These two staffing firms place employees in a spread of hospitality positions, together with as servers, bartenders, line and prep cooks and, sure, dishwashers. The citations assert that the businesses misclassified the employees as unbiased contractors and in doing so, violated the town’s minimal wage ordinance and state regulation on paid sick go away.
Colorado’s labor regulation defines an worker as any one who performs labor or providers for the good thing about an employer. Elements that go into making that willpower embrace the diploma of management an employer workouts over the individual, and the diploma to which the individual’s work is the first work of the employer. Against this, an unbiased contractor is taken into account somebody who works primarily freed from management and course and is “customarily engaged” in an unbiased commerce or enterprise associated to the service carried out.
The Denver circumstances might at first look look like small potatoes. However they’re truly a really large deal. The circumstances display the unfold of the exploitative gig enterprise mannequin far past Uber drivers and DoorDash meals deliverers, to embody a rising variety of jobs which have lengthy been carried out by staff with authorized protections. And the circumstances illustrate the pressing want for presidency intervention to safeguard core office rights.
As a result of office legal guidelines shield staff and never unbiased contractors, gig firms like Uber and Lyft save a bucket of money on each wages and taxes by avoiding the obligations that each different employer should comply with: wage-related legal guidelines in addition to unemployment, Social Safety and Medicare taxes. Consequently, gig employees can discover themselves paid sub-minimum wages, for instance, or left with out employees’ compensation when injured or killed on the job. One other consequence is that law-abiding employers face unfair competitors with companies that don’t comply with the foundations, and significant safety-net packages like unemployment insurance coverage lose badly needed funds.
The Denver circumstances make it clear that the gig enterprise mannequin isn’t nearly drivers and meals supply employees anymore. Instawork, for instance, also places warehouse, housekeeping, janitorial and retail employees, and Gigpro places employees at lodges. San Francisco’s metropolis legal professional, David Chiu, sued Qwick, a hospitality staffing firm, final yr, succinctly summing up the gig enterprise mannequin: “Qwick is inequality disguised as innovation, a staffing firm with an app that’s in flagrant violation of labor and employment legal guidelines.”