About one in three American workers are temps, according to a recent report from the Freelancers Union and a temp agency called ElanceoDesk Inc. That’s 53 million people (or 34 percent of the workforce). That’s sort of an update of a comprehensive U.S. Government Accountability Office report in 2006 that found that 31 percent were temps.
This is a trend going back a few decades. Back in 1971, a temp agency called Western Services had an ad in the Personnel Journal urging employers to convert all of their permanent employees into temps: “Just say goodbye… then shift them to our payroll and say hell-o again!”
Why should they do that? Another temp agency called Kelly Services provided a blunt answer that same year in an ad in The Office, a human resources journal, promoting the “Never-Never Girl,” who, the company said: “Never takes a vacation or holiday. Never asks for a raise. Never costs you a dime for slack time. (When the workload drops, you drop her.) Never has a cold, slipped disc or loose tooth. (Not on your time anyway!) Never costs you for unemployment taxes and Social Security payments. (None of the paperwork, either!) Never costs you for fringe benefits. (They add up to 30 percent of every payroll dollar.)…”
These days, many temp jobs are in the “sharing economy.” That’s a gussiedup Silicon Valley-invented term for startups that allow users to rent their labor and belongings to strangers. Recent software innovations now allow jobs to be sliced and diced into small tasks that can be meted out to workers with pay based on the demand for that task.
The taxi-hailing service Uber and the real estate subletting service Airbnb are the most well known. There’s also Task Rabbit, which offers odd jobs like cleaning a garage, taking clothes to a laundry or buying groceries. Prospective Rabbits compete with each other. The one who will do the job for the least amount of money gets the gig.
Economist Robert Reich says this is the “share-the-scraps economy. … Customers and workers are matched online. Workers are rated on quality and reliability. The big money goes to the corporations that own the software. The scraps go to the on-demand workers.”
Reich says “on-demand work is a reversion to the piece work of the 19th century — when workers had no power and no legal rights, took all the risks and worked all hours for almost nothing.”
The New Age hipster tycoons of the “share economy” yap about “revolution” and “disruption.” In an interview with Fortune magazine, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said this about his company: “I mean, the way we look at what Uber is, it’s a cross between lifestyle — which is ‘Give me what I want and give it to me now’… like instant gratification — and the logistics to get it to you, right?”
Uber has hired David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, to be senior vice president of policy and strategy, and former Defense Secretary Roberts Gates to recruit veterans.
The rightwing fell in love with Uber and other “sharing economy” firms after those companies developed conflicts with city and state governments over regulations. The Republican National Committee and Generation Opportunity (a Koch brothers astroturf group for young people) have conducted pro-Uber campaigns in social media.
Uber claims it should be exempt from regulations because the services are ordered on the web. That’s nonsense. It is quite sensible for governments to regulate taxi services to make sure that vehicles are safe and drivers are responsible and competent.
Uber claims it doesn’t have employees but “partners” who don’t need to be covered by workers’ compensation or protected by minimum wage and overtime rules. That’s sickening. It’s not surprising that many Uber drivers are organizing unions and have gone on strike in many cities.
Uber is a $40-billion firm that takes 20 percent of driver fares. Drivers have to supply their own cars and pay for maintenance, gas and insurance. Management dictates the rates and terms of their labor.
Since the Uber workers own all the capital, they should be able to transform the company into a worker-owned co-op. Economist Dean Baker argues that cities should create a “public option” to compete with the car-sharing companies. These public sites would benefit consumers and service providers while cutting out the profiteering middlemen.
At any rate, we need a genuine sharing economy.
This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.
