Posts tagged gig economy
A third of Americans contribute to the $1.3T freelance economy. Now what?
January 24, 2023 // Nearly 40% of Americans performed freelance work in 2022. That’s up nearly 10% from 2021, and a third of them make freelance their full-time work.
Opinion: Solving Gig Worker Problem will Open Up the Future of Work
December 21, 2022 // The costs and legal liability associated with classifying gig workers as employees would cripple the gig economy and cancel out all the productivity gains experienced over the last decade since the “gig economy” was first coined. This problem has puzzled policy wonks, judges, and legislators alike. The issue comes down to a simple, but loaded question: are gig workers employees or independent contractors? If gig workers were employees, platforms would be subject to legal and financial liability that would necessitate reducing worker flexibility. It would also be limited in the number of platforms they could work for at any given time. If gig workers were considered independent contractors, it removes this liability and maintains flexibility.
Biden’s regulatory machine wants to stifle the freedom of the American worker
October 31, 2022 // Frankly, workers are not helpless. They are perfectly capable of choosing their own lifestyles and can evaluate their labor choices along with the compensation and benefits each provides. We currently have an economy in which, for the entirety of 2022, the number of job openings has nearly outnumbered unemployed workers 2-1. If these “gigs” were so horrible, these people would seek other employment. Moreover, the Biden administration’s mandated reclassification would significantly increase the cost of doing business for both small businesses and large companies such as Uber, Doordash, and others that provide unique economic opportunities for gig workers. This heavy-handed regulatory approach will discourage entrepreneurial innovation and result in added costs that will be passed along to the consumer.
Is the Uber, Lyft and gig economy battle over workers nearing its end game?
October 17, 2022 // Proposed Department of Labor rules stop short of classifying Uber and Lyft drivers as employees. But the Biden administration’s pro-worker bias has analysts wondering what may come next in the battle over the gig economy and union momentum in the U.S. workforce. In a worst-case scenario, costs could rise as much as 30 percent for on-demand transportation companies just getting to break even, analyst says, and that means fares may rise as well.
If You Like Your Uber, Can You Keep Your Uber?
October 14, 2022 // Democratic administrations favor having fewer independent contractors and a standardized set of benefits. This gives more power to unions to organize workers. If Uber were the employer of all drivers, a union could ask Uber to support unionizing the labor force. It is practically impossible to organize independent contractors. Public sector unions made 90 percent of their contributions to Democratic candidates in the 2020 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.com. With the share of wage and salary workers who belong to unions declining from 20 percent in 1983 to 10 percent in 2021, unions are under pressure to recruit more members to fund union officials’ salaries and member pension plans.
Op-ed: FTC on the Gig Economy: The Glass is Almost Empty
October 12, 2022 // The FTC does, of course, have a legitimate role to play in challenging unfair methods of competition and unfair acts or practices that undermine consumer welfare wherever they arise, including in the gig economy. But it does a disservice by focusing merely on supposed negative aspects of the gig economy and conjuring up a gig-specific “parade of horribles” worthy of close commission scrutiny and enforcement action. Many of the “horribles” cited may not even be “bads,” and many of them are, in any event, beyond the proper legal scope of FTC inquiry. There are other federal agencies (for example, the National Labor Relations Board) whose statutes may prove applicable to certain problems noted in the gig statement. In other cases, statutory changes may be required to address certain problems noted in the statement (assuming they actually are problems). The FTC, and its fellow enforcement agencies, should keep in mind, of course, that they are not Congress, and wishing for legal authority to deal with problems does not create it (something the federal judiciary fully understands). In short, the negative atmospherics that permeate the gig statement are unnecessary and counterproductive; if anything, they are likely to convince at least some judges that the FTC is not the dispassionate finder of fact and enforcer of law that it claims to be. In particular, the judiciary is unlikely to be impressed by the FTC’s apparent effort to insert itself into questions that lie far beyond its statutory mandate.
New Legal Battle Begins Over Gig Economy Work At Uber And Lyft
June 22, 2022 // “Big Labor incrementally attacks any form of gig work, or contracting, and they come for ride sharing companies first,” Gabriella Hoffman, a freelance media strategist and Townhall columnist who has written extensively about the gig economy, told The Daily Wire. “If you poll rideshare drivers, however, they voluntarily go into this line of work and enjoy the flexibility that comes with the job.” Ben Zeisloft, Daily Wire, David Seligman, Hispanics, African Americans, Branch and Marqeta,
Opinion: Handcuffing Freelancers Is Bad For Economy And Small Business
June 3, 2022 // Addressing the increasing economic uncertainty, rising inflation, and declining consumer confidence requires a pro-growth economic response from Washington D.C. The right policy focuses on broad-based deregulation to reduce costs on businesses, encourage entrepreneurship, and incent greater economic activity
Biden’s PRO Act is a covert tax hike on 7.7 million Americans
April 28, 2022 // The PRO Act has been one of Biden’s top priorities despite the fact that it has yet to move in the Senate. The PRO Act’s ABC test is a clear tax hike on millions of Americans, 96 percent of whom make less than $400,000 per year. If Biden is serious about upholding his tax pledge, a central part of his presidential campaign, he should kick the PRO Act and the ABC test to the curb.