At Peers, we recently surveyed on-demand workers about issues of work and benefits and found that they want a broad spectrum of benefits, but most don’t want to be classified as employees. This paradigm is unattainable given today’s rigid and outdated employee classification system which discourages companies from providing benefits to independent…
Negotiate Don’t Litigate
This strange bedfellows group aligning around a set of core principles to help make the new economy work for all is an important beginning of moving from problem to solution. I was proud to help convene this group starting in the summer at the Presidio Institute, and look forward to the work to be…
I really think we have to look at “work” as existing along a “multi-employer spectrum” for more and more workers. The plight of many regularly employed part-time (W-2) workers, due to just in time scheduling and other tactics that employers use to reduce labor costs and increase flexibility, increasingly are not that different from those of gig…
Nearly 54 million Americans are freelancing today, but while they are pioneering a new approach to work and life, they still have none of the benefits or job protections traditional employees enjoy. We need a new system of support, one that fits the needs of this expanding workforce.
As someone who works in the digital advertising industry on computer systems that buy online ads through automated auctions, I too have been thinking about this. The combination of open source trading platforms and digital currency could create the possibility for many more self-organizing markets than we have today. Imagine if drivers could organize…
Portable Benefits Aren’t Just for On-Demand Companies
Something that needs to be said: portable benefits aren’t just for on-demand companies! While it only became clear to policy makers how out of step our current labor classifications are with how people work today when the on-demand economy offered up a whole new class of…
New software platforms are enabling real-time markets among individual actors. This is a highly diverse, fast-moving landscape of new business models and new work models. While the platforms are new, they are not the original source of change, rather the rocket fuel that is speeding structural shifts underway in the labor market for sometime. Given…
