Misguided Steps in Efforts to Harness the "Gig Economy"

Open up a legal or business paper today, and you'll notice they are filled with articles on attempts to understand the emerging "gig" or sharing economy - an authentic and "disruptive" movement that is revolutionizing several industries, including personal transportation, product delivery, and others. Many of the articles describe the economic and commercial novelty of the industries' growth and the potential for significant benefit to the entrepreneurs, customers and workers involved in these industries. However, others also describe the various measures taken to curb or regulate the emerging industries and their use of the sharing concept.

One of the particularly divisive issues that come up is the legal status of workers in these industries and the way they should be classified: are they employees or independent contractors? There have been several lawsuits attempting to adjudicate the status of those workers. Some have resulted in finding that they should be classified as employees, while others hold they may properly be classified by the service provider companies as contractors. Two of most significant recent cases have settled for the latter.

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