What’s really going on is the desire of businesses to chop wages and benefit costs while also limiting their vulnerability to lawsuits, which can happen when salaried employees are mistreated. The burden of economic risk is shifted even further onto workers, who lose the security and protections of the New-Deal-era social insurance programs that were created when long-term employment was the norm.
<snip>
rowing use of contingent workers (in “gigs”) came when capitalists sought to respond to gains by labor through the early 1970s, and in response to the victories capital won in the rise of the neoliberal era. Because contingent workers were usually not covered by union contracts or other legal safeguards, employers hired them to regain leverage over workers lost when unionized workers gained protection against unjust dismissal, and courts extended these protections to non-union workers under the “implicit contract” doctrine.
(full article)
http://ourfuture.org/20140528/cut-throat-capitalism-welcome-to-the-gig-economy
Unfortunately, liberals who support this libertarian economic model are too intellectually lazy to read this article because they're affraid of what they might find: they've been duped by the billionaire class just as their Republican counterparts have been for decades.
Meanwhile, Chicago cab drivers shut down service to both airports for 2 hours yesterday to protest Mayor Rahm Emmanuel's proposal to open the airports to Uber.
Follow the money:
Mayor Rahm Emmanuel is shilling for his multi-millionaire and billionaire cronies, his brother, Hollywood mogul Ari Emmanuel, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, both of whom, among others, are heavily invested in Uber.
Full-Time Uber drivers are fools. One should read their complaints forum and lawsuit page. They're underinsured, responsible for their own maintenance (that's huge driving on Chicago roads), underwater on auto lease payments TO UBER, chasing an illusion that they'll make upto $5000/week as Uber has advertised. Do they even know Uber is in a furious race to replace them with self-driving cars?
There are 6 main reasons your Uber driver isn't driving a cab:
1. They're too lazy to take the city mandated chauffeur class and exam
2. They are reckless and have a terrible driving record and can't get a job driving a cab
3. They have DUIs
4. They can't pass a criminal background check
5. They can't pass drug tests
6. They can't pass a physical exam
