From my research-in-progress,
check out this short but distressing conclusion (gig work refers to a “job,”
such as an Uber ride-share, that is a one-off work arrangement that is paid
piece rate and therefore avoids wage and hour laws, Social Security taxes,
etc.):
Looking beyond the statistics and into the factual contexts
of these cases, some gig work replicates debt labor systems from earlier times.
Maids who are required to deposit wages with a labor
contractor as a security against quitting without adequate notice, and are also
subject to no-compete contracts that bind them to pay $2,000 in damages, resemble the domestic servant who was forced
by a trial court into peonage in New Mexico in the mid-1800s.
Exotic dancers who sign leases to rent work space in their
clubs; cable technicians who rent a company’s equipment and tools by agreeing
to pay reductions; and financial advisors who pay their company fees for
cubical rent, telephone, computer, faxes, parking, and marketing
materials, resemble sharecroppers in the
post-Civil War South who were exploited in loan and lease agreements by
merchants and landowners.
Agreements by maintenance contractors to supply Wal-Mart
stores with undocumented immigrant janitors from Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia,
Estonia, Russia, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic,
after these workers were illegally trafficked and harbored by the contractors,
resemble the credit-ticket work-around system that was used to bond Chinese
coolie labor in California during the late-1800s after debt servitudes proved difficult to enforce in court.
No comments:
Post a Comment