Independent Contractors and COVID-19: Working Without Protections

[BeckyDem]

by Rebecca Smith

Areas of expertise: Enforcement of Workplace Standards, Immigrants and Work, International Human and Labor Rights, Unemployment

Pandemic crisis spotlights how gig workers and other misclassified workers are forced to work without critical protections like unemployment insurance, paid sick days, and paid leave


The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has exposed employer practices and policy gaps that leave millions of America’s workers—and their families and communities—at risk of grave illness and financial ruin. Work should provide people with financial and physical security and ensure the same for their families and communities. In these volatile times, safeguarding the long-term health of the U.S. economy and society will require that all working people have good jobs that provide livable wages and benefits and a robust set of policies and programs that provide workers with the economic security to weather unexpected injury or illness and job loss.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the ways in which many workers have been left out of this picture. For decades, corporate interests and their political agents have deprived workers of the security that we all need, either by under-resourcing enforcement and allowing corporations to cheat workers of both their rights and their day in court through forced arbitration agreements, or by going along with efforts to rewrite the rules and carve workers out of the protections of labor standards.

What has resulted is millions of workers who are out of work during this pandemic—construction workers, manicurists and hairdressers, retail and restaurant workers and others—or whose work is needed more than ever—cleaners, homecare workers, delivery drivers—but who have been told over and over by their employers that they are “independent contractors” who are not entitled to unemployment insurance benefits, paid sick days, health and safety protections, or paid family and medical leave protections. Many are workers in low-wage jobs who can ill afford to take unpaid time off: a recent New York study found that low-paid independent contractors in personal services, construction, transportation, arts, retail, home health, accommodation, and food services have seen annual earnings fall over the past decade. Many are workers of color: Black and Latinx workers are overrepresented in so-called app-based “gig” jobs, making wrongly classifying workers another tool for upholding structural racism. Combined, Black and Latinx workers constitute less than 29 percent of the workforce, but almost 42 percent of workers on apps like Uber, Handy, Postmates, and Amazon Flex.

The good news is that we can fix this for the short- and long-term. States and cities can ensure that these workers are immediately eligible for the benefits their employers have denied them, by taking a few urgent steps that can protect our communities in both the immediate future and for the long term.

https://www.nelp.org/publication/independent-contractors-covid-19-working-without-protections/