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I really get confused about this. I wonder if it is because I'm a bit older. Plenty of part time employment is like that. For example, many people that work ret

I really get confused about this. I wonder if it is because I'm a bit older. Plenty of part time employment is like that. For example, many people that work retail or service part time have very flexible schedules. They typically have an availability chart and then if they need a day off last minute, they are often required to find someone else to cover for them. The reality is that the contractor part of this is to hide them(GrubHub) from the risk involved. That's what no one understands here. Bicycle messengers were notoriously the original "gig economy" job. The reason no one wanted to make them employees is that they would then be responsible for workers compensation when they got in an accident. This is the same as GrubHub. You were lucky. You did not get in an accident. Someone else working for GrubHub somewhere else in the country probably did. And they very likely had very expensive medical expenses. Workers compensation also covers permanent long term disability payments if someone is injured and can no longer work. This can be millions of dollars. When anyone does the math with these gig jobs, they leave out risk. That's the difference. GrubHub is pushing the risk of long term disability, and other things like unemployment due to business slowdown, entirely onto you. As well as other risks they are free from if you are not an employee.

lbotos 7y ago
> Plenty of part time employment is like that. For example, many people that work retail or service part time have very flexible schedules. They typically have an availability chart and then if they need a day off last minute, they are often required to find someone else to cover for them. I think you are missing a large part of it. The "gig" economy is "on-demand" labor. There is no schedule to coordinate at the "worker level". Just a network of demand and a worker pool that grows and shrinks to meet demand. "Oh, I'm free for the next 3 hours, maybe I'll make some money" vs. "I need to let my boss know I'm not coming in tomorrow so we have coverage" That marketplace effect is "freedom".
- jashmatthews 7y ago
  This is exactly what casual/zero hours job contracts are for in the UK and other common law countries. Treating casual employees as contractors bollocks in a large part of the work.
- jlarocco 7y ago
  That's orthogonal to whether the workers are contractors or employees. Most companies don't let their employees work such flexible hours, but there's no reason why they couldn't.
  - Zak 7y ago
    > there's no reason why they couldn't. Yes there is. Workers compensation insurance and other benefits have significant fixed costs per employee. If someone is treated as an employee, they'll be required to work a minimum number of hours to cover those costs.
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      That seems like a failure of the insurance market more than anything else. It seems like insurance companies are using employee count as a proxy for hours worked... is there really that much of an increase risk for 4 people working 2 hours each vs one person working 8? Maybe, but we should be able to price that risk and allow a company to insure people per hour.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - pishpash 7y ago
        Or, you can just pay them what their market salary is in cash including what would have gone into insurance, and let them figure it out themselves. Why are you trying to overcomplicate things?
      - CryptoPunk 7y ago
        >>Maybe, but we should be able to price that risk and allow a company to insure people per hour. In many states regulations prevent customizing employee insurance packages to that extent. There are cookie cutter obligations that employers have to meet regardless of the hours an employee works. Gig economy jobs get around the inefficiencies imposed by labor regulations.
    - 7y ago
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> When anyone does the math with these gig jobs, they leave out risk. That's the difference. GrubHub is pushing the risk of long term disability, and other things like unemployment due to business slowdown, entirely onto you. As well as other risks they are free from if you are not an employee. It's generally quite the opposite. It's employer regulations hiding the cost of insurance from you. There is nothing stopping you as an individual from buying disability or unemployment insurance. But insurance typically has a negative expected value. With perfect efficiency the expected value is zero; probability of claim times payout from receiving claim equals average premium. Then you add the costs of administration and insurance fraud and it goes into the red. Whether the peace of mind from having the insurance is worth that cost to you is your own decision. Requiring employers to provide it does two things. The first is that it hides the cost from you. The employer is a corporation and corporations don't really pay for anything, employees, customers and investors do. It'd be nice to think the investors are paying for it, but the kind of employers who hire unskilled workers are typically not in high margin industries. In practice it's generally going to be the workers and customers. And then people ask for more and more things like that, thinking someone else is paying for it when it's really still them. Which leads to the second problem, which is that when it's required you can't decline it. If some double digit percentage of the people on unemployment are committing insurance fraud, you may be better off to just put the money you would have paid in premiums into a brokerage account to rely on if you lose your job, but you no longer have that option. You no longer even realize its cost, because you never receive a bill for unjustifiably high insurance premiums, you just get paid that much less or pay more when you buy stuff.
- lisper 7y ago
  > insurance typically has a negative expected value Only if you ignore externalities, like uninsured permanently disabled people begging on the streets or starving to death.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    That's not an externality. The person starving to death is the same person who didn't buy insurance. What you're getting at is that there is a reason people buy insurance anyway -- the peace of mind that that won't happen to you, as I mentioned. Because a million dollars in claims money even if you have to multiply it by the only 2% probability of that happening is worth more to you than the $20,000 in guaranteed premiums you'll have to pay over your life, because if the claim actually happens you need the money more. The value of the same dollar is higher to you then, which you can predict from the beginning and account for. But that value still has to be balanced against the losses to administration and fraud, and balanced against what you need the money for today. If losing $100/month to premiums causes you to starve now, it doesn't matter that there is a 2% chance that you starve in ten years from now. If the majority of insurance claims are fraudulent, the higher value of the money in case you have a legitimate claim may no longer exceed the losses from buying the insurance. It's possible that buying insurance makes sense. It's possible that it doesn't. But people should be able to make that choice for themselves instead of having it imposed on them.
conanbatt 7y ago
I think the ones that don't do the math are the ones that think the gig workers don't take into account the risk. Why is unemployed casual employee better than employeed contractor for you? Because its definitely not for the gigers: if it were, only 1 of the gig companies has to offer the contract, take that into account into the pay they give the employees (or substitutes like insurance) and then they would get all the workers. There are definite market failures, but the vast majority of denouncing of market failures are people not understanding the market has made a good decision.
michaelbrave 7y ago
I've worked a lot of part time jobs in my life. Very few respect your availability very well, and if it becomes too low they drop you. Most of the time the expectation is that you keep all hours available and they only have you work as is convenient for them not you. I only say this as I think you are a bit more optimistic about that than most who work those jobs would agree with.

lbotos 7y ago

> Plenty of part time employment is like that. For example, many people that work retail or service part time have very flexible schedules. They typically have an availability chart and then if they need a day off last minute, they are often required to find someone else to cover for them. I think you are missing a large part of it. The "gig" economy is "on-demand" labor. There is no schedule to coordinate at the "worker level". Just a network of demand and a worker pool that grows and shrinks to meet demand. "Oh, I'm free for the next 3 hours, maybe I'll make some money" vs. "I need to let my boss know I'm not coming in tomorrow so we have coverage" That marketplace effect is "freedom".

jashmatthews 7y ago
This is exactly what casual/zero hours job contracts are for in the UK and other common law countries. Treating casual employees as contractors bollocks in a large part of the work.
jlarocco 7y ago
That's orthogonal to whether the workers are contractors or employees. Most companies don't let their employees work such flexible hours, but there's no reason why they couldn't.
- Zak 7y ago
  > there's no reason why they couldn't. Yes there is. Workers compensation insurance and other benefits have significant fixed costs per employee. If someone is treated as an employee, they'll be required to work a minimum number of hours to cover those costs.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    That seems like a failure of the insurance market more than anything else. It seems like insurance companies are using employee count as a proxy for hours worked... is there really that much of an increase risk for 4 people working 2 hours each vs one person working 8? Maybe, but we should be able to price that risk and allow a company to insure people per hour.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - pishpash 7y ago
      Or, you can just pay them what their market salary is in cash including what would have gone into insurance, and let them figure it out themselves. Why are you trying to overcomplicate things?
    - CryptoPunk 7y ago
      >>Maybe, but we should be able to price that risk and allow a company to insure people per hour. In many states regulations prevent customizing employee insurance packages to that extent. There are cookie cutter obligations that employers have to meet regardless of the hours an employee works. Gig economy jobs get around the inefficiencies imposed by labor regulations.
  - 7y ago

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> When anyone does the math with these gig jobs, they leave out risk. That's the difference. GrubHub is pushing the risk of long term disability, and other things like unemployment due to business slowdown, entirely onto you. As well as other risks they are free from if you are not an employee. It's generally quite the opposite. It's employer regulations hiding the cost of insurance from you. There is nothing stopping you as an individual from buying disability or unemployment insurance. But insurance typically has a negative expected value. With perfect efficiency the expected value is zero; probability of claim times payout from receiving claim equals average premium. Then you add the costs of administration and insurance fraud and it goes into the red. Whether the peace of mind from having the insurance is worth that cost to you is your own decision. Requiring employers to provide it does two things. The first is that it hides the cost from you. The employer is a corporation and corporations don't really pay for anything, employees, customers and investors do. It'd be nice to think the investors are paying for it, but the kind of employers who hire unskilled workers are typically not in high margin industries. In practice it's generally going to be the workers and customers. And then people ask for more and more things like that, thinking someone else is paying for it when it's really still them. Which leads to the second problem, which is that when it's required you can't decline it. If some double digit percentage of the people on unemployment are committing insurance fraud, you may be better off to just put the money you would have paid in premiums into a brokerage account to rely on if you lose your job, but you no longer have that option. You no longer even realize its cost, because you never receive a bill for unjustifiably high insurance premiums, you just get paid that much less or pay more when you buy stuff.

lisper 7y ago
> insurance typically has a negative expected value Only if you ignore externalities, like uninsured permanently disabled people begging on the streets or starving to death.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  That's not an externality. The person starving to death is the same person who didn't buy insurance. What you're getting at is that there is a reason people buy insurance anyway -- the peace of mind that that won't happen to you, as I mentioned. Because a million dollars in claims money even if you have to multiply it by the only 2% probability of that happening is worth more to you than the $20,000 in guaranteed premiums you'll have to pay over your life, because if the claim actually happens you need the money more. The value of the same dollar is higher to you then, which you can predict from the beginning and account for. But that value still has to be balanced against the losses to administration and fraud, and balanced against what you need the money for today. If losing $100/month to premiums causes you to starve now, it doesn't matter that there is a 2% chance that you starve in ten years from now. If the majority of insurance claims are fraudulent, the higher value of the money in case you have a legitimate claim may no longer exceed the losses from buying the insurance. It's possible that buying insurance makes sense. It's possible that it doesn't. But people should be able to make that choice for themselves instead of having it imposed on them.

conanbatt 7y ago

I think the ones that don't do the math are the ones that think the gig workers don't take into account the risk. Why is unemployed casual employee better than employeed contractor for you? Because its definitely not for the gigers: if it were, only 1 of the gig companies has to offer the contract, take that into account into the pay they give the employees (or substitutes like insurance) and then they would get all the workers. There are definite market failures, but the vast majority of denouncing of market failures are people not understanding the market has made a good decision.

michaelbrave 7y ago

I've worked a lot of part time jobs in my life. Very few respect your availability very well, and if it becomes too low they drop you. Most of the time the expectation is that you keep all hours available and they only have you work as is convenient for them not you. I only say this as I think you are a bit more optimistic about that than most who work those jobs would agree with.