The biggest news in the world of protections for gig-economy workers came this month not from the National Labor Relations Board or the Department of Labor or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the federal agencies charged with setting employment standards for the fair treatment of the nation’s workforce. Instead, the Federal Trade Commission made news by announcing a new initiative to protect gig workers. According to the FTC’s policy statement, the Commission will make it an enforcement priority “to fight for consumers who work in jobs in the gig economy.” This fight will include addressing anticompetitive practices that harm “workers’ wages, job quality and other aspects of gig work.”
I will admit to finding the terminology in the FTC’s announcement a little confusing. Are Uber and Lyft drivers workers or consumers or both? Are the gig companies being regulated as employers or market participants or both? Putting aside the round-peg-square-hole nature of these terms of art, it is clear that the FTC’s objective is one that would be familiar to any labor or employment lawyer. The Commission aims to prevent companies from cheating the people who toil to make money for them. That is certainly a core aim of labor and employment law, especially the Fair Labor Standards Act and the agency that enforces that law, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor.
The FTC is going to use its fair competition tools, which are very different from DOL’s tools, to...
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