Workers getting injured on the job isn’t anything new. The neighborhood where I conducted my research was within walking distance of the Asch Building, home of the notorious 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, in which 143 young women and men perished. The fire was one of the largest workplace accidents in US history and is often considered an impetus for changes to American labor law and for the New Deal.3
A SHORT HISTORY OF WORKERS’ COMPENSATION
Workers’ compensation is hardly a new concept. The first known policy on worker compensation is the Sumerian Nippur Tablet No. 3191, dated to 2050 BCE, which provided compensation for specific injuries, including fractures. Likewise, the code of Hammurabi in 1750 BCE and ancient Greek, Roman, Arab, and Chinese law all provided for specific compensation schedules for the loss of a body part. But while ancient cultures compensated workers for their on-the-job injuries, modern economies have been much less generous.4
English common law provided the basis for an American legal framework that persisted into the early Industrial Revolution and included three loopholes that were so restrictive they were known as the “unholy trinity of defenses.” These three loopholes were contributory negligence, the “fellow servant” rule, and the “assumption of risk.” Contributory negligence meant if a worker was in any way responsible for the injury, the employer was not at fault. If a worker slipped and fell into hazardous machinery that was missing required safety mechanisms, the injury was not covered. Under contributory negligence, the worker was at fault for slipping. The fellow servant exemption provided a loophole for any injury caused by a fellow employee, and, when all else failed, there was the assumption of risk—the claim that by performing a job, employees assumed any risk that was inherent in the job.5
Historically, work in the United States was fairly dangerous. In 1904, twenty-seven thousand workers in manufacturing, transport, and agriculture were killed on the job. In one year, fifty thousand accidents took place in New York factories alone. Historian Howard Zinn notes that “hat and cap makers were getting respiratory diseases, quarrymen were inhaling deadly chemicals, lithographic printers were getting arsenic poisoning.” In 1914, according to a report of the Commission on Industrial Relations, thirty-five thousand workers were killed in industrial accidents and seven hundred thousand were injured.6
Populist support for an organized workers movement began to grow in the first decade of the twentieth century, assisted by the “muckrakers” movement of reform-minded journalists. The most famous of these was Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, who wrote about the appalling working conditions in Chicago slaughterhouses, the distribution of diseased and rotten meat, and the adulteration of food through the addition of cheap fillers. Sinclair’s work led to the development of the Food and Drug Act of 1906, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, and the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Sinclair was disappointed by this turn of events: he wrote The Jungle to help meatpacking workers, not to improve the quality of meat. “I aimed for the public’s heart,” Sinclair later wrote, “and by accident hit it in the stomach.” Although Congress passed the Employers’ Liability Acts of 1906 and 1908, softening the restrictions of contributory negligence, the conditions of workers were still largely ignored.7
In early 1911, the states of Washington and Wisconsin passed comprehensive workers’ compensation laws, but the true movement toward workplace protections and compensation for injury didn’t occur until the March 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.8 In the year after the fire, nine other states passed regulations, followed by thirty-six others before the decade was done.
In New York, the fire also led to the development of the Committee on Public Safety, headed by Frances Perkins—the future U.S. secretary of labor—and led to new legislation to protect workers, including the “54-hour bill” granting workers shorter hours. The New York State Legislature also created the Factory Investigating Commission to “investigate factory conditions in this and other cities” and to provide “remedial measures of legislation to prevent hazard or loss of life among employees through fire, unsanitary conditions, and occupational diseases.”9 The state commission’s reports helped modernize the state’s labor laws, making New York State “one of the most progressive states in terms of labor reform,” and led to the passing of sixty new laws that granted better building access and egress, mandated the installation of alarm systems and automatic sprinklers, increased requirements for fireproofing and fire extinguishers, improved eating and toilet facilities for workers, and limited the workweek for women and children.10
MODERN WORKERS, WITHOUT GENERATIONS OF PROTECTION
In a cruel irony, workers in the sharing economy—hailed as the height of the modern workplace—find themselves without any of the workplace protections enjoyed by their great grandparents. Although workplace protections still exist for full-time and part-time employees, gig workers, as independent contractors, are outside the social safety net of basic workplace protections.
In recent years, the number of workers classified as independent contractors has grown steadily, as businesses have deliberately restructured the work relationship, abandoning the employment model to escape social responsibilities.11 Independent contractors in the United States do not receive workers’ compensation, unemployment benefits, paid vacation, retirement, overtime, disability accommodations, family leave protections, protection from discrimination, or the right to form unions.
The majority of sharing economy services consider their workers to be independent contractors, or 1099 workers, named for the end-of-year tax document they receive that details their income. In addition to freeing companies from the obligation to pay into unemployment insurance funds or to make an employer’s contribution to Social Security and Medicare (7.65 percent of the employee’s salary), classifying workers as independent contractors allows companies to create a two-tier system in terms of benefits without facing complaints of discrimination. Full-time workers can get 401k contributions, health insurance, and stock options, for which contract workers are deemed ineligible. It’s no wonder that in 2011, the American Bar Association noted that a federal study estimated 3.4 million employees were classified as independent contractors when they should be reported as employees; a 2009 study by the Treasury Department’s inspector general estimated that misclassification costs the United States fifty-four billion dollars in underpayment of employment taxes.
The lack of workers’ compensation means that any worker injured on the job is not compensated for on-the-job injuries, and workers are responsible for their own health expenses if they are injured. Emma—the twenty-six-year-old TaskRabbit on painkillers—is fortunate enough to qualify for Medicaid, a situation she described as “necessary.” But other workers who get hurt while working face a double whammy, gaining medical expenses even as they lose work and income.
For instance, David, fifty-four-year-old Kitchensurfing Tonight chef, was also injured on the job. Kitchensurfing Tonight provided clients with on-demand chefs who arrived in Kitchensurfing uniforms of black chef jackets or aprons, wearing backpacks and dragging insulated bags weighing as much as forty pounds—the ingredients for as many as sixteen servings of steak, fish, and vegetables and all of the necessary pots, knives, and cutting boards. But while the chefs wore uniforms, they were often without shoes.
Proper footwear is required in most professional kitchens, where workers may encounter hot, dripping grease; spills of boiling water; slippery floors; and the discomfort of standing for long periods. As a result of such dangers, absorbent sneakers and open-back shoes, such as clogs, are not allowed at the Culinary Institute of America, one of the top culinary schools in the country.12 Yet, chefs for Kitchensurfing were instructed to ask clients if they should remove their shoes when entering a home. Kitchensurfing’s Secret Diner program, which allowed workers to receive a cash bonus if they followed a checklist of rules, included the shoe-removal offer as one of the requirements, along with explaining the meal’s conten
ts and asking how diners wanted their meat cooked.
It was cold and slushy in February 2015 when David arrived at his client’s house to cook that evening’s meal. It was only his second week of work on Kitchensurfing. Not surprisingly, the client accepted the his offer to remove his wet shoes. His accident occurred after he’d completed the job, as he prepared to leave. “I [had] had snow boots on,” he said. “I had my backpack full of stuff, and I hopped to put my boots on that I’d taken off at the door, and I just twisted something. I go to step out of their apartment and my knee just gave out, and I collapsed.”
But his shift wasn’t over. He still had two more households to cook for. Kitchensurfing used algorithms to assign locations that were within walking distance or along the same transit line, and that evening David had to take the subway to get to his next cooking gig. “It was tough. I was down on Houston Street, and it was a long walk to the last one. If I could have found a cab, I would have taken one,” he said with a low chuckle. “And there were a lot of stairs on the subway—that was the killer, all those stairs. . . . I fell down the subway stairs a couple of times. My knee just gave out. I couldn’t feel it. It was numb. It was all, ‘Aughhhh.’ So yeah, that was a long night.”
He called Kitchensurfing the next day to let someone know what happened. “She was nice. I was like, ‘I have to go see the doctor.’ She was like, ‘Take as much time as you need.’ And, you know: ‘The job will be waiting for you,’” he said. “They were really cool, they were really good about that. So that made it easier, that I didn’t need to rush back.”
The Kitchensurfing administration didn’t mention sick pay or reimbursement for the medical expense of visiting the doctor. David missed a full week and a half of work—unpaid—and then returned at three days a week in order to ease in. An MRI revealed what he suspected: a herniated disk. In an effort to stave off the need for surgery, David is going to weekly acupressure and physical therapy—at a cost of about a hundred dollars a week, out of pocket. “I’m hoping [the surgery] is not as invasive as it used to be. I had [a herniated disk] in my neck back in the ’90s. I couldn’t take time off to do it, because I was raising my daughters. But back then they said it would be a six-week recuperation, and I can’t do that right now, either,” he said, chuckling softly. “And you know how it is, I’ll have to sign something saying that there’s a possibility that you’ll wake up paralyzed. Anything having to do with your spine. So I’m hoping this combination of physical therapy and acupressure will allow me to not have to do that.”
As independent contractors, Kitchensurfing workers are not covered by workers’ compensation. They also don’t qualify for employer-sponsored disability compensation. “We’re just the hired help. We’re freelancers,” David said. “I think it’d be easier, if it happened on the job, to get some sort of worker’s comp.”
But as hired help, David was on the job when he got hurt—he’s just not covered under the independent contractor model. He’s not the only worker who has experienced long-term health issues as a result of sharing economy work. Shaun, thirty-seven, also experienced a back injury while working as a TaskRabbit. “I have to stop with the moving assignments because I got hurt,” he said. “My mind thinks I’m twenty-five, but my body is way older. [Laughs.] And I keep telling myself, ‘Yeah, let me just lose a couple of pounds, let me just lose the stomach or at least get my flexibility back before doing things like that again.’”
Shaun’s injury occurred during a moving task. “I helped lift a dresser. Had to pull it up a flight of stairs. It was two dressers; and even though I had assistance, I’m carrying stuff that weighs about 125, and my current abilities can only allow me to carry 50 pounds. So, yeah, I stretched my back, and I just walked out of there saying, ‘I’m okay.’ But when I’m out, I’m like, ‘Ouch.’”
ADVANCE PLANNING IN AN ON-DEMAND AGE
The stories of Shaun, David, and Emma are not unique. Part of the shifting of risk from employer to worker means than workers are responsible for knowing their own limits—what might make them ill, what might injure them, and how much they can accomplish in a few hours—and plan accordingly. That type of advance planning is challenging enough for people with steady white-collar employment. But for workers who find themselves in a variety of workplaces and dealing with different “bosses” daily, such planning is nearly impossible.
For TaskRabbit workers, especially, this can be a problem. Under the peer-to-peer model, workers are often hired by individuals who may not fully understand what they’re asking them to do, or who may downplay the description to avoid scaring off a potential worker. Natasha, twenty-eight, tries to weed out work that she’s uncomfortable with, but sometimes clients aren’t forthcoming with details.
Recently I had a task where a woman said, “I had construction in my home. I just need you to help me clean.” What she really meant is all of these chemical cleaners. She brought gloves. She brought a face mask. She’s like, “Well, there’s all this dust from the construction, and I need you to take a vacuum; but mostly I need you to dust with rags.” And there’s this chemical that she got from the contractor, because the contractors didn’t want to stay any longer if she didn’t pay them. So she got the fluid that they use to clean up the plaster dust. . . and she wanted me to do that. So we did it together for a little bit, and then she’s like, “I’m going to go, because I’m getting sick.” Well, what the hell do you think I’m doing, you know? I’m getting sick, too.
Same thing with yesterday. I’m getting sick from the dust. I blew my nose and dust came out. Stuff like that, and they just don’t care. Those people don’t care.
It’s hard to believe, but Natasha is actually one of the lucky ones—at least her client provided a mask and gloves and worked with her for a while. Other TaskRabbits have found themselves working alone and without even the most basic safety precautions. Jamal, twenty-five, was hired to clean a small fish pond on a property in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn for a client he described as a movie stylist for feature films.
It was a very nice place, a backyard with a pool. And he hadn’t cleaned it out in years, so the pool was just real—oh, it was just—I don’t know what it was. . . . I think it was just mildew, and mosquitoes, everywhere. So he wanted me to go into it, scoop the stuff out, and that’s pretty much it. And then, add clean water. I guess it was one of those little ponds you put fish in. It had a little flowing waterfall. Kind of peaceful—a little meditation pond. Very small, but it’s very deep. It was quite deep, and I had to climb into it, too. I’d say it’s probably three feet deep. The stuff came up to right here [he pointed to right below his knees].
“So that’s probably the most disgusting thing I ever did in my life. I just had everything through my toes, it felt slimy. I literally have a visceral reaction to that,” he said with a laugh. Fortunately, the pond wasn’t full, but Jamal doesn’t know what he was standing in, barefoot. “He hadn’t put water there in year. It was just stuff—I don’t know what,” he said. “It was green. It was green and slimy. I rolled up my jeans. I took off my shoes and socks. . . . I just got into it and did it. Yeah, so I have nightmares about that.” The experience was so disgusting that Jamal photographed his feet afterward, showing them covered with a thin layer of brown and green muck (see fig. 11).
Figure 11. Jamal’s feet after he cleaned a fish pond in Brooklyn. Photo by respondent.
Small ponds are usually cleaned out with a pump or vacuum—not by a person standing in the pond. When people do have to step into a pond, it’s usually recommended that they wear tall rubber wader boots to protect their legs and feet from whatever may be in the water and mud.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that TaskRabbit’s newest advertising materials have veered away from “neighbors helping neighbors” to: “We do chores. You live life” (see fig. 12). This new motto further emphasizes how the service makes it possible for clients to outsource unpleasant work to others, a concept that Juliet Schor refers to as the �
�servant economy.”13 It’s true that Natasha and Jamal could simply refuse to do the work. Numerous TaskRabbits noted that TaskRabbit orientation emphasizes worker safety, and that Taskers are told to leave any task where they feel physically uncomfortable. But such policies ignore the reality of TaskRabbit work for many Strugglers and even some Strivers: if you are financially dependent on an afternoon of work, you may feel like you can’t really afford to walk away from the task. By the time a worker arrives at a location, he’s likely spent at least an hour on traveling and on communicating with the client—further decreasing the appeal of such an unpaid “choice.”
Figure 12. TaskRabbit advertising campaign noting, “We do chores. You live life.” Photo by author.
DANGEROUS WORK DELIVERED VIA APP
Many workers probably encounter work that they’d rather not do at their full-time job—whether it’s a white-collar worker fixing a jammed copier, a plumber squeezing into a crawlspace to fix a pipe, or even a teacher grading research papers. TaskRabbit and Kitchensurfing are a far cry from the dangers offered by fishing, logging, or even general construction work. But the sharing economy claims to be “fundamentally changing the way we live and work.”14 Shouldn’t that fundamental change involve getting rid of unpleasant work, or at least making it less dangerous?
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