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Ask frogs about gigs
The gig economy was always a lie. Firms wanted to use tech to drive down wages and avoid their responsibility to provide benefits. And in some cases, they aimed to use brute capital force to monopolize markets. Uber hasn’t quite managed the latter, but they’ve beaten the band at the former. California’s legal system is testing Uber's approach, where a judge has ruled that the firm needs to treat drivers as employees. Uber’s response was to threaten to take their ball and go home. If the courts don’t want to let them do things however they like, they’ll just shut the service down and leave their drivers, who they were just told to treat as employees, in the lurch.
Natalie Shure calls this maneuver out for what it is.
This a capital strike - when a business withholds its resources/investment to pressure labor or government into giving it what it wants. It’s a key tool for perpetuating inequality, because it allows big private firms to override democracy and beat back any policy they don’t like
— Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely)
7:13 PM • Aug 12, 2020
The gig economy is a plague on society. Uber can either take a u-turn, and find a way to take care of its drivers, or it can park itself in the dustbin of history.