openpolitics.com

Gigs with Benefits

We’d do better to create a third legal category of workers, who would be subject to certain regulations, and whose employers would be responsible for some costs (like, say, reimbursement of expenses and workers’ compensation) but not others (like Social Security and Medicare taxes). Other countries, including Germany, Canada, and France, have rewritten their laws to expand the number of worker categories. There’s no reason we can’t do the same, and give gig-economy workers a better balance of flexibility and security.

.. And, as Sundararajan says, “It makes no sense to have a well-developed safety net for one category of employment and virtually none for other kinds of productive work.” Obamacare was a step in the right direction, and Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, has suggested that we could use a similar system for benefits like workers’ comp and unemployment insurance. Work is changing. The protection we offer workers should change as well.