Workers’ Compensation, Nonstandard Work, and Workers Laboring in the Gig

Individuals laboring in “nonstandard work”—temporary/staffing company workers, “gig”¹ workforce actors like Uber and Grubhub drivers, and other freelancers—are a population on the rise.² This growth in the number of nonstandard workers, and the correlative phenomenon of businesses aggressively classifying their workers as independent contractors,³ has been ascribed to at least three factors: (1) enhanced competition due to globalization, (2) pressure from investors (capital markets) for corporations to concentrate on “core competencies” and maximize profits, and (3) the revolution in information and communications technology.⁴ Many commentators, in a nod to the enhanced competition factor, also ascribe the growing use of independent contractors to firms’ desire to avoid burdensome regulations that attach when workers are classified as employees.⁵