Federal Action on Gig Workers

Again, the Biden administration has been really fantastic on labor issues. Let’s see where this leads. Certainly a good sign in any case.

President Joe Biden’s top labor official said Thursday that most gig workers in the United States should be classified as “employees” deserving of related benefits, in what could be a policy shift that is likely to raise costs for companies that depend on contractors such as Uber and Lyft and impact millions of workers.Again, the Biden administration has been really fantastic on labor issues. Let’s see where this leads. Certainly a good sign in any case.

Shares of Uber fell as much as 8 percent while Lyft dived as much as 12 percent. Doordash fell nearly 9 percent and Grubhub was down 3.3 percent.

Oh for Christ’s sake. If the entirety of these businesses are scams based on screwing workers, they deserve to die anyway. As if one can’t profit while also employing people. Anyway:

“We are looking at it but in a lot of cases gig workers should be classified as employees… in some cases they are treated respectfully and in some cases they are not and I think it has to be consistent across the board,” Walsh told Reuters in an interview, expressing his view on the topic for the first time.

“These companies are making profits and revenue and I’m not (going to) begrudge anyone for that because that’s what we are about in America… but we also want to make sure that success trickles down to the worker,” he said.

Again, we’ll see. As we saw in California this fall, these companies are willing to go to any extreme, including gazillion dollar ad and propaganda campaigns aimed at voters, to maintain their theft of what workers earn them. Federal leadership is going to be required. Maybe that will happen.