> We’re deeply concerned that companies will try to get around the law and continue to exploit vulnerable workers by pretending they are self-employed when they should enjoy the full protection of the law.
This is really the crux of the issue: why do we pretend that gig workers don't deserve the same benefits and protections that proper employees do? Even referring to it as a "gig" makes it sound more like a hobby than a livelihood.
EDIT: yea sorry I meant to imply "wages and wage guarantees" as well but I just shoved it in with "benefits and protections"
> why do we pretend that gig workers don't deserve the same benefits and protections that proper employees do?
Because some—in some cases, many—of them don’t. And in many cases, e.g. healthcare, it’s unclear why we’re still bundling something into employment that properly should be separate.
Extending employment protection to gig workers is a simple solution. But it probably leaves many of them worse off than they are now. (Also, most full-time employees are paid up to 14 days after post.)
> And in many cases, e.g. healthcare, it’s unclear why we’re still bundling something into employment that properly should be separate.
This, one million times over.
I read an account describing how things came to be as they are.
Apparently, it all started during WW2.
The Government controlled wages, and so some wages were too high and some too low, and for those set too low, it became difficult to get staff.
To make employment more remunerative, employers began to add benefits on the side - such as health insurance - and these were not taxed, either.
The Government eventually noticed this was happening, and moved to tax such benefits, and discontent with this was so widespread the Government backed off.
So then we end up with health insurance as a non-taxable benefit tacked on to employment.
Pretty much, but what was left off is the union demands for healthcare as an employment benefit that truly entrenched the practice in the US.
> what was left off is the union demands for healthcare as an employment benefit that truly entrenched the practice in the US
Source?
> Pretty much, but what was left off is the union demands for healthcare as an employment benefit that truly entrenched the practice in the US.
This just doesn't make any sense—single payer would free up the union to fight for more. Literally just the sunk cost fallacy.
I don’t really follow your comment, but it is true that labor is a large part of the reason that jobs bundle healthcare.
Even in the modern day, they are one of the largest influential advocates for keeping this scheme: labor killed Obama’s cadillac tax which was designed to solve this problem.
Not that the cadillac tax was ever going to survive, the American people are not educated enough to understand why it is such an important policy.
> single payer would free up the union to fight for more
Do unions in single-payer countries typically have healthcare goodies?
The difficulty in staffing was because over the course of the war the army expanded from under 200k soldiers to over 8 million, and the navy expanded from under 400k to over 3.4 million.
That's almost 11 million people, which was around 12% of the civilian workforce, diverted to the military.
Same reason why high paying jobs like consultants, bankers, lawyers have a bunch of "perks" associated with those roles
yeah basically the only reason we have the current system is due to tax preferencing and any attempt at reform (like Obama’s cadillac tax) is opposed by broad interests
> only reason we have the current system is due to tax referencing
What is tax referencing?
oops dropped a p
This story is from the UK where we healthcare is not bundled up with being employed, so it's even more of an outlier.
In the Netherlands gig economy workers weren't paying into the pension or unemployment system.
The wheels move slowly but once they grind nothing can stop it. The self employed are being reintegrated into the Borg collective.
We gave less rights to part-time workers so companies just started making as many part-time as possible. If you create a loop-hole it will be exploited.
Pretty much this. The ACA that said you had to offer health insurance to employees working over 30h / wk? Well, guess what, you're now only working 29.5.
We should have just expanded medicare to cover everyone, but no, that'd give too much power to the workers.
> should have just expanded medicare to cover everyone
Maybe the solution is to go piecemeal. We already have Medicaid for the poor--raise the limit on that. Expand Medicare to children and pregnant women. Et cetera.
> that'd give too much power to the workers
Medicare For All isn't popular [1]. There isn't a conspiracy, just people being cautious about a complicated and important topic.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/468401/majority-say-gov-ensure-...
I think if you put it to the American people as a referendum 'Hey, we're going to get rid of private insurance and put everyone on Medicare, here's the budget estimate from the CBO' I'm quite confident it would pass.
The sheer earned disdain I've seen expressed for health insurance providers recently makes me hope this is some sort of 'Abe Moment' for the US where even conservatives can acknowledge the majority of Americans are sickened by what our healthcare system has become.
> sheer earned disdain I've seen expressed for health insurance providers recently
"Americans' positive rating of the quality of healthcare in the U.S. is now at its lowest point in Gallup’s trend dating back to 2001," yet still, 71% rate the quality of their own healthcare excellent or good, with 65% saying the same about their coverage [1]. (I'm guessing the quarter to third minority that doesn't have a positive view of their own healthcare or coverage overlaps significantly with the one fifth who view Mangione very or somewhat positively [2].)
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/654044/view-healthcare-quality-...
[2] https://stratpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/UHC-Pol...
It'd almost certainly fail, because for many people (who haven't researched much) they consider "Medicare" the same as "crappy healthcare".
You're much better off boiling the frog by expanding the availability of medicare through various means until almost everyone has it as an option even if they're not using it.
I can't help but feel the problem is that someone becomes "full time" in the US after exactly 40 hours.
I feel like some kind of gradient system would be ideal. Like if you work 10 hours a week you get 25% of the cash value of benefits. That way, a company wouldn't be incentivized to keep them right below the limit.
the ideal would be no benefits, just cash - and a negative income tax at the lower scales.
catastrophic insurance can be paid by the state.
What are those benefits that don't scale with salary?
I know the US has that health-care thing, is it just that or there are other ones that need a cut time somewhere?
This is such a great idea that I'm surprised I've never read anyone suggest it in all of my professional life.
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Honestly I think the whole system runs on "let's pretend we're doing stuff for the workers but create loopholes so big business doesn't have to actually comply."
What is the difference between a “gig worker” and an independent contractor?
Jason Snell, the former editor of Macworld went independent after getting laid off from MacWorld. He purposefully put together streams of income consisting of podcasting, writing articles for different magazines - including MacWorld, writing for his own blog and writing technical books.
He said out of those, because of the initial laws passed in California, it made it harder for him to be what in essence was a gig worker when writing for various websites.
The little time I did spend doing C2C contracting, I also had net 30 payment terms.
Yes I realize it’s different for the gig workers in the article. But the last thing we need is laws that affect all “gig workers” whether they make $10/hour or whether they are making $150/hour.
On that note, I did pay a third party company $10/hour for a short term contract that I had with a former CTO. It would have been too much work on both ends to get me approved to work directly for the company so I became a subcontractor for an established company to make every thing easier even though I found the initial contract.
It's in your answer: the difference is low wages vs well paid.
Once you get paid the amounts that people are in the "gig economy" it becomes exploitative, people don't have enough to live or to get out of their situation easily.
I would be okay with laws that distinguish between when a worker is expected to make less than $X per hour or per job.
Contractors get to negotiate how much they are paid.
Gig workers do too. Isn’t the idea behind surge pricing is that people decide whether it is worth them working or not?
It's not the workers that get to decide surge pricing or wages. The employer decides that, and they keep the extra money for themselves.
> not the workers that get to decide surge pricing or wages. The employer decides that
Ridesharing seems like a relatively-efficient market. Nobody is singularly setting the rate.
We could switch to a two-sided market where every time you book a ride you enter a reserve and maximum price, and then drivers enter their reserve and minimum and the system matches for a fee. And then we can watch a competitor eat our lunch because literally nobody wants to do that.
Employers don’t keep the extra amount. If that were the case, the workers would have no motivation to work or to get the supply/demand in balance.
I don’t get to “choose” how much I make. I just get to choose whether the amount of money I’m being offered per hour is worth my time.
The point is, you're not the one deciding the split. You don't think the majority of the revenue goes to you over the ride share company, do you?
You know the split because it’s a ratio that scales with the price.
Just like when I sub contract as a W2 contractor with a third party firm. I know how much I’m going to net. The higher my asking rate is the more I’m going to make and the more the contracting firm is going to make.
Oh, I didn't know that ride share companies allow the drivers to specify their rate!
Oh, right. They don't.
No one gets to “specify their rate”. If I could, I would specify I want $700/hour when I do independent consulting.
The drivers can decide whether a given rate is worth it to them given other alternatives like anyone else that’s the entire purpose of surge pricing to convince more people to drive when there is more demand
Remember kids, recharging your battery reduces traffic.
While this is true, you don't control how many hours you're allowed to work.
I've worked on several projects were I was promised an FTE conversion after performing really well during a project. My manager said the company wanted to keep me around and convert me to an FTE spot. Within weeks of my project being released, they dangled the conversion out in front of me while reducing my hours to 20-25 a week. I fell for it for a few weeks and then decided they had no intention of converting me, it was just to keep me around for various other shit work their devs didn't want to do so I moved on - another perk of being a contractor/part-time/"gig" employee.
This is another benefit of being a “gig worker”. I meet plenty of Uber drivers who do it just for extra side money and they can do it whenever they want to.
I met one lady who was from another city and came to town to spend time with her child and grand children. Her daughter was at work during the day and her grandkids were in school. She drove Uber during the day, during the week when she was bored and wanted a little extra money.
Because the term "gig work" carries a history of being used for skilled tradespeople with high trust and high independence independently selling their work one gig at a time. The professionals maintain high independence by choice and have uncommon, balancing leverage when it comes to negotiating with clients because of the expertise they bring.
The esteem ad other associations of that usage are now given to untrained drivers, personal shoppers, and cashiers because it helps technology firms avoid traditional worker protections.
Taking on unskilled gig work is the modern equivalent to moving into a scrip town.
ideally benefits should be provided by the state or out of pocket, not by employers - imposing requirements like full benefit coverage for gig workers would likely lower employment rates
Hell the whole gig thing is putting risk / cost of demand changes onto the worker.
Tangential, but I think we're long overdue to fund employee benefits through taxes instead, which employers pay instead of being on the hook for e.g. paid medical/maternity/etc. On average employers would pay as much as now (unless they're abusing loopholes, e.g. gig work), there would be fewer loopholes, and small employers would be 'insured' against potentially ruinous hires - I know a handyman that won't hire an assistant, because of the risk of getting someone that would be on medical leave more than work, leaving the handyman on the hook for all his pay. This makes growing small (<10 people) businesses very difficult.
Taxes may be part of a solution, but don't expect them to solve this problem alone.
In most EU states you pay taxes to provide medical care to employees. If an employee gets sick or otherwise unable to work, you are usually required to continue paying those taxes even if the employee does zero workhours.
The key part to help small businesses is to mitigate their risk of dispropotional cost. Does not matter if it's a tax or any other payable.
> fund employee benefits through taxes instead
This is already true, at least in part. Not only do employers get to fully deduct the cost of almost all employee benefits from their taxable income, but in most cases (e.g. health insurance) they also do not have to pay their share of employer payroll taxes (Soc. Sec and Medicare tax).
You should know that the Treasury is mostly funded by taxpayers. If we break down total receipts into the Treasury 85% come from individual tax returns, 7% come from business tax returns, and 7% from excise taxes.
I thought businesses that small weren't on the hook for providing medical benefits under the ACA or for providing medical leave pay under the FMLA?
This was a few years ago in the EU, but I admit I'm not the most knowledgeable on employment law.
My bad I read taxes as Texas for some reason. I guess that's what just being on a red eye returning through Texas does to you!
Is that single-payer healthcare?
To receive their wages within 30 days. This is basically just an inhouse bundled payday loan program. imo they should probably be required to pay out at the normal biweekly timescale, but it’s not nearly as awful as this title makes out
For my clients, I handle this simply. Payment due upon receipt of invoice. Then, I stop working until paid. Then I resume their project (re-queue it in my workflow).
Resorted to this after not ever getting paid too often.
The problem is if you stop working as a gig worker you get replaced almost immediately because the barrier to work is incredibly low. The company never even feels a change.
This is kind of a weird framing. 30 days is longer period than probably acceptable, but most people get regular, lagging biweekly paychecks rather than getting their paycheck paid out continuously in infinitesimal chunks.
The article is about the UK.
It's normal for people working temporary jobs (such as factory or cleaning work) to be paid weekly.
You missed the point.
They don't want to treat these workers as employees (so they can skip paying out benefits) but pay them like employees (at the end of the month; in fact even worse than that).
Just wait, pretty soon we will have "fee fees". A fee charged so the company can charge more fees.
Let's face it, we're getting there. TicketMaster, similarly, with its convenience fees:
- want to get your ticket 'delivered' via email? Convenience Fee!
- want it mailed to you? Convenience Fee!
- want to pick it up at the box office? Convenience Fee!
When you consider all your available delivery options to be "convenient", it's just a fee.
Well, in Spain you have to pay a minimum 200€ fee every month just for the government to let you be self-employed, even if you make 0€ (and it gets steeper and steeper the higher your income is), on top of every other tax you also need to account for. Talk about immoral.
I got lucky, I wrecked my car (not while doing a gig) but my insurance company was like "were you doing a gig job?". Had to prove I wasn't. I don't get in many wrecks, had 1 in my life so far that was this bad (totaled car).
edit: I'm aware you're supposed to get some kind of special business insurance but at the time I was not aware of that. Thankfully this insurance company who I had been with for almost 10 years honored my claim.
I am glad I'm able to drive on the side. Turn it on and go nice to have extra cash. I am aware of the instant pay (fee) but I also like that vs. waiting for ACH to clear day(s) later.
> Had to prove I wasn't.
How did you prove it? What is their standard of evidence? My intuition says it would be difficult to prove a negative.
Screenshot of my (gig) app history, I guess arguably that can be faked
I do food deliveries primarily since my car isn't accepted as a passenger car
How come your car isn't accepted as a passenger car? 2 door coupe or something? Delivery van?
Yeah doors/small and uncomfortable. I wish I could drive people (makes more) but at the same time I got my car for me. It's not a fancy car I wish, once I'm not in debt/have more money I want to graduate to cooler cars like a Lotus Exige.
As an aside, delivery can be fun as far as exploring a city and meeting random people (mostly the food workers) but it's a way to get out. I am destroying my car though putting like 1000 miles a week on it or more.
I think once I'm out of debt I won't drive/donate plasma anymore and just use my spare time for other things provided a have a good paying job like I do now.
I would think the burden is on them to prove that you were. They were just digging for a reason to deny the claim.
If the police report mentions an second individual in the car unrelated to you then they might start digging around for your name in Uber or Lyft, but most of the time that is probably just a standard question to screw over the unwary.
About the Title: The Guardian's title is now "...gig economy workers charged fee to get paid quicker". (They note that as a correction to their prior version of the article.) So the whole story is more-or-less about an extra-bonus-sleazy payday loan scheme.
About the Health Insurance angle: The article is about YoungOnes - which claims to only operate in the UK and Netherlands. Both of which counties have national health systems. (And the article is so UK-centric that I see no mention at all of the Netherlands.)
PayPal does the same thing if you want to “instantly” transfer your own money to your bank account.
They make a lot of money “on the float” by holding onto funds and investing them until you cash out.
I complain about this at the other end of the cash flow cycle all the time: having to pay to pay.
When a service, often my local municipality, charges a fee to pay a fee.
VISA is arguably the biggest mafia organization in the world... 3% of all retain sales worldwide? Why?
With the proliferation of 3rd party "payment processors", and the accompanying crimes commited, The Fed has instituted a central bank hosted instant payment system:
https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about....
But almost no one uses it. Why is that? Do people really want their money locked up in stripe or paypal?
Almost no one uses FedNow (which would theoretically bring the U.S. almost on-par with European Open Banking) because the banks really don't have much incentive to integrate with it, especially if they're the ones making money by issuing debit and credit cards.
The banks making money off of the shakedown is certainly a part of the problem.
But I bank at a local credit union, and I've mentioned FedNow to about 5 different branch managers. So far, no one has even heard of it 8-/
They just cancelled a relationship with zelle (which I didn't like or use), and I've suggested that tehy replace it with FedNow, but no one even knows what i'm talking about.
p.s. Love your username mosburger! My favorite Japanese fast food chain! Especially for their offering of the YasaiBurger...
The answer is transaction costs. Details at patio11:
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Send a check. That’s free.
The employer should obviously be paying to use what is essentially a SaaS payment platform like ADP, Paylocity, etc.
So it’s wage theft then? Gotta love the “disruptive” tech industry. Such innovation.
Why are YC’s leadership and other VCs so vocal on shoplifting crime but never raise their voice against rampant wage theft in our industry? The criminality by dollar value is far worse with the latter
Because they're the ones benefiting from the wage theft, and complaining about low-level crime helps elect politicians that are more likely to overlook that wage theft.
That sounds hypocritical and deceptive to frame it as supporting being hard on crime in general yet selectively applied
It’s neither hypocritical nor deceptive. It’s simply selfish.
Scumbags as they were once called
"Gig workers" gets the headline, but this is really just highlighting that contractors of all sorts get shafted with regards to payment timelines.
"Standard 30+ day delay" is pretty common for contractors of all sorts, and is part of the reason contracting rates should be so much higher than standard employment. But it's kinda shitty and usually due to laziness on the corp's part rather than any particular actuarial reason.
add, this is typical whether your a single employee contractor or a multiple employee contractor with the least leverage in the deal. Its a fact of real life, not a ploy against the self-employeed
This has been happening to truckers for a long time now
Not that it makes ok but these terms are basically no different and perhaps in some specific cases better (the cards had a myriad of fees for various transaction types) than the sort of scummy prepaid visa tied to a debit account crap that temp agencies have been loading people's pay onto for more than a decade now.
> “freelance” retail assistants
How is that a gig at this point? It's a temp agency. Temp agencies cannot do this in the UK right? A cursory low-effort google returns some laws. [0] I'm sure they have legions of lawyers ready to argue their unique and disruptive business model has never been seen on the british isles before but I have trouble seeing this as anything other than a temp agency.
[dead]
innovation, ftw! /s
Are these folks forced into "gig" work?
It used to cost me maybe 25 cents for a cup of coffee. Now, its like $25 to get my Starbuck's double-decaffeinated half-caf with a twist delivered by Doordash.
Gotta gig, 'cause the Inflation is Real, boomer!
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Out of touch. Imagine trying to tell your landlord or the grocery store they'll get their money in 30 days, and by the way thanks for the food!
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Your friends are not the ones I was calling out of touch.
The company in the OP set up "a new payment system" without warning to their workers, and now people are getting paid 30 days later than previously agreed upon. If you think that the average person won't be impacted by not getting paid for a month, then yes, I stand by my statement.
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> but they aren’t being charged to get their money.
They literally are. The deal was altered so that what used to be free now charges a fee.
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"Gig workers" have less consistent hours, and are probably much poorer than your monthly salaried friend. Picking up some extra shifts to pay for unexpected expenses is a sad but common reality. Charging them a fee to not wait 30 days is definitely exploitative.
We're talking gig workers here. Can you not imagine someone on such apps might be living under tighter constraints than a well paid software engineer paid once a month?
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So a fraud? Can they be sued in court for fraud?
There's probably a waiver in the contract signed by temp workers giving the platform freedom to change terms of payments.
Gig work is the dirt underbelly of the economy:
> Enough demand that it can generate revenue, not enough revenue that it creates incentives for high-loyalty structure -–which is what you do when you care about your employees and want to keep them working for you.
If Uber loses one driver, there is a thousand that would gladly replace them and get paid same day, in cash, pre-tax at a higher hourly rate than they can get in the job market (Amazon warehouse, Fast Food, etc...), with a lot more control of their time.
How do you compete? The companies know and have no incentive to hire.
Meanwhile, if legislation is passed to force them to do it, they're likely to dramatically cut driver headcount to keep their already shitty P&L healthy and will cause 100s of thousands to lose their main income source and a 1000x increase in costs for consumers. (Bad outcome for all parties involved)
As it stands the economics of that business model are too messed up for a good path forward to exist.