Universal Assistance for Every Individual!
In the ever-evolving digital economy, an increasing number of workers are classified as crowd-sourced, earning income through platforms such as Uber, Amazon Mechanical Turk, ClickWorker, TaskRabbit, Deliveroo, and others. These self-employed workers often find themselves with limited or no social protection, despite their contributions to various tasks and market demands.
This lack of fundamental rights and security for self-employed workers leads to a growing population of citizens bearing market risks while lacking income protection, holiday rights, pension rights, parental rights, and other essential benefits. This situation, UNI, an international union, argues, is unacceptable and can potentially create a new underprivileged and underpaid group of citizens.
A feasible solution to address this issue is the implementation of a portable benefit system. In this system, benefits such as health insurance, retirement savings, and paid leave would be tied directly to the individual worker instead of a specific employer, allowing gig workers and independent contractors to accumulate and access benefits across multiple jobs or platforms. This model ensures continuity and respects each work form as a contributive factor to social security and social rights.
Recent developments have been recorded in this realm. The U.S. Labor Department has temporarily halted a rule that aimed to classify more gig workers as employees, creating a legal limbo. This pause leaves businesses with temporary relief but no long-term certainty, as formal rescission will require a notice-and-comment period, extending into late 2025.
Advocacy groups like Human Rights Watch are pushing state legislators to clarify platform companies' obligations to provide workers' compensation. Policymakers and researchers are exploring portable benefits as a middle path to ensure gig workers have access to essential benefits without requiring traditional employment relationships.
Artificial Intelligence is also playing a crucial role in transforming informal work, particularly in the Global South, by enhancing visibility and enabling workers to build digital reputations and portable portfolios. This can indirectly support the concept of portable benefits by providing workers with verifiable work histories and digital identities.
In conclusion, while a fully implemented portable benefit system for crowd-sourced, self-employed workers in the digital economy has not yet been realized, there is growing interest and advocacy for such a framework to address the challenges faced by gig workers in securing their rights and benefits.
- In the ongoing debate about the rights of crowd-sourced, self-employed workers, the general-news outlets have highlighted the UNI's opinion that the current situation without fundamental protections and benefits is unacceptable and could lead to a new underprivileged group of citizens.
- Policymakers, in their analysis of finances and business concerns related to these self-employed workers, are exploring the implementation of a portable benefit system as a possible solution to ensure these workers have access to essential benefits without requiring traditional employment relationships. This, in essence, would respect each work form as a contributive factor to social security and social rights.
