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Workers Built the Platform Economy, But They’re Not Seeing Its Rewards
By classifying workers as contractors, platform companies avoid paying core employment obligations while retaining tight control over how the work is done.
May 29, 2025
Alejandro G. thought that driving full-time for Uber in Houston offered freedom—flexible hours, quick cash, and time to care for his young son. But that promise faded fast.
“There are hours when I make $20,” he told me. “And there are hours when I make $2.” As his pay dropped, he pawned his computer and camera, began rationing the insulin he takes to manage his diabetes—putting his health at risk—and started driving seven days a week, often late into the night, just to break even.
Alejandro, whose real name is withheld for his privacy, is one of millions of workers powering a billion-dollar labor model built on legal loopholes. Companies like Uber insist they are tech platforms, not employers, and that their workers are independent contractors. This sleight of hand allows them to sidestep minimum wage laws, paid sick leave, and other workplace protections, while shifting the financial risks and responsibilities of employment onto the workers. It also lets them avoid employer taxes, draining funds from public coffers.
If gig workers were properly classified, public companies would have to disclose pay data, showing just how far below the median these workers earn, and how high executive compensation soars above them.
A new Human Rights Watch report looks at seven major platform companies operating in the U.S.—Amazon Flex, DoorDash, Favor, Instacart, Lyft, Shipt, and Uber—and finds that their labor model violates international human rights standards. These companies promise flexibility and opportunity, but the reality for many workers is far more precarious. In a survey of 127 platform workers in Texas, we found that after subtracting expenses and benefits, the median hourly pay was just $5.12, including tips. This is nearly 30% below the federal minimum wage, and about 70% below a living wage in Texas.
Seventy-five percent of workers we surveyed said they had struggled to pay for housing in the past year. Thirty-five percent said they couldn’t cover a $400 emergency expense. Over a third had been in a work-related car accident. Many said they sold possessions, relied on food stamps, or borrowed from family and friends to get by. Their labor keeps the system running—but the system isn’t built to work for them.
By classifying workers as contractors, platform companies avoid paying core employment obligations while retaining tight control over how the work is done. The platforms often use algorithms and automated systems to assign jobs, set pay rates, monitor performance, and deactivate workers without warning. In our survey, 65 workers said they feared being cut off from a platform, and 40 had already experienced it. Nearly half were later cleared of wrongdoing.
Companies use incentives that feel like rewards but function more like traps. Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash dangle “quests,” “challenges,” and “surges” to push workers to stay on a shift for longer or hit quotas. These schemes lure workers into chasing bonuses that rarely reflect the true cost of the work. One Uber driver in Houston said, “They are like puppet masters. They psychologically manipulate you.”
Access to higher-paying gigs is also conditioned on behavior. Platforms use customer ratings and performance scores to shape who gets the best jobs. One Shipt worker in Michigan said her pay plummeted immediately after she received two four-star reviews, down from her usual five. Ratings are hard to challenge, and recovering from a low score can take weeks. Workers feel forced to accept every job and appease every customer, reinforcing a system that rewards compliance over fairness.
These aren’t the conditions of self-employment. They’re the conditions of control.
This labor model also drains public resources. In Texas alone, Human Rights Watch estimates that misclassification of platform workers in ride share, food delivery, and in-home services cost the state over $111 million in unemployment insurance contributions between 2020 and 2022. These are public funds that could have strengthened social protection or public services. Instead, they’re absorbed into corporate profits—a quiet transfer of public wealth into private hands.
In 2024, Uber reported $43.9 billion in revenue and nearly $10 billion in net income, calling the fourth quarter its “strongest ever.” DoorDash pulled in $10.72 billion, up 24% from the previous year. Combined, their market valuation exceeds $250 billion.
But workers are pushing back, and policymakers are starting to listen. From June 2 to 13, the 113th session of the International Labour Conference—the United Nations-backed forum where global labor standards are negotiated—will convene to debate a binding treaty on decent work in the platform economy. The message is clear: Workers are demanding rules that protect their rights.
The U.S. can start by updating employment classification standards and adopting clear criteria to determine whether a platform worker is truly independent. We also need greater transparency. If gig workers were properly classified, public companies would have to disclose pay data, showing just how far below the median these workers earn, and how high executive compensation soars above them.
This isn’t about rejecting technology. It’s about making sure new forms of work don’t replicate old forms of exploitation or create new ones, by hiding them behind an app.
Alejandro doesn’t need an algorithm to tell him when to work harder. He has a right to a wage he can live on, protections he can count on, and a system that doesn’t punish him for getting sick, injured, or speaking up.
He and millions like him built the platform economy. It’s time they shared more than the burden.
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Let the 2017 Tax Cuts Expire
It is high time for elected leaders to admit publicly that tax increases can sometimes be necessary to allow the government to continue or even expand vital programs.
May 27, 2025
The tax cuts enacted during the first Trump administration were scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025, returning us to the higher pre-2017 tax levels.
President Donald Trump now wants Congress to renew these tax cuts. But despite deep proposed reductions in many vital programs, extending the 2017 tax rates would guarantee a huge 10-year increase in the national debt.
With only a one vote majority, House Republicans have passed a bill doing exactly this. One must hope that the Senate will not go along with this irresponsible bill.
Which would Americans prefer? To pay somewhat higher taxes but live in a thriving economy, or pay lower taxes but live in a depressed economy?
In today's circumstances, letting the reduced taxes die a natural death would be the best possible action. Although pre-2017 tax levels were far from perfect, restoring them would substantially reduce annual deficits.
This wouldn't require Congress to do anything, which is what Congress does best.
In 2017 we were told that the tax cuts would stimulate so much additional economic activity that the reduced tax rates applied to the stronger economy would "pay" for the cuts. Instead, they drove up the national debt.
The draconian program cuts that are supposed to help pay for extending the 2017 tax rates will injure many people who voted for the new administration.
What are Republican legislators more interested in: reducing budget shortfalls, or reducing the taxes of their wealthy campaign donors?
If balancing the budget were their priority, they would be willing to consider tax increases in order to avoid slashing services for America's less fortunate people—Medicaid, food stamps, housing support, taking care of veterans. And they certainly wouldn't reduce the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget, which brings in several tax dollars for each dollar spent.
Many Republicans have taken the "Norquist Pledge" never to vote for tax increases, a pledge which is so unwise that it amounts to political malpractice. There can be situations where reducing taxes is desirable, but no responsible leader who has taken Norquist's pledge could ever vote to reduce taxes.
Voting to reduce taxes would require them to make two false assumptions. First, that they can identify exactly how much the reductions should be. And second, that new circumstances will never arise where the reductions need to be reversed.
Letting the 2017 tax reductions expire will be the only way that Republican politicians who have unwisely taken the "pledge" can act responsibly without violating the pledge, since they would not need to vote for the increased taxes that the expiration of the reductions would automatically produce.
It is high time for elected leaders to admit publicly that tax increases can sometimes be necessary to allow the government to continue or even expand vital programs.
Whacking programs like Medicaid is an especially bad idea at a time when displacement of workers by artificial intelligence (AI) means that fewer and fewer jobs will be secure. These former workers will lose their job-related medical insurance, putting their health and that of their families in jeopardy. Many ill people will die prematurely, if they haven't starved first thanks to fewer food stamps.
Everybody else would also be damaged if, as is likely, this results in a major recession.
Medical care is now about one sixth of our economy. Doctors and hospitals employ large numbers of people and are now substantial parts of many local economies. The closure of hospitals caused by reductions in Medicaid will gravely harm these localities. Abruptly injuring one sixth of our economy is not going to be a great idea!
Which would Americans prefer? To pay somewhat higher taxes but live in a thriving economy, or pay lower taxes but live in a depressed economy?
People understandably don't like taxes. Equally understandably, politicians like to tell voters what they want to hear. But they also have a duty to tell the public the truth and to educate voters about where their bread is truly buttered.
One way or another, we all need to be reminded of the old but true saying: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. TANSTAAFL!
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GOP Proposes $4.5 Trillion Tax Giveaway to the Rich While 'Ransacking' Food Stamps and Medicaid
"House Republican leadership put a giant bullseye on Medicaid, with the intent to strip Americans of their healthcare benefits to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations."
Feb 12, 2025
House Republicans unveiled a draft budget resolution on Wednesday that calls for $4.5 trillion in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy while proposing $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other programs.
Lawmakers are set to mark up the House GOP's budget blueprint on Thursday as Republicans look to craft a sprawling reconciliation bill that can pass both chambers of Congress with a simple-majority vote. Last week, Senate Republicans released their own budget resolution that proposed significant cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other spending that benefits working-class families.
"Instead of tackling rising prices and delivering relief for American families, House Republicans are charging ahead with trillions of dollars in deeply unpopular tax breaks for billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk," Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said Wednesday in response to the House GOP resolution.
"And, they're paying for their billionaire handouts by ransacking healthcare, food assistance, and other vital programs that American workers and families rely on," Jacquez added.
The new resolution released by the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee specifically calls on the chamber's energy and commerce panel to "submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than" $880 billion over the next decade. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over Medicaid.
The measure also instructs the House Committee on Agriculture, which has jurisdiction over SNAP, to cut no less than $230 billion in spending between fiscal years 2025 and 2034.
"They wanna do a giant tax cut that disproportionately helps the rich while taking away people's health insurance and food while still adding trillions to the debt," Bobby Kogan, a former Senate Budget Committee staffer who is now senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote in response to the resolution.
Overall, the House GOP's budget resolution calls for $2 trillion in cuts to "mandatory spending" over the next decade, taking aim at a category that includes Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and SNAP. While Social Security benefits cannot be cut through the reconciliation process, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) can.
Congressional Republicans have outlined a number of ways they could slash Medicaid and SNAP, including punitive new work requirements that analysts say would strip benefits from tens of millions of low-income people.
But Families USA executive director Anthony Wright said Wednesday that "we don't need to know the mechanisms of how Medicaid would be cut to know the impact would be catastrophic: The sheer size of the proposed cuts means millions of Americans losing coverage, hospitals and clinics plunged into budget shortfalls, and healthcare services we all depend on being eliminated."
"This budget resolution is a five-alarm fire alert for our healthcare," said Wright. "House Republican leadership put a giant bullseye on Medicaid, with the intent to strip Americans of their healthcare benefits to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations."
Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for the progressive coalition Unrig Our Economy, issued a similarly scathing statement on Wednesday, arguing that House Republicans "showed us that what they value is more tax breaks for greedy billionaires and giant corporations with everyday people paying the price."
"At a time when everyday Americans face increasingly higher prices, Speaker Johnson and his stooges want to write billionaires a check and force working-class people to foot the bill for their outrageous tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-wealthy," said Christian. "Everyday Americans will not stand for these games—it's time for Republicans in Congress to end their campaign that puts the ultra-wealthy first on the backs of the rest of us."
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