Reimagining and Empowering the Contemporary Workforce
This Collection explores how to better protect workers against the harms of an expanding gig economy and an increasingly automated workplace. It offers three distinct and interconnected perspectives on the legal, regulatory, and policy interventions that could empower workers to navigate the shifting landscape with flexibility, security, and dignity.
AI and Captured Capital
An AI arms race and a laissez-faire approach to globalization enable a borderless labor market without labor protections and the capture of workers’ capital. Proposed redress includes: (1) workers’ data as stake capital, (2) a data-licensing regime, and (3) a guaranteed income fund organized by the International Labor Organization.
Data Laws at Work
Recognizing harms arising from the growing use of automated systems for labor control, the European Union (EU) has passed an array of digital-rights protections for workers. This Essay argues that the EU framework fails to account for the formal subordination of workers and proscribe the harms of algorithmic labor control.
Gig-Economy Myths and Missteps
This Essay disputes the myth that employment, unlike independent contracting, is inherently inflexible. It traces the roots of this widely shared belief to corporate propaganda and rejects “third-category” legislation based on this fiction. Finally, the Essay cautions labor enforcers to avoid the third-category sham in negotiated misclassification settlements.