The gig economy loomed large in the public comments on the National Labor Relations Board’s reconsideration of its Trump-era legal test for determining whether a worker is an employee protected by federal labor law or an independent contractor who is not.
Rideshare Drivers United, which represents 20,000 California-based drivers for Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc., and other app-based drivers, asked the NLRB to adopt a standard that “unambiguously” recognizes that gig economy workers are employees. Those drivers lost the benefit of a 2019 change to the employment classification test under California law with the 2020 passage of a voter initiative known as Proposition 22.
The American Society of Journalists and Authors and a dozen other groups representing freelancers, on the other hand, urged the board to keep its current framework to avoid misclassifying “legitimate independent contractors as employees.” The journalist and author society lost a legal challenge to California’s standard that it made it more difficult for employers to classify workers as contractors.
The prominence of gig worker issues in the public comments, which were due at the NLRB on Thursday, underscores the high stakes that employment classification has in the gig economy. The NLRB received about 20 briefs as of Thursday afternoon, including comments from the U.S. Justice Department,...
As Nigeria prepares for the 2027 general elections, political campaigns and online discussions are expected to intensify across social media and messaging platforms. Alongside legitimate political...