By: Mike Montgomery
When the California Labor Commission ruled that Uber drivers are employees and should therefore be entitled to benefits, it showed how out of touch our regulators are with the new economy.
The ruling is another reflection of outdated thinking about the employee-employer relationship. Digital platforms and apps are reinventing the intersection of supply and demand. This change may have skyrocketed with ride- and home-sharing, but we will soon use these systems for all types of services, from parents finding Little League batting coaches for their kids, to truckers picking up extra loads on their routes.
These new platforms are creating profound change. Over the last 40 years we’ve gone from a workforce where an employee had two or three employers over his or her lifetime to workers now switching careers regularly and even scaling by hiring their own employees along the way…