Sapone and her cofounder disliked the high level of customer and worker churn found in the 1099 model, and they were concerned about

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fair, the impetus for treating workers as employees is not generally philanthropic. For instance, the office service Managed by Q views its rejection of the independent contractor model as a business strategy. Shortly before creating the service, the founder, Dan Teran, read Zeynep Ton’s book, The Good Jobs Strategy. The

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their workers as employees or offering their workers stock options and full company involvement? For one, the cost savings from classifying a worker as an independent contractor can be considerable: after factoring in unemployment insurance, workers compensation premiums, Social Security and Medicare contributions, health insurance, and any additional benefits, the savings

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are able to offer much lower prices than companies that commit to paying an actual wage. The cost savings of deeming workers to be independent contractors creates a perverse incentive for companies to save money on the backs of their workers. It also makes it harder for companies that are

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worker that’s been misclassified . . . are worse than your chances of finding a leprechaun riding a unicorn.”84 As noted previously, classifying workers as independent contractors reduces payroll taxes, including Social Security contributions, workers compensation, and health insurance premiums. Misclassifying workers can also lead to issues when workers file for unemployment

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supervises others under a contract pursuant to which the worker agrees to provide material and labor and is only responsible for the result, this indicates independent contractor status. 6. Continuing relationship: A continuing relationship between the worker and the person for whom the services are performed indicates employee status. 7. Set

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hour, week, or month: Payment by the hour, week, or month generally points to employment status; payment by the job or a commission indicates independent contractor status. 13. Payment of business and/or traveling expenses. If the person for whom the services are performed pays expenses, this indicates employee status. An

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: The provision of significant tools and materials to the worker indicates employee status. 15. Significant investment: Investment in facilities used by the worker indicates independent contractor status. 16. Realization of profit or loss: A worker who can realize a profit or suffer a loss as a result of the services (

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available to the general public: If a worker makes his or her services available to the public on a regular and consistent basis, that indicates independent contractor status. 19. Right to discharge: The right to discharge a worker is a factor indicating that the worker is an employee. 20. Right to

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, to be covered by civil rights laws, and to have taxes deducted from their paychecks. Workers would also have the opportunity to pool with other independent contractors to receive certain benefits, such as disability insurance, retirement accounts, and liability insurance, much like workers who join the Freelancer’s Union. However, under

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IRS’s 1984 Strategic Initiative, an examination of 3,331 employers for the 1984 tax year, found that 15 percent of employers misclassified workers as independent contractors. The IRS also found that “when employers classified workers as employees, more than 99 percent of wage and salary income was reported. However, when

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workers were classified as independent contractors, 77 percent of gross income was reported when a Form 1099 was filed, and only 29 percent of gross income was reported when no Form

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of numerous workplace protections. Implementing my solutions would reduce this risk. ENTREPRENEURS BY CHOICE Under the Time Rule and pajama policy, the category of independent contractor would be reserved for people who were largely self-directed. Workers could opt out of employee status and choose to be entrepreneurs by incorporating, which

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Passengers to Stop Drinking in Car.” NBC Washington, February 22. Committee on Ways and Means. 2007a. “Hearing on the Effects of Misclassifying Workers as Independent Contractors.” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support and the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures of the Committee on Ways and Means, U

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. “The Casualization of Intimacy: Consensual Non-Monogamy and the New Sexual Ethos.” PhD. diss. Available from ProQuest, AAI3550956. Griffith, Erin. 2015. “Why Kitchensurfing Made Its Independent Contractors into Employees.” Fortune, September 1. Griswold, Alison. 2014. “In Search of Uber’s Unicorn.” Slate, October 27. ———. 2016a. “The Dirty Secret of Airbnb Is

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Background Relating to Worker Classification for Federal Tax Purposes (JCX-26-07). Washington, DC: Internal Revenue Service, May 7. Jost, Micah Prieb Stoltzfus. 2011. “Independent Contractors, Employees and Entrepreneurialism under the National Labor Relations Act: A Worker-by-Worker Approach.” Washington and Lee Law Review 68(311). Kahn, Bonnie Menes. 1987

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, 208 collective bargaining, 64–65, 70, 71 collective consciousness, 32 Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation, 68–69 Commission on Industrial Relations, 93 commission structure model: independent contractor status and, 199–201box 1; Juno/Gett, 190–91; Lyft, 75; TaskRabbit, 6, 80, 185; Uber, 75–76, 184; worker control and, 182 Committee

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171; worker control and, 64, 171 entrepreneurship: overview, 6, 23, 31; Airbnb and, 44; capital requirements for, 40; democratization of, 5, 6, 34, 186; independent contractor status and, 206–7; inequality and, 38, 183, 186; Kitchensurfing and, 58; for the masses, 5, 6; platforms and, 181–82; reduction of barriers to

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CrowdFlower financing programs: Santander, 3, 73; Uber, 3, 73 flexibility: overview, 6, 15, 16; addressing need for, 177; in-demand job skills and, 38; independent contractor status and, 111; of Kitchensurfing, 167–68; limits to, 86–87; stigmatization of usage of, 184; successful workers, 10–11, 19, 159 FLSA (Fair Labor

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guilds, 71 Hacker, Jacob, 37, 181 hackerspaces, 27 Hall, Elaine, 121 Hall, Jonathan, 38 Handy: as exchange of services, 27; homeless workers and, 42; independent contractor status and, 36; lawsuits by workers against, 38; term reinvention and, 29 happy worker model, 178, 190, 207 Harris, Seth, 196, 201, 202 Hart, Keith

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152, 162, 187, 188, 190; Airbnb and, 72; costs of, 186; Driver Injury Protection insurance, 102; Hello Alfred and, 188; high-deductible plans, 37; independent contractor status and, 94, 190–91, 196; Kitchensurfing and, 59; lack of, 152, 156, 207; Managed by Q, 190; MyClean and, 190; Postmates and, 110–11

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and, 164–66; Gabriele, 82, 132, 170–71; guest screening, 47, 168–72; host discrimination, 35–36; host-guest interactions, 33–34, 128–31; as independent contractors, 36; Instant Book service, 170; James, 167, 168, 170; Jessica, 165; Joshua, 165, 170, 192–93; landlord-tenant disputes, 230n17; landlord-tenant issues, 222n49

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; McClean, 189; opportunities for, 23, 157; risks of, 37; TaskRabbit and, 56; of workplace risk, 191. See also piecemeal system overtime: avoidance of, 36; independent contractor status and, 94; paid overtime, 189 overwork, 6, 15–16 The Overworked American (Schor), 16 owner-occupied move-ins, 41 paid time off, 180, 188

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–84; Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft, 31–36; income rates, 184–85; increasing casualization of labor and the related risk shift, 36–39; increasing social inequalities, 39–42; independent contractor classification, 196–202; pajama policy, 204–5, 206; participant recruitment and methodology, 42–43; promises of, 5, 6, 25, 207–9; protecting workers in,

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50 UberPeople, 72–73, 225n34 uberPOOL, 27, 105–6 UberRUSH, 127–28 UberTaxi service, 77 Uber workers: Baran, 2–3, 6; Bryan, 78–79; as independent contractors, 36 uberX, 27, 75, 75tab. 2, 77, 78, 107 underemployment, 42, 62, 175 underground economy, 186 unemployment: discrimination against long-term unemployed, 62; long

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-term unemployed, 11; sharing economy and, 61 unemployment benefits: access to, 187; independent contractor status and, 94; unionization and, 177 unemployment insurance, 120, 191 unemployment rate, 10, 175, 176 unexotic underclass, 231n4 unicorns (startups), 2 unionization: overview, 6,

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-home arrangements, 66 worker categories, 59, 109–11; Strivers, 10–15; Strugglers, 10–12, 14–18; Success Stories, 10–13, 18–21. See also independent contractors; striving workers; struggling workers; successful workers worker classification: overview, 11–12; employer-employee relationship factors, 199–201box 1; FLSA and, 196; independent worker category, 201

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, 202; risk and, 36; tax revenues and, 205–6; time rule solution, 202–3. See also independent contractor status worker safety: overview, 6, 22; advanced planning and, 97–100; dangers of driving for hire, 101–4; health issues of driving, 104–6; in

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109–11; urination issues, 106–9. See also workerplace injuries workers’ compensation: overview, 22; access to, 187, 189; avoidance of, 36; costs of, 191; independent contractor status and, 91–92, 94–95, 96–97, 196; short history of, 92–94 work hours: on-call time, 81–84; erratic nature of, 74

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16; promise of, 6; social class and, 38; striving workers and, 14–15 workplace injuries: overview, 4–5, 6, 22; financial aspects of, 74; independent contractor status and, 95–97; lack of protective regulations on, 90–92. See also workplace protections workplace issues: overview, 2, 22, 90–92; advanced planning and

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

by Jeremias Prassl  · 7 May 2018  · 491pp  · 77,650 words

actually going on from regulators and evade the law. His first example of a ‘pervasive’ arbitrage technique? ‘[F]iring employees and re- hiring them as independent contractors to avoid employment regulation.’36 * * * The Economics of the Gig Economy 21 In that sense, then, employment law—or rather the evasion of employ- ment

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employment status, on the other hand, is a consistent theme throughout: shareholder value is created by denying workers their legally mandated rights. Classifying workers as independent contractors allows plat- forms to offer services without having to pay for their cost. Responsibility for assets, remuneration, insurance, and tax, as well as the risks

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today are clear about the indus- try’s commercial focus and courts are increasingly content to ignore sophis- ticated contractual attempts to recast employees as independent contractors. The gig economy’s claims of genuine entrepreneurship and innovation, on the other hand, pose a much more significant challenge: if true, they would leave

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the ‘Roo’ or Rider Community, instead of a fleet of delivery couriers, are designed to defeat employment law through the contractual reclassification of workers as independent contractors—with less and less success. Cuddly terminology as well as the fictional language used in gig plat- forms’ contracts are increasingly coming under attack. When

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in late 2015 highlighted, key industry players were often closely involved in drafting the laws—many of which contain provisions designed to classify drivers as independent contractors, beyond the scope of state-level employment law protection.61 In some cases, this is achieved through explicit carve-outs. In Ohio, for example, the

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- tract’,62 and in Indiana, ‘an Act to amend the [State] Code concerning insurance’ discreetly stipulates that TNC drivers are similarly to be seen as independent contractors by law.63 Other states have included less direct provisions to similar effect. In Texas, legislation stipulates that a TNC ‘does not control, direct, or

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key element in * * * 48 Doublespeak most employment law tests,64 and in North Carolina, a ‘rebuttable presump- tion exists that a TNC driver is an independent contractor and not an employee’.65 Similar lobbying efforts are by no means limited to the United States. A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy, published

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used to provide the underlying service’ should be classified as service providers.66 Even those uncomfortable with the legislative classification of gig- economy workers as independent contractors eschew employment status. At the least radical end of the spectrum, we find proposals to create a ‘third’ employment status for gig-economy workers, located

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between the traditional categories of employee and independent contractor. Building on the notion that on-demand economy platforms represent a genuinely novel form of work, deserving of its own legal status and regulatory apparatus

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when these workers communicate online, companies spy on them—and even kick potential troublemakers off their platforms. Moreover, since on-demand workers are frequently considered independent contractors, they aren’t pro- tected by federal labor laws that prohibit companies from retaliating against employees who join together to improve conditions.70 More and

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consumers and workers. Gig-economy platforms step in to restore choice and control for each of us. To some extent, that is true, of course: independent contractors enjoy much more flexibility than regular employees, who have traded some of their freedoms for stability and protection, and consumers might gain access to hitherto

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regulation of the labour market hinges on a fundamental trade-off between security and control: employees working under a contract of employ- ment are protected; independent contractors are not. Most countries’ employment laws have adopted a version of this ‘binary divide’ model to structure their employment law, tax, and social security systems

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wage, and may not illegally discriminate against particular groups in hiring and firing.3 Employers deduct payroll taxes, and contribute to pensions and insurance payments; independent contractors can set higher rates in return for being responsible for their own tax returns and long-term economic security. * * * Playing by the Rules 95 Some

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simple and far from innovative. This ‘disrup- tion’ is based on contractual misclassification (the simple assertion in plat- forms’ terms and conditions that workers are independent contractors rather than employees) and the increasing use of multilateral work arrangements, * * * 96 Disrupting the Disruptors through the sharing and blurring of employer control between customers

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very point of the carefully drafted and strongly worded terms and conditions that prospective workers and customers must accept before joining a platform: TASKERS ARE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS AND NOT EMPLOYEES OF COMPANY. COMPANY DOES NOT PERFORM TASKS AND DOES NOT EMPLOY INDIVIDUALS TO PERFORM TASKS. USERS HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT COMPANY DOES NOT

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WORK PERFORMED OR THE TASKS IN ANY MANNER.5 Everyone has agreed, it appears, that on-demand platforms are but neutral intermediaries, facilitating transactions between independent contractors and their clients—and thus most certainly outside the scope of local, national, or international employment regulation. But the law isn’t quite so easily

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been embroiled in misclassification lawsuits. Like many on-demand platforms today, the company exercised tight control over its delivery drivers, whilst maintaining that they were independent contractors. In one of the leading decisions against FedEx, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2014 upheld drivers’ claims that they were employees

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decision, which caught the attention of journalists and regulators across the world, Judge Snelson was unequivocal in finding that claimant drivers were workers, rather than independent contractors. The language in Aslam, Farrar v Uber was unusually pointed: [87] . . . we have been struck by the remarkable lengths to which Uber has gone in

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and ACOSS are pursuing Uber for several million euros’ worth of contributions that the platform has refused to pay, insisting that its drivers are but independent contractors.15 Regulators around the world are starting to take notice. A set of interpretative guidelines under the US Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, released

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of $1 billion.21 The underlying message is clear: however strongly worded, platforms’ denial of employment status will not automatically succeed in classifying workers as independent contractors. Depending on each jurisdiction and claim, the ordin- ary tests of employment and labour law apply to work in the on-demand economy—and, given

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amount of work avail- able from the employer have nothing to do with the worker’s managerial skill and do little to separate employees from independent contractors—both of whom are likely to earn more if they work more and if there is more work available.26 Because the platform clearly exercises

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taxes directly to the state, and to deduct (‘with- hold’) a certain percentage of income tax and employment-related insur- ances. As mere intermediaries for independent contractors, gig-economy platforms argue, they should not be subject to either of these obligations. This leads to a direct tax loss: by engaging

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independent contractors, plat- forms are not responsible for any of the payroll taxes levied on other compan- ies. In many countries, this loss is further compounded by

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was] forecast to cost [UK] public finances over £5 billion’ per year.24 Tax authorities are increasingly challenging platforms’ insistence that work- ers operate as independent contractors. French social security administrators URSSAF brought a claim for nearly €5 million in unpaid contributions dur- ing a period of 18 months in 2012–13

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on the employer’s share of revenue; devolution of tax responsibility to individual contractors also makes collec- tion cumbersome and patchy. In the United States, independent contractors have to report their earnings on Income Revenue Service (IRS) Form 1099 (hence the name ‘1099 economy’, which sometimes crops up as a synonym for

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their so-called vicarious liability—a legal doctrine that holds employers responsible for wrongs committed by their employees.34 Detailed rules vary across jurisdictions, but independent contractor status is nearly always the easiest way of wriggling out of responsibility. This will usually leave the injured consumer or bystander without meaningful recourse, as

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service quality. Consider working time and minimum wage protection (or wage and hours laws, as they are known in some countries) as an example. An independent contractor who has been on the road for most of a day and decides to put in another few hours to pay her expenses will be

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workers with state benefits instead? From this perspective, platforms would still be forced to bear the cost of their business activities, but could continue with independent contractor classification. Even if we ignore the practical problems with this approach (remember the difficulties with tax collection chronicled earlier), however, it turns out that employment

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- enon itself is generally accepted. Oei and Ring, for example, characterize platforms’ decision to classify themselves as mere intermediaries and their ‘affirma- tive adoption of independent contractor classification’ as examples of ‘tax opportunism’, rather than regulatory arbitrage, whilst acknowledging that the overlap between those categories can be significant—‘In some cases, it

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Coase, ‘The nature of the firm’ (1937) 4(16) Economica 386. Coase sug- gested that the main advantage of hierarchical employment relationships over contracts with independent contractors was the entrepreneur’s degree of control and the resulting decrease in transaction cost, whether in the search, selection and training of workers, or the

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33. Even platforms themselves might profit. Take competition law as an example: an increasing number of lawsuits allege that if gig-economy workers are genuinely independent contractors, then their use of an app to determine prices would be a clear violation of competition or antitrust law. (See, for an overview, Julian Nowag

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, 76, 77 Kaplow, Louis 184 illegal practices 57 Kasparov, Garry 1 immigrant workers 77 Katz, Lawrence 16 incentive structures 67–8 Katz, Vanessa 116, 179 independent contractors 21 Kaufman, Micha 17, 145, 149 Independent Workers Union of Great Kempelen, Wolfgang von 1 Britain (IWGB) 113, 179 Kennedy, John F. 135, 185 industrialization

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

by Arun Sundararajan  · 12 May 2016  · 375pp  · 88,306 words

service at their coffee shops and use these locations as drop-off points for rented items. Today, your Kozmo delivery person would likely be an independent contractor or part-time employee with his or her own GPS-enabled smartphone. In 1999, however, Kozmo had to hire employees and equip them with its

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—imagine Uber without GPS-enabled smartphones; simply not possible at scale—and what workforce models might be now feasible when a smartphone-equipped crowd of independent contractors can seamlessly enter and exit digital labor markets. The Digitization of the Physical Alongside the consumerization of digital, we are now also witnessing a parallel

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vehicles and pay for their own gas and repairs while building their transportation microbusinesses. Indeed, there is a long history of taxi drivers operating as independent contractors in the United States. Uber maintains that it is a technology company that simply provides a platform for drivers to connect with customers in the

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June 2015 by SherpaShare, a provider of financial services to sharing economy providers, two out of three Uber drivers indicated that they viewed themselves as independent contractors to the platform rather than as employees.2 As this book goes to press, the case, involving 160,000 Uber drivers, is still underway. In

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Alfred employ their providers full-time, and their CEOs, Dan Teran and Marcela Sapone, have frequently argued the advantages of full-time employment over an independent-contractor relationship.5 And policy makers have started to take note. In a June 2015 speech, Virginia senator Mark Warner called for federal policy makers to

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challenges that will unfold over the coming decades. We need labor policy that anticipates this ongoing transition, moves past the false dichotomy of “employee” and “independent contractor” to redefine how we categorize productive work, decouples the social safety net from full-time employment, and better supports our emerging networked society of microentrepreneurs

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and dozens of links to other pertinent sites), at http://uberlawsuit.com/. 2. Jianming Zhou and Ryder Pearce, “Do On-Demand Workers View Themselves as Independent Contractors or Employees?” SherpaShare, June 15, 2015. https://sherpashare.com/static/resources/SherpaShare-IndependentContractorEmployeeSurveyResults.pdf. 3. See the full docket report for the case, O’Connor

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, “Uber and Lyft Fail to Convince Judges,” Business Insider, March 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-and-lyft-fail-to-convince-judges-their-employees-are-independent-contractors-2015-3#ixzz3UIFTYbVy. 5. I have heard Teran discuss this at two separate events in the second half of 2015: the TAP Conference in New

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book the central labor policy question for the sharing economy seems to concern the employment status of the new, flexible workforce. Are they employees, or independent contractors, or something else? Since my training is in economics and business rather than in the law, I won’t waste your time with a layperson

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with deliberation, with pilots and safe harbors, so that we gather more data before making any significant extensions to the current framework. First, the employee/independent contractor question is not new. According to Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge, quoted by Justin Fox in a Bloomberg View article: Few problems in the law have

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thus a historically vexing issue, not a fresh challenge posed by the sharing economy’s newly minted corporate giants. Second, the determination of “employee” versus “independent contractor” is not algorithmic. True, the issues discussed are always about how independent the contractor is, and how much control the potential employer exerts on the

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“now enjoy a wide variety of federal, state and local protections, from minimum-wage and overtime laws to unemployment insurance, that aren’t available to independent contractors.”3 This is an important distinction for a number of reasons, most saliently because the specter of future litigation may actually be preventing workers from

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the IRS’s criteria for determining whether a worker is an employee is whether that worker gets benefits, a platform that considers benefits for its independent-contractor workers as, for example, a retention strategy, or a way of attracting new workers, will shy away from this to avoid potential class-action lawsuits

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.” As I mentioned in chapter 7, it seems as if a majority of Uber drivers don’t want to give up the flexibility of being independent contractors. Before you raise your eyebrows at my basing a conclusion on a quick survey run by a Silicon Valley insider, let me point you to

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type of employment, 2005 As indicated by these findings, as early as 2005, it was clear that a vast majority of self-employed workers and independent contractors don’t want an alternative employment structure. (These are the most recent numbers available through this agency.) Of course, perhaps many of them wouldn’t

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-time employees can pool their individual bargaining power and take collective action, protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the NLRA does not protect independent contractors, and current antitrust law may penalize them for doing so, a point Elizabeth Kennedy highlights using the example of independent physicians in her 2005 paper

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of workers in North America, and began by reflecting on the inherent contradiction in the term: Because the choice of either legal designation—“employee” or “independent contractor”—in effect prejudges the issue of their right to bargain collectively, a new term is needed: “dependent contractor.” They are “dependent” economically, although legally “contractors

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intermediary pay half of the worker’s contributions toward the FICA payroll taxes (as much as 13.8% of earnings, and currently borne entirely by independent contractors).14 Although the introduction of a third category of worker will help many sharing economy providers and will also allow today’s platforms greater flexibility

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create a “safe harbor” for specific sharing economy platforms that would allow them to give benefits, training, insurance, and other forms of protection to their independent contractor providers without triggering a categorization of these providers as employees. We are still very early in the labor transition induced by the sharing economy. Labor

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, or the Airbnb/Etsy software that every host and customer uses be considered a “tool”?) Fourth, can disciplinary actions be taken against the worker? While independent contractors may have their contracts terminated, they can’t be disciplined as employees might be. (Does blocking someone temporarily from accessing a platform, or lowering his

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long-run business sense. There is also reason to believe that provider protection will be an effective retention strategy for platforms. If collective organizing for independent contractors becomes legal, platforms must consider provider unionization. These platforms must also consider the prospect of large-scale provider migration that might accompany the creation of

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both futures. But the choices we make over the coming decade will determine which one dominates. Notes 1. Justin Fox, “Uber and the Not-Quite-Independent Contractor,” Bloomberg View, June 23. 2015. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-23/uber-drivers-are-neither-employees-nor-contractors. 2. The SS-8 form

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/pub/irs-pdf/fss8.pdf; detailed supplementary guidelines are available at http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Independent-Contractor-Self-Employed-or-Employee. 3. Fox, “Uber and the Not-Quite-Independent Contractor.” 4. Often called the “congressional watchdog,” GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. The report is available

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.net/2014/08/05/it-takes-a-new-kind-of-worker-to-make-instant-happen/. 6. Elizabeth Kennedy, “Freedom from Independence: Collective Bargaining Rights for Independent Contractors,” Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 26, 1 (March 2005): 155–157. http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1348&context=bjell

J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax

by J K Lasser Institute  · 30 Oct 2012  · 2,045pp  · 566,714 words

underpayment rate. - - - - - - - - - - Plans subject to and excluded from Section 409A. Unless an exception applies, Code Section 409A applies to all plans, including arrangements between an independent contractor and a service recipient, and a partner and partnership, under which the service provider has a legally binding right during a year to compensation that

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the likelihood that the forfeiture will be enforced. - - - - - - - - - - Non-employees. The tax rules for restricted property are not limited to employees. They also apply to independent contractors who are compensated for services with restricted stock or other property. Sale of property that is not substantially vested. If you sell restricted property in

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employees must be at least half the seating capacity. The exclusion applies only to regular employees. For partners, more than 2% S corporation shareholders, and independent contractors who are provided transit passes, the IRS allows up to $21 per month as a tax-free de minimis benefit. If the monthly value exceeds

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month only if the price paid plus the $240 exclusion is less than the value of the parking. Commuter parking benefits for self-employed partners, independent contractors, or more-than-2% S corporation shareholders do not qualify for the $240 exclusion but may qualify as a tax-free de minimis benefit (3

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disallowed on the grounds that his employment in California was not temporary; it lasted more than one year. The Tax Court disagrees. Just because an independent contractor returns to the same general location in more than one year does not mean that he is employed there on an indefinite basis. Mitchell’s

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entertainment; the employee is, when claiming the meals on Form 2106. A similar rule applies to meal allowances or reimbursements that you give to an independent contractor and that you report as compensation on Form 1099-MISC where the contractor does not adequately account for the expenses. The restrictive tests (20.17

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and entertainment that are treated as taxable compensation to the employee and as wages for purposes of withholding of income tax. 2. You reimburse an independent contractor for meal and entertainment expenses he or she incurs on your behalf and the contractor does not adequately account for the expenses. You should report

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. The backup withholding rate is 28%. Backup withholding will apply to fees of $600 or more (Form 1099-MISC) for work you do as an independent contractor, payments from brokers (Form 1099-B), royalty payments (Form 1099-MISC), and certain gambling winnings (26.8) if you do not give the payer your

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Form 1040 if you are a sole proprietor of a business or a professional in your own practice. If you do freelance work as an independent contractor, you are self-employed and use Schedule C. If you are an employee with a sideline business, report the self-employment income and expenses from

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are required to report payments and receipts to the IRS. If you fail to comply with this reporting, you can be penalized. Payments to independent contractors. If you pay independent contractors, freelancers or subcontractors a total of $600 or more within the year, you must report all payments to the IRS and the contractors

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actually carrying on the business is subject to self-employment tax on the earnings. - - - - - - - - - - Caution Freelancer Fees Fees you earn for freelance work as an independent contractor are business earnings reportable on Schedule C, and if you have a net profit, they are subject to self-employment tax on Schedule SE. - - - - - - - - - - Qualified

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Group 1. Technical specialists who contract directly with clients may be classified as independent contractors by showing that they have been consistently treated as independent contractors by the client, and that other workers in similar positions have also been treated as independent contractors. Thus, they may treat their income as self-employment income. Firms that are

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a decedent. Income earned by a person before death but taxable to an estate or heir who receives it; see 1.14 and 11.16. Independent contractor. One who controls his or her own work and reports as a self-employed person; see Chapters 40 and 45. Individual retirement account (IRA). A

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, a net loss as an ordinary loss; see 44.8. Self-employed person. An individual who operates a business or profession as a proprietor or independent contractor and reports self-employment income on Schedule C; see Chapters 40 and 45. Self-employment tax. Tax paid by self-employed persons to finance Social

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local tax refunds tax, withheld on wages tax-free, earning withholding allowances Income in respect of a decedent (IRD) Incompetent persons, filing a return for Independent contractor backup withholding parking benefits provided by employer payments to Section 409A, plans subject to tax rules for restricted property Index options Indian employment credit Indian

Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don't Talk About It)

by Elizabeth S. Anderson  · 22 May 2017  · 205pp  · 58,054 words

egalitarian hope, the enterprises responsible for most production are not sole proprietorships. But economies of scale do not explain why production is not managed by independent contractors acting without external supervision, who rent their capital. One could imagine a manufacturing enterprise renting its floor space and machinery and supplying materials to a

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set of self-employed independent contractors. Each contractor would produce a part or stage of the product for sale to contractors at the next stage of production. The final contractor would

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of the firm, this is due to the excessive costs of contracting between suppliers of factors of production.14 In the failed New England system, independent contractors faced each other in a series of bilateral monopolies, which led to opportunistic negotiations. The demand to periodically renegotiate rates led contractors to hoard information

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and delay innovation for strategic reasons. Independent contractors wore out the machinery too quickly, failed to tightly coordinate their production with workers at other stages of production (leading to excess inventory of intermediate

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; it is merely a nexus of contracts among independent individuals.24 John Tomasi, writing today, continues to promote the image of employees as akin to independent contractors, freely negotiating the terms of their contract with their employers, to obtain work conditions tailor-made to their idiosyncratic specifications.25 While workers at the

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state, upon accepting an offer of work? Not just theorists of the firm, but public discourse too, tend to represent employees as if they were independent contractors.26 This makes it seem as if the workplace is a continuation of arm’s-length market transactions, as if the labor contract were no

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of work is a product of free contracts between workers and employers that optimally reflects their preferences, such that employees are equivalent to self-employed independent contractors in the autonomy they enjoy. I argue that these legacies are anachronistic holdovers that pretend that the hopes of the earlier pro-market ideal had

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: Princeton University Press, 2012), 23, 77, 81. 26. This tendency facilitates a common abuse of labor law, in which employers pretend that their employees are independent contractors, to avoid minimum wage, maximum hours, benefits and safety regulations; to shift the burden of employment taxes on their workers; and to force them to

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Package System, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 16585 (9th Cir. Aug. 27, 2014), which ruled that FedEx misclassified thousands of its California truck drivers as independent contractors. 27. Josiah Wedgwood, a pioneer of the Industrial Revolution in promoting worker discipline in his pottery factory, was also a major abolitionist. 28. Blackstone, Commentaries

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, 125; on the rise of market society, 121–22 immigration/immigrants, 32–33, 137; immigration rights, 159n23 Imperative of Integration, The (Anderson), viii independent contractors, 51, 132; employees as independent contractors, 57, 159n26 individualism, 65 Industrial Revolution, the, vii, ix, 48; centralized production as a product of, 65; and the change from egalitarian values

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass

by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri  · 6 May 2019  · 346pp  · 97,330 words

. It will require people to navigate layers of software interfaces and learn to labor in the shadow of AI. It will contain an ecosystem of independent contractors like Joan, typing away in spare bedrooms, cafés, and cinder-block homes in rural India, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon—or anywhere else a person

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of small projects and micropayments, and human bosses are being replaced by automated processes that are programmed to oversee a far-flung workforce of anonymous independent contractors. Ghost Work departs from the well-known story about the rise of robots by documenting a more complicated future that is already emerging. It shows

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once it’s been accepted by a worker. Workers alone are responsible for the taxes on their MTurk income. They are expected to file as independent contractors, the 1099 forms familiar to anyone in the freelance consulting world. The trade-off for the requester is that the work is done fast and

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was that, according to Otey, CrowdFlower set expectations accordant with a full-time employee, but the pay and benefits were commensurate with those of an independent contractor. Otey says of his time working for CrowdFlower, “I didn’t have control over the work I did. It was all done on their platform

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service. It also did not apply to employees considered “supervisors” or those workers employed by federal, state, or local governments. And it excluded laborers considered independent contractors, such as domestic help, farm hands, and the relatives of small-business owners. The timing of the Wagner Act is key. It targeted the rapidly

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FLSA, lobbied to narrow the definition of “employee” under the Taft-Hartley amendment to Wagner’s National Labor Relations Act. Hearst pushed to explicitly exempt independent contractors, working off-site or considered peripheral to business operations. Congress’s revisions to the original Wagner Act would instead require courts to use strict tests

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Labor Standards Act as covering all workers was closed by the Taft-Hartley Act’s explicit litmus tests and classifications for full-time employment and independent contractor work. This change also created a new class of non-unionized, expendable labor more valuable to the rapidly expanding service industry sectors and so-called

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seem relevant to the debates over FLSA. And so, the Fair Labor Standards Act applied to “any individual employed by an employer” but not to independent contractors or volunteers training to enter the professional class. Both types of workers were considered liminal characters. The contractor was treated like a hammer or mechanical

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faster.29 Langley’s first female computing pool opened in 1935. Under the FLSA, the federal government’s War Department was granted latitude to employ independent contractors as civil servants. By 1946, Langley Field’s campus had reorganized as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA’s precursor, with only a

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spotlight not so much for its status in the growing tech industry as for a troubling trend in its staffing procedures. Employing temporary workers and independent contractors was nothing new for tech companies. These workers were supposed to fill short-term company needs, pick up work when permanent staff were on leave

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the IRS had grown wary of this arrangement and audited Microsoft’s staffing procedures. The agency ended up deciding that about 600 of Microsoft’s independent contractors should be reclassified as permanent employees, because their work was entirely under Microsoft’s control.40 But it didn’t end there. Microsoft outsourced the

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. Yes, the permatemps case became a landmark example for legal and business leaders to illustrate how one should or should not implement temporary workers and independent contractors.But it did nothing to resolve the plight of the millions of people doing jobs that fall outside of the formal definitions of “full-time

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-bound messengers who deliver food for local restaurants are part of the range of ghost work explored in this book. Caviar’s couriers operate as independent contractors. The company requires deliverers to sign liability waivers for work injuries, including death, before they can start delivering. Pablo Avendano was delivering food on his

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the law is clearly on the company’s side and has been ever since William Randolph Hearst won his fight to classify newspaper boys as independent contractors secondary to Hearst’s core business.3 As tragic as the death of Pablo Avendano is, there is no employment law that clarifies companies’ responsibilities

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like Uber should not have to follow the same rules and regulations as taxis. The majority of respondents also viewed ride-hailing services’ drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. Yet they also expected Uber, as much if not more than the driver, to manage their customer experience. This contradicts all of

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current rules we have about how much a business can manage or direct those working for them on contract and what help or support an independent contractor can receive from a business that is not one’s official employer. On April 30, 2018, the California Supreme Court ruled that some Uber driver

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-partners should have been classified as employees rather than independent contractors. Uber was found guilty of violating existing labor laws where it withheld employee benefits to individuals who could show that Uber controlled their wages, hours

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tracking their business expenses, so that on their taxes they can get their fair share of the deductions that come with being self-employed as independent contractors. And DoorDash offers a same-day pay feature, called Fast Pay, that lets Dashers cash out earnings, much like Amazon Payments lets workers draw their

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. But these are also features that, by legal litmus tests, could classify LeadGenius’s workers, if based in the United States, as employees rather than independent contractors. The company can afford to invest in its team researchers this deeply only because it does not have the additional costs of employee benefits and

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on to the Good Work Code still need to cover their bottom lines. For example, DoorDash may offer liability coverage, but it also requires its independent contractors to maintain their own insurance, too, in whatever amount might be required by local laws. If Dashers don’t carry their own insurance, DoorDash’s

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we will have to decide what we want ghost work to look like.1 Taken as a whole, the current “gig economy”—an ecosystem of independent contractors and small businesses driven by short-term projects that shift to meet market demands—is quietly moving to ghost work platforms. A growing number of

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measure it. Yet, statistically speaking, we need look no further than the subtle shifts happening in the current, so-called gig economy. This ecosystem of independent contractors and small businesses driven by short-term projects and resistance or incapacity to carry the costs of full-time employees is already quietly moving to

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Chandler. “The Average Laboratory Samples a Population of 7,300 Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers.” Judgment and Decision Making 10, no. 5 (2015): 13. Stoiber, J. “Independent Contractors Should Get Benefits.” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 20, 1996. Stone, Brad. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. New York: Little, Brown, 2013

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Economy; S. Greenhouse, “Equal Work, Less-Equal Perks: Microsoft Leads the Way in Filling Jobs With ‘Permatemps,’” New York Times, March 30, 1998; J. Stoiber, “Independent Contractors Should Get Benefits,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 20, 1996. [back] 41. Levy and Murnane’s notions of “expert thinking” and “complex communication” are a good way

The World's First Railway System: Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain

by Mark Casson  · 14 Jul 2009  · 556pp  · 46,885 words

203 two new lines was associated with a separate capital account. Although the LNWR was willing to Wnance these lines, the Llanelli company had employed independent contractors who, partly as a consequence of the Overend Gurney banking crisis of 1866, got into Wnancial diYculties. The date of the LNWR’s arrival in

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determined timetable, as on the railway system of today. Indeed, in the Victorian period a number of companies leased the operation of their lines to independent contractors, such as Thomas Brassey, the railway builder, on a short-term basis. Furthermore, many companies that owned short branch lines leased their operation to the

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work

by Sarah Kessler  · 11 Jun 2018  · 246pp  · 68,392 words

—as important, powerful things so often are—extremely boring, at least at surface level. It was essentially a tax classification. Uber had called its drivers “independent contractors.” This relieved the company from government-mandated employer responsibilities in most countries, and in the United States, where Uber started, it relieved the company of

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with commitments to contribute to government safety net programs for retirement and unemployment benefits. And they can be difficult to fire when business circumstances change. Independent contractors come with none of these responsibilities. They also do not have the right to unionize under US federal collective bargaining laws, and there’s no

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more closely. It seemed the site, called Gigster, wasn’t looking for employees to help build the world’s biggest engineering department. Instead, it wanted independent contractors, or “remote talent,” who could work on their own schedules. “The nature of work is changing,” the promo text read. “In the future, companies

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he wanted to contribute monthly to his retirement savings account, and his expected taxes, which would double once he made the switch from employee to independent contractor. Then he browsed through Gigster’s website, which listed available jobs and their compensation, to estimate how much he would need to work in order

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X” entrepreneurs were solving the service portion of their businesses in a similar way. Though some hired subcontractors, like Managed by Q, and some hired independent contractors, like Uber, the misconception behind both strategies was similar: “We’d build this beautiful interface, and of course the cleaning just happens,” Saman remembered thinking

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calls “independent business operators” (IBOs), who in turn hire the people who actually answer phones. Terrence had found an IBO that was looking for new independent contractors. On the website of Gary’s new employer, under a slideshow of white women in headsets with too much makeup and photoshopped white teeth, an

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graphic designers, journalists, movie production crews, programmers—and those with less scarce skills, like house cleaners and drivers and Mechanical Turk workers. As a group, independent contractors earn more than employees who do similar work. Many of them are highly skilled freelancers like Curtis, the New York City–based programmer, and make

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that there are several reasons workers’ pay and benefits are stronger when workers are permanent employees at a larger company than when they work as independent contractors, for a contractor, or for a temp agency. He writes: Large firms employing a wide spectrum of workers—from highly trained engineers and professional

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$90, NELP reported to a US Senate Committee, “The stores said the workers were not their employees, and the labor brokers said the deliverymen were independent contractors.”14 * * * Gig economy champions are fond of touting data that shows that workers like flexibility. But this data doesn’t take into consideration how

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develop a reputation for providing great service, so that customers would begin to rely on them. On the other, their lawyers advised them that providing independent contractors with training, uniforms, benefits, or regular work shifts—that is, the things that produce happy, well-trained employees—could put the companies at risk of

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which could force them to make an expensive shift to employees. In the United States, there’s no single test that determines whether workers are independent contractors or employees—it’s different in different states and under different laws. And similarly in Europe, laws are often so complicated that there’s no

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clear-cut way to define who is truly independent. Generally speaking, independent contractors should decide how to complete work, have potential for profit or loss, and, because they take on these responsibilities, have some bargaining power in contracts

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up. Zirtual, a company that provided virtual assistants, said one reason it laid off hundreds of workers in 2015 was because it had switched from independent contractors to employees (the company was acquired soon after the switch). “All of these on-demand shared economy companies that have been built up all have

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asked. “We’re like Uber for the home.” She started another video, this one in which the featured cleaner had a British accent. “Being an independent contractor, for me, it just means freedom and flexibility,” a version of the previously featured woman explained. Next Carol flipped to slides that explained how the

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(a spokesperson for the company told me it has since stopped this practice). Carol did what she could to keep the conversation about supplies in “independent contractor” territory: “These are optional to take; this is your business, you are responsible for supplies.” Along with cleaning supplies, the bag held branded blue marketing

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woman wearing a skirt in the front row. “Don’t call us,” Carol automatically corrected. * * * Uber was extremely shrewd at finding new ways to manage independent contractors through its app. “Employing hundreds of social scientists and data scientists,” wrote the New York Times in 2017, “Uber has experimented with video game techniques

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, looked a lot like the old process of cheating workers by misclassifying them. In January 2015, workers for Instacart, a gig economy company that sent independent contractors shopping on behalf of its customers, filed a lawsuit that alleged the company’s employment practices were “unethical, oppressive and unscrupulous” (the case was subsequently

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of a long change in how companies structured their workforces. Not a solution, but a problem in need of one. * * * Categories like temp worker and independent contractor put divisions between companies and workers who provide them with labor. Gig economy apps widened these divisions. Without the need to manage people face-to

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. Instacart, a startup that delivers groceries and once relied entirely on independent workers, also made the decision to hire workers rather than rely solely on independent contractors. “This is something that people need to be trained on and coached on, on a regular basis,” said Apoorva Mehta, the CEO.18 Ultimately,

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our couriers, which we believe will ultimately create the best experience for our customers.”19 Delivery restaurants Munchery and Sprig also switched their couriers from independent contractors to employees shortly after launching. The gig economy remained prevalent, both in Silicon Valley and beyond, and some of the startups that switched away from

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using independent contractors failed even after hiring employees. But Managed by Q had to some extent proved the Good Jobs Strategy could work. Running Managed by Q was

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like a gambling addict. “I kept boosting. I kept seeing results. I kept doubling the budget, tripling the budget, quadrupling the budget.” Uber drivers, as independent contractors, couldn’t join a traditional union. But with this extra help from social media, what Abe imagined to be a different kind of labor movement

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employees, and as employees, they could organize under federal collective bargaining laws. The second was to find some way outside of those laws to organize independent contractors. A local chapter of the Teamsters in Seattle lobbied for a law that would allow Uber drivers to form a union. It passed. (Shortly later

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executive director Bhairavi Desai called it a “historic betrayal” and promptly filed a lawsuit with ten Uber drivers that accused Uber of misclassifying workers as independent contractors.17 Abdoul Diallo, the Uber driver who helped organize other drivers in New York, said the Drivers’ Guild sounded “bogus,”18 and he encouraged drivers

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all aspects of independent workers’ economic security.”31 Their solution was one that other countries had already adopted: a third employment category between employees and independent contractors. As they envisioned it, this third category of workers would allow gig economy companies to purchase and administer certain benefits for workers without worrying about

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well as similar categories in Italy, Spain, and Canada, often argue that these classifications just intensify the problem: that with another option between employees and independent contractors, employers find more loopholes for opting out of the laws and benefits associated with traditional employment. Still, the idea of creating a new type of

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fund—which he or she could put toward benefits like life insurance and dental care—and, as a result, be certain the workers would remain independent contractors. The independent contractor classification would apply to even work done previously for the company, essentially removing Handy’s risk of misclassification lawsuits. Hiring employees can cost 20

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% to 30% more than hiring independent contractors. Social Security and Medicare payments alone cost 7.65% of a worker’s pay. By comparison, Handy had proposed companies divert at least 2.5

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opposed the plan worried that it would look to some on-demand companies like a bargain; that it would allow them to classify workers as independent contractors (albeit, independent contractors who had access to small benefits funds) when they would be more properly categorized as employees, who have more rights and protections. Others who

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the Affordable Care Act (ideally, healthcare would fall into the insurance benefit category, but that is a larger battle).”37 In this version, contributing to independent contractors’ benefits would not be a choice. Benefits would accrue to all workers regardless of classification. If someone worked 20 hours for one employer, that employer

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and handyman services. Dan’s version served offices and relied on employees. Handy’s customers were households and its cleaners and handymen were classified as independent contractors. Despite these completely different approaches, it was hard to say from a business perspective which company had turned out to be more successful. Managed by

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who worried about misclassification lawsuits and would rather hire temporary employees than freelancers. Adding mobile technology to the process makes using both temp labor and independent contractors easier, more efficient, and ultimately applicable in more situations. Is this a bad thing? Maybe not. Gig economy boosters often point out that between 70

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for instance, not well-paid professionals who can likely afford to create their own safety nets, but couriers. As the potential for companies to use independent contractors expands with mobile technology and automation, it’s possible that workers could regard new types of piecemeal labor as being more like temp work. Unlike

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Act? After Donald Trump was elected president, congressional Republicans made it clear they planned to repeal the US law, which made it easier for the independent contractors that Handy relied on to buy their own insurance. Oisin didn’t answer the question. “There’s a massive amount of uncertainty,” he said.

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one pilot program somewhat similarly to the Black Car Fund in New York, which provides more than 70,000 livery drivers—typically, like Uber drivers, independent contractors—with workers’ compensation insurance via a 2.5% surcharge on every ride. The customer pays into the fund, rather than the dispatcher. Uber’s

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It offered a $5 monthly discount to drivers for Lyft, which introduced it in a blog post as “an easy, affordable investing platform built with independent contractors in mind.”8 (Goldman Sachs acquired Honest Dollar four months later.) An organization called Peers.org aimed to collect these sorts of services onto a

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results paled in comparison to the security of a traditional full-time job with benefits, and, second, that they involved a choice. Companies that hired independent contractors could choose whether to participate in a benefits fund like the one Peers.org had envisioned. They could choose to ensure contract workers were paid

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/.) The National Domestic Workers Alliance, a worker advocacy group, organized nannies, elder caretakers, home cleaners, and other domestic workers, all of whom tended to be independent contractors. Instead of union dues, the organization mostly ran on grants. A non-traditional union founded in 2003, called the Freelancers Union, advocated for another form

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Warren Slams Uber and Lyft. Financial Times. May 19, 2016. https://www.ft.com/content/abc00336-1de1-11e6-b286-cddde55ca122. 25   Trottman, Melanie. Employees vs. Independent Contractors: U.S. Weighs in on Debate over How to Classify Workers. The Wall Street Journal. July 15, 2015. https://www.wsj.com/articles/labor-department

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) ecommerce Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Elance (freelance marketplace). See also Upwork Employee Benefits Security Administration (US Department of Labor) employees alternatives to current classification of independent contractors versus at Instagram Managed by Q and misclassification of retention rights of social safety nets and Uber and unionizing and Etsy (ecommerce website) Even (income

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capital investment and continued relevance of cooperatives decline of earnings employee model and flexibility and freedom and future of healthcare and history of independence and independent contractors and insecurity and instability and jury duty and lawsuits and Medicare politics and portable benefits and ratings systems retirement security and as safety net socioeconomics

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ratings scale worker rates and benefits worker retention worker training Hanley, Dervala Hanrahan, Oisin Harris, Seth Hayek, Friedrich healthcare Affordable Care Act in Canada COBRA independent contractors and Medicare Hermes UK (delivery service) Highlight (social networking app) Holmberg, Susan Homejoy (home-cleaning service) household income H.U.G. (Helping You Grow) Hughes

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, Chris Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) Husein, Mamdooh (“Abe”) iCEO (automated management system) IKEA Inc. (magazine) independent business operators (IBOs) independent contractors alternatives to current classification of Arise and category of definition of earnings employees versus Gigster and misclassification of switch to employee model from Uber and

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of change affiliate marketing program driver-led activism and protests Drivers’ Guild and FTC charges of exaggerated earnings funding growth of guaranteed fares history of independent contractor model lawsuits and legal issues “No shifts. No boss. No limits” pitch Pandora partnership politics and price war with Lyft rating system self-driving cars

Empire of Guns

by Priya Satia  · 10 Apr 2018  · 927pp  · 216,549 words

to send him.” The London company’s proofhouse hired a new assistant to cope with the increasing work. Regimental agents were banned from buying arms independently. Contractors knew that sending arms directly to a ship seriously violated protocol. In this climate, contractors gained leverage on prices. Lockmakers asserted their demand for seven

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work

by Alex Rosenblat  · 22 Oct 2018  · 343pp  · 91,080 words

freedom, flexibility, and independence. It tells them that they are entrepreneurs who can “be your own boss.”4 For legal purposes, Uber classifies them as independent contractors, meaning they are largely excluded from the employment and labor law protections to which employees are entitled.5 Yet on the other hand, Uber leverages

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freedom and the reality of invasive algorithmic management. In fact, this tension is the basis of legal claims that drivers should not be classified as independent contractors.8 One of the fascinating aspects of Uber’s approach is that according to the company, its drivers are not workers at all—they are

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are. In 2013, a group of drivers and lawyers filed a class-action misclassification lawsuit, alleging that Uber was not justified in classifying drivers as independent contractors; they argued that Uber treats drivers like employees.9 In a January 2015 court hearing of the case, Uber’s lawyer explained that the company

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with part-time employment are eligible for benefits. But the recently unemployed who began driving for Uber to try and make ends meet? That’s independent contractor work—self-employment, not part-time employment—and so their unemployment benefits were jeopardized.20 Or consider immigration status. Ibrahim, an Uber driver I chatted

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as algorithms) significantly shape and control how drivers behave at work. This finding is a lightning rod in debates over whether drivers are misclassified as independent contractors rather than as employees, but this book is not focused on questions of labor history or labor law. Instead, Uberland is an exploration of how

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through driver recruitment ads, such as “Get paid weekly just for helping our community of riders get rides around town.” Uber drivers are classified as independent contractors in the eyes of the law and termed “driver-partners” in Uber’s official lexicon: these categorizations imply a higher level of autonomy and equity

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users, and they often find their work in the on-demand, gig economy. The CEO of Intuit, a company that offers tax accounting software for independent contractors that is particularly popular with Uber drivers, echoed the idea that the gig economy is a millennial phenomenon when he commented, “We know the gig

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local brewing company. Michael, who commutes into Atlanta from Marietta, says he keeps all his receipts so he can account for his expenses as an independent contractor. But like many new drivers, he isn’t necessarily prepared to account for the full range of his possible expenses, like maintenance, wear and tear

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by occupational drivers to improve their working conditions. In Seattle, for example, unionization efforts are under way to represent ridehail drivers, who are classified as independent contractors. In December 2015, Seattle passed an ordinance allowing drivers to bargain collectively (which was challenged by the Chamber of Commerce and ultimately upheld in federal

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by economist Lawrence Mishel in May 2018. He notes that this figure doesn’t account for the costs of the health or retirement benefits that independent contractors must provide for themselves.31 In communications with the FTC, Uber’s lawyers implied that lazy drivers who choose not to work hard enough are

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to take that next step. Many read like this sample ad: “UBER NEEDS PARTNERS LIKE YOU. Drive with Uber and earn great money as an independent contractor. Get paid weekly just for helping our community of riders get rides around town. Be your own boss and get paid in fares for driving

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with the nearest driver.22 Drivers operate at an informational disadvantage, and so it is harder for them to make full and informed decisions as independent contractors about the work they do. This haze has sparked rampant speculation about what goes on behind the scenes. In the summer of 2017, one driver

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him. Ron, who had been driving in New Jersey and New York City for over a year, said, “Show the destination before. If we’re independent contractors, we should have the right to refuse. If I look down and it’s three in the afternoon, and the guy is going to JFK

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for a period of time, such as two minutes, ten minutes, or thirty minutes. The takeaway is that even though drivers are still classified as independent contractors, Uber’s dispatching practice, app design, and penalty system all shape how they are required to behave at work. In other words, this policy is

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to emphasize how this policy affected his employment status with the company. He wrote, “We really need to start fighting this because this is not independent contractor status. . . . Uber the new car sharing app[,] or can we just say crop sharing!!!!” In one sample exchange between Uber Support and a driver who

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the cutoff is between temporary and permanent suspension).18 These weekly summaries are sent after rides are complete. Despite the claim that Uber drivers are independent contractors and entrepreneurs, they must deliver a standardized experience to passengers or risk suspension, deactivation, or loss of pay.19 The rating system functions as both

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the biases and whims of consumers, which, in turn, means that blatant passenger discrimination could negatively affect them. Yet because Uber drivers are classified as independent contractors, not as employees, they do not benefit from most workplace discrimination protections.32 In this way, the rating system provides one of the clearest signals

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job was not protected from being fired unfairly because he is, according to their assessment, an independent contractor.33 In Toronto, Canada, a class-action lawsuit filed in January 2017 contends that drivers are misclassified as independent contractors, rather than employees.34 Misclassification lawsuits abound when it comes to Uber, but the various challenges

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are formally self-employed, but who are economically reliant on a single employer for their income), and independent contractors. On appeal, a UK employment tribunal confirmed an earlier ruling that asserts Uber drivers are not independent contractors. They are workers and, as such, are protected from unlawful discrimination and entitled to a minimum wage

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and holiday pay, among other benefits.35 Conversely, in Florida, an appeals court ruled that drivers are independent contractors,36 and later, the state legislated their status

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as independent contractors. The implication is that drivers are not entitled to unemployment benefits or most labor law protections. Meanwhile, the California Labor

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Commissioner’s Office ruled that drivers are employees, not independent contractors, as early as 2015.37 These rulings affect the working conditions of thousands of drivers, but it’s clear that there is not a universal

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consensus on whether drivers should be defined as employees or independent contractors. Whether drivers should be considered workers at all, rather than consumers, is another question. TREATING LABOR AS CONSUMPTION: HOW UBER JUSTIFIES ITS MANAGEMENT PRACTICES The

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care about workers, but who cares about end users? By fudging the terms of employment within its control, such as by potentially misclassifying drivers as independent contractors, and by pivoting to frame drivers as customers or end users, Uber provides us with a template for questioning what we know about employment relationships

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social force that is turning workers into customers through the power of technological tools and narrative. Deliveroo, for example, classifies its food-delivery people as independent contractors in a dozen or so of the countries where it operates, and classifies some, in other countries, as employees, such as in the United Arab

…

flagging Nazis is suddenly part of the job, drivers are the ones who shoulder the occupational risk of confrontation and retaliation, even as they remain “independent contractors.” Leveraging drivers in a show of anti-Nazism is one way of forming alliances, both with drivers who can feel confident that they won’t

…

passed the Texas State Senate30 and was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott shortly afterward. The bill, which overrides local ordinances, classified drivers as independent contractors and clarified that drivers would not be required to undergo fingerprint-based background checks.31 A tension, like that between Uber’s desirability and its

…

appeal to the state legislature for relief. The goal of this approach is to rewrite employment laws by ensuring that state laws classify drivers as independent contractors. The rationale they use to justify their efforts, however, is that if regulations were left to municipal governances, the company would have to accommodate a

…

says that advances in automation will result in mass joblessness. Against this cultural backdrop, Uber simultaneously approaches state regulators to pass laws that legislate the independent-contractor status of drivers,41 even stripping them of worker rights. But the logic of automation debates frames this effort as a small concession: ceding workers

…

digital communications networks in society. Employers are distancing themselves from workers, such as through subcontracting arrangements, and Uber is no exception, classifying its drivers as independent contractors, treating them like low-value consumers, and managing them through algorithms. As the company builds off of labor trends by scaling opportunities for work among

…

.gov.uk/media/5a046b06e5274a0ee5a1f171/Uber_B.V._and_Others_v_Mr_Y_Aslam_and_Others_UKEAT_0056_17_DA.pdf. 36. “Court: Uber Drivers Are Independent Contractors, Not Employees,” CBS, February 1, 2017, http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/02/01/court-uber-drivers-contractors-employees/. 37. Mike Isaac and Natasha Singer, “California

…

, https://twitter.com/maffiemd/status/841999619697573891. 41. Alison Griswold, “Three US States Have Already Blessed Uber’s Independent Contractor Employment Model,” Quartz, December 10, 2015, https://qz.com/571249/three-us-states-have-already-blessed-ubers-independent-contractor-employment-model/; Lisa Nagele-Piazza, “Florida Legislature Approves Ride-Hailing Driver Bill,” Society for Human Management

…

–64, 226n26; FTC’s fine for misleading, 61, 63, 77; of Lyft drivers, 56; in New York City, 3, 61, 221n3; in San Francisco, 61 independent contractor classification: laws protecting, 3, 8, 18, 155; misclassification lawsuits, 4, 54, 156 Independent Drivers Guild, 121, 201 India, 171–72 Innisfil, Ontario, 185 Instacart, 229n58

…

Katz, Lawrence F., 25, 203 Kofi (driver), 9, 163–64 Krueger, Alan, 25, 51, 203 labor laws: for agricultural and domestic workers, 37–38; of independent contractors, 3, 8, 18, 155–56; litigation against sharing economy companies, 175; litigation against Uber on, 61, 63, 77–78; sharing economy rhetoric and, 30–33

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