NELP - How Antitrust Law Supports Workers’ Rights

An article from legal director Sandeep Vaheesan and Chief economist Brian Callaci was referenced arguing that digital labor platforms aim to take control over employees without accountability and failing to comply with labor laws.

Anticompetitive Practices on ‘Gig Work’ Platforms

Antitrust law also highlights the contradictions in digital labor platform work—otherwise known as “app-based” or “gig” work. Digital labor platforms like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash say their workers are independent contractors all running their own independent businesses, yet the digital labor platforms control key conditions of the work, including:

• which assignments workers are offered,

• the prices consumers pay for the workers’ services, and

• the wages workers get paid.

If these workers were truly independent businesses, shouldn’t this wage- and price-fixing and other coordination implicate antitrust law?

Digital labor platforms want to have it both ways. As Sandeep Vaheesan and Brian Callaci at Open Markets Institute have said, they want control without responsibility. They want control over the workers doing the central work of their businesses, without being responsible to these workers for complying with wage and hour laws, health and safety laws, and paying into social insurance funds. If the digital labor platforms want to call their workers independent contractors, then antitrust law should require them to truly treat them as independent and protect these independent contractors from violations of their autonomy.

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