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Unemployment in the US remains stubbornly high at 6.3 percent. Job growth has stalled, with 9.6 million fewer jobs in January than the same month a year earlier. But gig companies say they’re having trouble finding people to drive, pick up, and deliver for them.
“I m worried about one thing going into the second half of the year: Are we going to have enough drivers to meet the demand that we re going to have?” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told an analyst last month. DoorDash chief financial officer Prabir Adarkar called the situation “a tale of two cities,” with hordes of new customers racing to order takeout but fewer drivers offering to deliver it. DoorDash orders more than tripled in the last part of 2020, compared with the same period a year earlier.
A Quiet Return to Government for an Obama-Era Labor Official
Seth Harris, who co-authored an early blueprint of what Uber and Lyft would adopt in Californiaâs Prop 22, is back in the White House in a labor policy position.
Former Deputy Secretary of Labor Seth Harris speaking in June 2018
The Biden administration likes to send press releases about new hires. I have been emailed information about the new head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, members of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, the senior director for building emissions at the Council on Environmental Quality, the legislative affairs director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the deputy social secretary for the Office of the First Lady, and much more. I think I know the name of everyone who works in the West Wing at this point.
Thousands of kilometres (miles) away from his native Venezuela, 48-year-old Nestor Perez died last month on the streets of Madrid when he was hit by a garbage truck while delivering a food order for Deliveroo.
“Drivers are in a position of subordination and dependency to Uber, such that they have little to no ability to improve their economic position or professional or entrepreneurial skill.”
The ruling makes clear that platforms should be required to offer basic benefits for the people “collaborating” with them. This ruling can have an impact beyond those in the U.K.
But where does the decision leave migrant gig workers?
These implications were discussed in a study recently presented under the auspices of the CERC Migration program, focusing on newcomer migrants who work in the gig economy, notably on platforms like Uber, TaskRabbit or Amazon Flex, to name a few.