Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Gig-Dependence: Finding The Real Independent Contractors Of Platform Work, Keith Cunningham-Parmeter
Gig-Dependence: Finding The Real Independent Contractors Of Platform Work, Keith Cunningham-Parmeter
Northern Illinois University Law Review
Platforms such as Uber and TaskRabbit avoid employment obligations by categorizing their workers as “independent contractors.” Declining to follow overtime, antidiscrimination, and other workplace mandates, these platforms claim to employ no one. Applied on a grand scale, the entire project of platform labor threatens to destabilize our contemporary understanding of employment law. But not all platform workers possess the characteristics of genuine independent contractors, as courts first envisioned that category. Judges did not originally formulate the independent contractor distinction to define the boundaries of workplace protections; rather, the independent contractor classification was designed to limit the liability of masters for …
The Gig Economy: An Annotated Bibliography, Matthew L. Timko
The Gig Economy: An Annotated Bibliography, Matthew L. Timko
Northern Illinois University Law Review
Companies like Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Airbnb, and others have become established within society, to the point that Uber has become a regularly used verb. While the consumer benefits of these companies has been immediate, the legal implications remain far murkier. This emerging market has demonstrated that the twentieth century laws are unable to cope with these twenty-first century businesses in regard to employee rights, employer responsibilities, consumer protections, and federal and state regulations. This bibliography presents the primary and secondary sources which are essential to understanding what has been termed the "gig economy" so that readers have a background of …