It seems like everyone is jumping into the debate over how to classify people who drive for Uber and Lyft or work for Handy and the rest of the sharing economy. Are they employees, contractors or some new middle ground we as a society are going to have to define? I don't have any answers or proposals that have not already been tossed around, and I believe that the conversation is an important one for our country to have as technology erodes what employment means to millions of Americans. This blog post isn't aimed at answering that question, but rather to suggest that we should reframe the debate and not allow it to be so Uber-centric.
When someone starts a conversation about the sharing economy their statement generally begins with some variation of the phrase "with companies like Airbnb and Uber." It is shortsighted for us to use Uber as the proxy for the rest of the sharing economy because they are the most likely to eliminate their workers altogether. If you believe that driverless cars will arrive in the not too distant future then it's certainly not a stretch to argue that Uber will be at the forefront of that movement. Once that happens we won't need to classify their drivers because there won't be any drivers to protect. The debate needs to be adjusted away from Uber and closer to companies that don't have as clear a path to automating their workforce. Instacart is going to have a much tougher times getting robots to go grocery shopping for all of us and Handy will require human skills for the foreseeable future as well. Let's have the conversation but shift our attention away from Uber to companies that will actually have workers in the long run.