While gig-based work is marketed by platforms as an attractive opportunity, little attention has been paid to the long-term experience of gig workers. Based on longitudinal interviews with 11 gig workers, this chapter seeks to answer the question, what is the impact of gig economy work on a worker’s future career trajectory and personal life? To paraphrase Kalleberg (2011), is gig-based work a good or bad job? What distinguishes those workers who move out of gig work from those workers who remain engaged in gig work, whether by choice or circumstance? Do workers think that extensive time spent in gig work as a primary source of income has affected their ability to move to stable traditional employment? This chapter connects gig work to a larger discussion of “side hustles” and worker reliance on additional sources of income, and the impact of underemployment on wages and employment call-backs. The negative career implications of gig work, especially long-term gig work, suggest serious inequities in regards to worker opportunity or experience. These inequities should be cause for concern among labor and employment law scholars, and further support the importance of establishing a social safety net and workplace protections for gig workers.

Cities and municipalities know they need to regulate the rideshare industry but have only recently taken steps to do so. Beyond obvious safety concerns, regulators need to tread carefully when trying to balance public concerns related to transit and mobility with private enterprise and independent contractor status.

At the same time, drivers constitute only one piece of the ride hailing puzzle. Drivers are not a monolith, as much as they may seem, and have competing priorities among themselves. From driver protests to organized driver groups like the Independent Drivers Guild, Rideshare Drivers United and Gig Workers Rising, drivers are coming together and demanding changes – but not all of these changes are supported by all drivers.

In terms of fundamental regulation for the ride hail industry, there are two main issues: insurance and wages. In these cases, regulators can have a real impact, and there is ample opportunity for regulators to get in early and set the tone. This chapter will delineate the path of ride hail regulation, how regulators can fix erroneous regulations and how to prevent future errors.

This book, although it may appear to be a single book, is in fact two. On the one hand, this is a book about labor exchange in the gig economy masquerading as a book about the value of qualitative empirical data for law and policy development. On the other hand, this is also a book about the value of qualitative empirical data masquerading as a book about the buying, selling, and performance of labor via gig companies like Uber and Airbnb. Since a reader may find it difficult to tell which of these two she is reading at any given moment this introduction will sketch the contours and purpose of each book.

Online care platforms have become major brokers of informal paid caregiving in the U.S., alongside a patchwork of agencies, informal networks, and online job boards. While domestic carework has been considered a paradigmatic example of “invisible” work, platforms like Care.com emphasize workers’ online visibility – through self-branding and online identity management – as key to a successful job search. Based on interviews with careworkers and a content analysis of company materials, we find that careworkers negotiate overlapping and conflicting “visibility regimes,” which are constructed by platforms, and other social institutions that shape their job searches. While some leverage the individualized visibility of platforms as a vehicle for building a “caring brand,” others find themselves lost in a sea of search results that flatten important professional distinctions. We argue that this complicates policy assumptions that pose increased visibility as a solution for invisible or undervalued work. Instead, these new forms of online scrutiny serve platforms’ interests in making workers legible to clients. As careworkers’ livelihoods become more closely intertwined with the decisions, design, and policies enacted by platform companies, more attention should be paid to their legal and ethical responsibilities for working against entrenched inequalities within the industry.

This chapter argues that the partial automation of managerial authority should not matter when determining whether platform workers are—or should be treated as—employees or independent contractors under the law. It offers a close reading of an end-user license agreement (EULA) between the on-demand transportation company Uber and its drivers. In particular, the chapter examines the relationship between the EULA and Uber’s use of algorithmic management to design, direct, monitor, evaluate, and compensate drivers’ work. By scrutinizing this relationship through a theory of the “self” implicit in contract law, the chapter shows that the EULA grants Uber rights to direct drivers’ work and determine the principal terms of the agreement as it goes along. This unilateral discretion is difficult to reconcile with what the law expects of an enforceable contract. Rather, it resembles the open-ended authority that the law permits an employer over its employees. Uber exercises its extra-contractual discretion through the App. Algorithmic management enables Uber continually to recalibrate its putative bargain with drivers to the company’s advantage. One lesson of this analysis is that decision makers tasked with evaluating the employment status of platform workers should take more seriously the contractual component of being an “independent contractor.”