SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In a ruling with potentially sweeping consequences for the so-called gig economy, the California Supreme Court on Monday made it much more difficult for companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
The decision could eventually require companies like Uber, many of which are based in California, to follow minimum-wage and overtime laws and to pay workers' compensation and unemployment insurance and payroll taxes, potentially upending their business models.
Industry executives have estimated that classifying drivers and other gig workers as employees tends to cost 20 to 30 percent more than classifying them as contractors. It also brings benefits that can offset these costs, though, like the ability to control schedules and the manner of work.
"It's a massive thing — definitely a game-changer that will force everyone to take a fresh look at the whole issue," said Richard Meneghello, a co-chairman of the gig-economy practice group at the management-side law firm Fisher Phillips.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/business/economy/gig-economy-ruling.html
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 02 2018, @06:00PM (2 children)
The fact is, they are. Intentionally so, I might add: If unemployment gets too low in any profession, they go to the government and say "Waaa, you need to make the economy suck more and/or make immigration easier so that we can hire people more easily." And (possibly after some campaign donations) they get what they want.
Karl Marx also wrote about this phenomenon: The concept of a "reserve army of labor" was that basically the underclass and underemployed people are there to replace any working class person at any moment, and as technology improves this underclass becomes larger and larger, making life harder and harder on the people lucky enough to have jobs.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 02 2018, @06:08PM
Oh, and a quick followup: Don't think you're safe from this because your job is white-collar and requires education. What do you think the ever-increasing H-1B phenomenon is all about? And they're going after doctors, scientists, academics, engineers, etc. They would be doing it with lawyers, too, but there's already about 1/3 of law school graduates being unable to work in law.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @08:15PM
...[the Capitalist Ownership Class will] go to the government and say "[...]make immigration easier"
Our undamped pendulum of a Chief Executive, in his usual ignorant swinging-from-one-extreme-to-another mode recently pulled a move that will apparently put a chill on importing knowledgeable people.
[1] I do wish that that site hadn't hired a nitwit who stripped from their pages all indications of publication dates. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]