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On this Labor Day, millions of gig workers will be working while the rest of the U.S. enjoys a long weekend. They have become an essential feature of a consumer economy that runs through smartphones, whether ride share, food delivery or on-demand services,
Many Americans who need extra cash and prize flexibility turn to gig work to make ends meet. But a lot has changed, according to Jacob Lederman, a scholar of urban politics at the University of Michigan-Flint. While these workers still place a high premium on flexibility, their jobs are becoming more essential as a primary source of income. At the same time, the major platforms still don’t offer basic benefits such as health insurance.
This means gig workers increasingly rely on public safety net programs and are now among the top recipients of food aid and public health insurance. In effect, taxpayers are helping foot the bill.
A better way, Lederman argues, is portable benefits that give some basic protection to gig workers. This has already happened in New York and California, and other states are also considering legislation.
Those experiments, he argues, should remind policymakers that “they don’t need to treat flexibility and worker protections as mutually incompatible.”
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