Payroll fraud and the shift to contingent employment are robbing workers of wages, benefits, and job

[Omaha Steve]

http://prospect.org/article/workers-edge

One of the most significant contributing causes of the widening inequality and insecurity in the American workforce is the accelerating shift to what economists call contingent employment. That means any form of employment that is not a standard payroll job with a regular paycheck. It can take the form of temps, contract workers, part time jobs, or jobs with irregular hours. A study by the GAO found that fully one-third of the U.S. workforce, or 42.6 million workers, was contingent, meaning in a work arrangement that is “not long-term, year-round, full-time employment with a single employer. “

It is a common myth that the shift to precarious, irregular employment reflects either the structure of the new, digital economy or the preferences of workers themselves. But in reality, most contingent work is the result of efforts by employers to undermine wages, job protections and worker bargaining power. Work that could be (and once was) standard payroll employment is turned into substandard jobs, because corporations prefer it that way. And much of this shift is illegal, even though the laws are weakly enforced.

A leading scholar of this phenomenon, Professor Arne Kalleberg of the University of North Carolina, says that the rise of contingent work has led to “Pervasive job insecurity, the growth of dual-earner families, and 24/7 work schedules for many workers….These changes in work have, in turn, magnified social problems such as poverty, work-family conflicts, political polarization, and disparities by race, ethnicity, and gender.”

At heart of contingent work is the misclassification of regular workers as independent contractors, a practices that deprives workers of income, benefits such as workers compensation, and rights to form bargaining units—and deprives government of tax revenues. While some contractors are truly independent high-paid professionals, working in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the New York financial industry while enjoying the flexibility of their various relationships with the companies that give them assignments, many more are low-paid workers who are misclassified. A Fiscal Policy Institute study of the New York state workforce in 2005 found that 10.6 percent of the private sector workforce was misclassified. Similarly, a study done for the U.S. Department of Labor in 2000 reported that as many as thirty percent of employers misclassified some of their employees.

FULL story at link.

[Sherman A1]

1. K&R

Thanks for posting.

[beveeheart]

2. My 25 yr old grandson just recently became an "independent contractor"

not by choice. He's an apprentice electrician without any benefits including insurance or worker's comp. Or at least he was until I explained to him the risks of not having insurance in his field of work. He kept telling me that he didn't need it because he never gets sick. I reminded him of the time when he walked backwards over the roof of a low building and fell to the ground. Fortunately he wasn't seriously injured, more a blow to his ego than to his body. He's insured now through Connect for Colorado and thinks he'd better start looking for a job with a company that does have benefits and worker's comp.