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> I don't know what the answer is, but I think there is some gaming of the system going on where these companies have found a way to offload risk that is not really fair.

Yeah, Amazon is powerful enough to set its own rules, and by those rules it's never at fault.

Maybe the solution is to beef up some kind of small-claims-court like process, and have some actually-independent arbiter take a look at the facts.

The supreme court did recently rule for forced arbitration, making this idea mostly a no-go I would think. Collective bargaining, and forcing contractors to be employees are the more realistic options. If you can't actually choose your working time, and work 32+ hours, there's a good chance you should be an employee, or at least the option to become one should exist.

> I don't know if this is a consequence of how risk averse the world has become, but I believe it's a source of competitive advantage.

It is a consequence of bad laws and lack of labor law enforcement. It is par for the course to hire a “manager”, give them no ability to modify a budget, pay them a meager $40k salary so that they qualify as an “exempt employee” so you do not have to pay them overtime, and then give them impossible metrics to meet.

Voila, you now have a fall guy, and can save on labor costs because they are willing to work 60 to 80 hour weeks at no extra cost in exchange for a steady paycheck. And they will do questionable things, like the linked Amazon example, without the employer needing to put it in writing giving the employer plausible deniability.

I even know many immigrants that were lucky enough to immigrate to the US a few decades earlier do this to their own relatives who chain immigrate after them.

Very simple fix - make the minimum exempt employee salary $200k or even more per year.

> I don't know what the answer is

One potential answer is to make gig workers employees.

Taking away voluntary transactions that incur no third party harm is not a solution, in my opinion. It would be a violation of freedom of contract.

The freedom to get rekt, it's in the constitution.

I'm quite serious. Think about the consequences of taking away freedom of contact (which we technically already did with the repulsive reinterpretation of Lochner vs. NY).

For this example:

1. Gov says no more 1099 workers -> consequence is every single contractor loses their job (thankfully those whose contracts were killed would be due just compensation under the 5th ammendment).

2. Gig worker now must get rehired as a w2 worker or they need to find a new job.

3. They get paid less if they take their old job back because now their employer needs to provide them the equipment to do their job, plus any benefits required by law, plus minimum wage.

3b. They get their job back at the same wage but consumers now have to pay more for all the reasons in [3]. Or they no longer can find work because they don't provide enough value at the adjusted wage rate to justify it, in the event consumer demand falls at the new price levels.

Let's say all the above happens, and they still have their job.

Next week another tornado comes and they have to swerve off course again, same conditions, to not die. Their employer can still fire them without a second thought as either party may end the working relationship at any time for any reason!

So you've done nothing except make more, useless, legislation.

*Note: I just read the article and saw nothing about this being a situation derived from the worker being 1099 or in the "gig" economy. However, this response is with respect to the comment specifically targeting "gig" workers.

Nobody wants to end freedom of contract. We want to end the abuse of pseudo-contracting as a way for Megacorps to skirt their responsibilitirs as employers.

Gig workers are misslabelled as contractors. They are not. It's a perversion of the idea.

All your arguments can be sued against minimum wage as well, but minimum wage increase have shown positive effects every time. Your arguments can also be used to justify slavery.

Where do you think this society is headed? A bunch of gig workers scrapping the bottle of the barrel, with no insurances, no job safety, bad working conditions, but doing all the jobs servicing us fat middle class programmers, who think these people can't earn more because then we would have to pay a shopping fee on Amazon?

You and I work to afford a house and a vacation. Others work to afford basic survival. And we deny them improved working conditions because of why?

And gig working is only one part of the problem. Abuse if sub-contracting achieves the same, and missing worker protection laws even allow companies to mistreat their actual employees.

There is no need for this economic brutality. There is enough for everyone, the super rich can even stay super rich once we improve the situation of the people on the other end of the scale.