This is a very touchy area. Firms can pay $20 an hour for cleaning services precisely because they're not paying for sick days, health insurance and the like. If they have to pay all that, then the wages go down. This is one of many reasons why a large company will pay a company like Accenture two or three times the salary compensation of it's own employees. (There are other reasons too, like having someone to blame when things go wrong.)
In my mind, as long as everyone has open eyes up front, it's all good. If Uber treats people poorly, they can go to Lyft. The key is insuring more competition for the workers. That more than anything else will drive how they get treated. If there are 100 cleaning jobs, and only 90 workers, and multiple vendors, then Handy can't mistreat the workers.
On a side note, I've used Handy in the past, and have had mixed experiences. Some are great, some show up so late that I've had to cancel appointments. Not sure if this would have changed if they were employees.
> Firms can pay $20 an hour for cleaning services precisely because they're not paying for sick days, health insurance and the like. If they have to pay all that, then the wages go down.
Or they could, you know, charge more.
The problem with "let the market solve it" is that customers are generally extremely price-sensitive, and if all the other cleaning companies are getting away with misclassifying their workers, the one that does the right thing and treats them as employees voluntarily will be at a serious market disadvantage. If Good Guy Cleaners charges $25 while Bad Guy Cleaners charges $20, Bad Guy Cleaners will get rich and Good Guy Cleaners will go out of business. The only way out of the trap is to remove the option for any players in the marketplace to do the wrong thing.
Not necessarily. The price for these services probably settles at an equilibrium relatively quickly due to competition, and a company charging above the equilibrium for the same service won't be able to stay in business for long. They could seek to have higher quality workers and then indeed they could charge more. But at that point it's not even the same product and so what are we even talking about?
What happens if suddenly everyone is charging $25 - and prices for everything else have gone up too - and consumers responding by reducing consumption?
One suspects that both Good Guy Cleaners and Bad Guy Cleaners are going to have problems.
Is it 100% clear that there's a Good Guy and Bad Guy here? Is employment 100% preferable to freelancers? In many cases it is, but there are people who would say, "I get my benefits from somewhere else, and don't want to be locked in to 30+ hours per week. I prefer to pocket a higher hourly wage."
Why force a company to choose one way or the other?
I'm now talking in the abstract, and not defending one company over another. I'm also not defending a situation where there is a clear case of everyone actually being full time employees.
In my mind, as long as everyone has open eyes up front, it's all good. If Uber treats people poorly, they can go to Lyft. The key is insuring more competition for the workers. That more than anything else will drive how they get treated. If there are 100 cleaning jobs, and only 90 workers, and multiple vendors, then Handy can't mistreat the workers.
On a side note, I've used Handy in the past, and have had mixed experiences. Some are great, some show up so late that I've had to cancel appointments. Not sure if this would have changed if they were employees.