"Disruption through technology has brought undeniable advantages, especially to consumers, but it has proceeded with relative indifference to its consequences for the nature of work or the well being of workers. This indifference has provoked close scrutiny of the platform business model and the insecurities of its flexible work arrangements, and, in particular, its reliance on an online and on-demand labor market, willing , to accept short-term, free-lance assignments, often at very low pay. This scrutiny has, in turn, triggered multiple policy debates in the U.S. and elsewhere.
There is not even a consensus on what to call the phenomenon. Moreover there is broad disagreement as to the size and significance of the gig economy. Core of the debate is the question, if these new forms of employment result in good jobs or bad jobs and what in1pact they will have on the labor market. This results in the legal and regulatory debate if gig workers are properly treated as independent contractors, excluded from the rights, benefits and protections that »employee« status entails under workplace laws. Looking at the future the author asks what the gig or platform economy means for economic security, labor standards, social protections and worker bargaining power and if everything old is new again.
She concludes that there are clearly winners and losers of this development, and that the dialectic of change and continuity poses real dilemmas for policy makers. Policy solutions may even look back in history, discovering new meaning in concepts developed in earlier eras. But to survive, the law must adapt and change in her opinion. With wise public policy choices to change the rules of the game, informed by accurate data and careful research, we could do a better job to ensure that the gains from technological advance are broadly distributed. "

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