Law Commons^™

A Global System Of Work, A Global System Of Regulation?: Crowdwork And Conflicts Of Law, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The on-demand economy has truly gone global. Consider online platform TaskRabbit, a U.S.-based site for odd jobs. A high number of TaskRabbit’s users were seeking help with the construction of furniture they purchased at IKEA, and skilled carpenters started using the platform to find customers. Corporate management at Swedish company IKEA noticed the trend, and as a result acquired TaskRabbit in 2017. As a result, a Swedish company now owns a platform labor service in the United States and Britain, with plans to expand the TaskRabbit platform to twenty-seven more countries where IKEA currently owns brick and mortar stores. …

Age Discrimination In The On-Demand Economy And Crowdwork, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The dominant narrative about the on-demand or gig economy focuses on the plight of Millennials, the generation born between 1982 and 2004. Reporters, bloggers, and commentators have largely confined their account of gig platforms to what the on-demand economy means for Millennials who are just beginning their careers. Media sources have spotlighted the hardships facing young, tech-savvy workers who are forced to cobble together a living through a combination of part-time work, entrepreneurial activities, and insecure gigs online. These sources note that these Millennials are barely scraping by and often lack job security or benefits. When discussing the problems …

The Sharing Economy And The Edges Of Contract Law: Comparing U.S. And U.K. Approaches, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

Technology and the rise of the on-demand or sharing economy have created new and diverse structures for how businesses operate and how work is conducted. Some of these matters are intermediated by contract, but in other situations, contract law may be unhelpful. For example, contract law does little to resolve worker classification problems on new platforms, such as ridesharing applications. Other forms of online work create even more complex problems, such as when work is disguised as an innocuous task like entering a code or answering a question, or when work is gamified and hidden as a leisure activity. Other …