In a speech about the so-called “gig” economy before the New America annual conference in Washington, D.C., Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), acknowledging that companies are using the internet to “transform the way Americans work,” including the “most famous example” of “ride-sharing platforms in our cities,” warned that the “bargain with workers has become increasingly one-sided for millions of independent contractors and hourly employees.”
Senator Warren said that “[t]he safety net – unemployment insurance, workers comp, Social Security – hasn't been updated to fill in the holes that employers have created.” She added that “[t]emporary workers, contract workers, seasonal workers, permatemps, and part-time workers rarely have access to these benefits.”
She advocated “three much-needed changes.”
First, she said, every worker should have to pay into Social Security and, therefore, that “electronic, automatic, and mandatory withholding of payroll taxes must apply to everyone – gig workers, 1099 workers, and hourly employees.”
Next, Senator Warren said that “every worker should be covered by catastrophic insurance” – “even workers who haven't built up enough credits for disability insurance, even workers who don't have traditional worker's compensation.”
Finally, according to Senator Warren, “all workers, no matter where they work or who they work for, should have some paid leave,” such as by accruing proportional credits toward a certain number of days a year for any purpose and by paid family and medical leave.
Among other things, Senator Warren also said that employers “shouldn't be misclassifying workers to keep labor costs down and they shouldn't be hiding behind complex arrangements like franchising and subcontracting to skirt their responsibilities to their workers.”
She concluded by stating that workers “deserve a level playing field and some basic protections, no matter who they work for, where they work, or how the law classifies them. They deserve a strong safety net, dependable benefits, and the chance to bargain over their working conditions – that's the basic deal. And that's the deal that is necessary to restore a strong and sustainable American middle class.”
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].