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App Companies Propose New Model For Worker Benefits (cio.com)
itwbennett writes: In late October, four delivery drivers for the app-based Amazon Prime Now service filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the company misclassifies its workers as contractors. In June, the California Labor Commission ruled that Uber drivers are employees, not contractors. Now, worker advocacy groups, companies offering services through apps (including Lyft, Etsy, Care.com, and Instacart), a variety of policy experts, and venture capitalists are proposing a new model for worker benefits that will be "portable" across the number of jobs they do in the new on-demand economy. "Self-employed workers choosing to engage in flexible work may also encounter unforeseen work disruptions or other hardships without the protections and benefits that may be provided through full time employment," the group said in a statement posted on Medium.
The model of relying on a business to provide benefits to its employees in lieu of the government or the employees themselves turns the employee into a serf, unable to leave in fear of losing their benefits. COBRA was the last grand experiment in government meddling in "portable" healthcare benefits and it was by all accounts a miserable failure.
Stop calling them "benefits" and just call them what they are, which is compensation. Corporations (and politicians) have used the term "benefits" to be the equivalent of the corporations giving their employees welfare. They've actually used this term, "benefits" in PR campaigns to steal employees retirement packages.
If you get health insurance, sick days, retirement, it's because you earned them. They are yours. It's not company largesse.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Meritocracy only works if it's not a lie. It doesn't magically happen out of nowhere, it's a consequence of a system that can cull bad actors.
Real life is not that system. In real life, bad actors, con artists and CEOs run amok exactly as much as they're allowed to.
Completely deregulate and go full retard (to use what ought to be, but isn't, a more politically correct and inoffensive term for 'free market') and you only guarantee without a shadow of a doubt that your OCRACY is the farthest possible thing from MERIT.
In the best of all possible hypothetical worlds, the best you could hope for is that merit is not actively a disadvantage: nobody's penalized for wasting time and effort getting good. In this world, that's time better spent learning to con people, or building up a social media herd of suckers to fleece, and choose wisely.
Please never all-capitalize meritocracy again. As it is a malicious lie in the absence of a serious and well-organized and administered system with coherent goals and definitions of 'merit', it doesn't deserve even one capital letter, really.
Next you'll be telling me Google, and YouTube, are meritocracy in action. Or Uber.
if THEY set your schedule, like Lyft or any of the other 'shared jobs" YOU ARE A SERF.
This is just the corporate attempt to not pay for the value of that availability at schedule and submission to working conditions without prior knowledge or leverage.
Face it, the goal isn't serfdom
It is slavery
The model of relying on a business to provide benefits to its employees in lieu of the government or the employees themselves turns the employee into a serf, unable to leave in fear of losing their benefits.
Which is I think a part of why Republicans seem to hate "Obamacare" so much. They've lost their leverage to keep people subservient.
COBRA [dol.gov] was the last grand experiment in government meddling in "portable" healthcare benefits and it was by all accounts a miserable failure.
It wasn't a failure. COBRA did more or less what it was designed to do. It was designed to be a bridge, not ongoing portable insurance. The system around it was the failure. Used to be that if you lost your job you lost your health insurance too so you were doubly screwed. COBRA gave an (expensive) safety net option but it couldn't possibly solve the actual problem that was eventually solved with the Affordable Care Act. I've used COBRA insurance twice and it was fine for what it was.