Establishing Legal Responsibility in the Fissured Workplace,
“Many businesses, including app-based platforms, have restructured toward ‘fissured workplace’ business models. They treat workers like employees (specifying behaviors and closely monitoring outcomes) but they classify workers as independent contractors (engaging them at an arms-length and cutting them off from rights and benefits tied to employment). These arrangements confound legal classifications of ‘employment’ and expose deficiencies with existing workplace protections, which are based on “’relationships.’ As a result, a growing number of workers lack both bargaining power and critical workpalce rights and benefits.”
“We propose a Concentric Circle framework to better govern workers’ rights in the modern era. At the core, we maintain that certain rights and protections should not be tethered to an employment relationship, but to work itself. Thus, the right to be compensated for work and paid a minimum wage; freedom from discrimination and retaliation; access to a safe working environment, and the right to associate and engage in concerted activity should belong to all workers, not just employees. Second, as a middle circle, we argue for a rebuttable presumption of employment to address those rights that remain exclusive to employees (and not independent contractors), and we propose an updated legal test of employment. Finally, at the outer ring of the framework, we suggest policies that could enhance workers’ access to benefits that promote worker mobility and social welfare.”
“Other scholarship has focused exclusively on either independent contractors or employees, or it has proposed a new category of worker altogether. We contend that this comprehensive framework better assigns rights, responsibilities, and protections in the modern workplace than do current legal doctrines or alternative proposals.“
Institute for New Economic Thinking, March 2020: “Who’s Responsible Here? Establishing Legal Responsibility in the Fissured Workplace”
SSRN Paper, February 18, 2020: Who’s Responsible Here? Establishing Legal Responsibility in the Fissured Workplace, by Tanya Goldman and David Weil (53 pages, PDF) Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series No. 114
Institute for New Economic Thinking papers
Institute for New Economic Thinking programs
Online Event:
Who’s Responsible Here? Establishing Legal Responsibility in the Fissured Workplace Brandeis University Heller School of Social Policy and Management; Harvard University - Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), David Weil & Tanya L. Goldman, with Discussants: Ana Virginia Moreira Gomes, PPGD/CCJ, UNIFOR and Antônio Rodrigues de Freitas Jr., Faculdade de Direito/USP
LINK to EVENT HERE: meet.google.com/cfp-knuw-zgh June, 18, 15h00 - 16h15 EDT