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living wage
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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Millions in US Toiling Under This Imposed Housing Crisis Need One Thing: Straight-Up Cash
The real-life stories of our clients moving through eviction court show us that what most struggling families really need is simple: money.
Oct 12, 2024
Katrina is the mother of three children, one of whom lives with major disabilities that require Katrina to spend most of her time as a caregiver. Katrina was already struggling to make ends meet, but then an unexpected car repair and reduced work hours caused her to fall behind on her rent.
Darren was hurt on the job and lost six weeks of pay. Now he is trying to put in as much work time as his employer will give him, but the pay is only about $17 an hour. Darren shares custody of two very young children, ages three and nine months, and he is desperately struggling to catch up on overdue rent.
Sheila‘s husband has been arrested and jailed for violently abusing her. Safe for the moment, Sheila has returned to work as a manager at a retail business. But she owes several months of back rent, plus late fees and court fees. It is more than she can pull together, so Sheila will have to move within the month. She is putting most of her possessions into storage. She is also packing a few trash bags of clothes to take with her to her new home—a friend’s unheated garage with no access to plumbing.
I teach a law school clinic in Indianapolis, where my students and I represent Katrina, Darren, Sheila and other clients in eviction court. They have a shared need, one that also applies to the nine million U.S. households that are behind on their rent right now:
They need money.
Katrina, Darren, and Sheila are among the three of every four households who qualify for subsidized housing, but do not receive it because we don’t fully fund the programs. They are forced to try to pay market-rate rent, which takes up most of their income even in the good times. In the bad times, the rent is more than what is coming in. So we see them in eviction court.
Turns out that some of the usual suspects—volunteer work, random acts of kindness—may not be as impactful as we hoped in delivering happiness. But what does work? You guessed it: money, especially for low-income folks.
We can do better than this. We know we can, because just a few years ago Katrina, Darren, and Sheila and almost everyone else we see eviction court now were safely housed. Emergency rental assistance, expanded child tax credits, maximized food stamps, and extended unemployment benefits prevented more than three million eviction cases, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In fact, poverty rates actually dropped during the Covid pandemic.
Since then, researchers from Columbia University and City University of New York, CUNY, studied the impact of those benefits, and confirmed what we saw in our clients’ lives. “We find that direct cash payments were the single most useful tool for helping people ride out the pandemic and were first and foremost, used to cover basic needs, including rent or mortgage payments, utilities, and food,” they said.
That is powerful evidence pointing us toward what we can do to help. Add that to the pile of research showing that strings-free cash leads to dramatically positive outcomes. Specifically to housing, studies have shown that unconditional cash given to unhoused persons both reduced homelessness and saved money that would have been spent on government programs the recipients. Cash is so effective because this and other studies show that low-income people are far more likely to spend cash assistance on rent, food, and transportation than “temptation goods” like alcohol or drugs.
More broadly, analysis in the Annual Review of Psychology reviewed multiple studies examining what actually makes human beings happier. Turns out that some of the usual suspects—volunteer work, random acts of kindness—may not be as impactful as we hoped in delivering happiness. But what does work? You guessed it: money, especially for low-income folks.
“A growing number of rigorous preregistered experiments suggest that such cash transfers and other forms of financial support can provide an efficient mechanism for enhancing happiness,” wrote Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn, professors of psychology at the University of British Columbia. “Cash seems to be as good or better than other interventions that carry similar costs, including psychotherapy and job training.”
This analysis matches what we see in court. Would Katrina and Darren and Sheila benefit from psychotherapy? Maybe. But for most clients it appears that their financial crises are causing their mental health struggles, more so than the other way around. Would job training help? Again, maybe. But these people are already doing work in the community—home healthcare, food, service, retail work, warehouse work, etc.—that is essential for our economy. So, shouldn’t those jobs pay a living wage?
As we evaluate presidential candidates’ responses to our housing crisis and the clamor over building more housing, it is worth keeping this simplicity in mind. Until and unless we create much more subsidized housing, which is the real solution to the crisis, what our clients need most is straight-up cash.Keep ReadingShow Less
Workers Who Help Americans Get Healthcare Benefits Deserve Fair Compensation
Companies like Maximus that are getting so much government money should have to create good jobs with liveable wages, decent benefits, and the right to unionize.
May 24, 2024
I love my job.
Every day I get to answer phone calls from some of the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act and help them get the healthcare benefits they need.
Even though I do an essential job, my employer—the federal call center run by Maximus in Tampa, Florida—does not pay me enough or provide me with the healthcare benefits needed to be able to treat my own health condition.
Maximus signed a 10-year deal worth $6.6 billion in 2022 to field calls about the federal healthcare marketplace and Medicare. The company has 10,000 employees across 12 call centers, mostly in the South and Southwest.
I’m supposed to visit the doctor every three months to treat a chronic health condition, but because our deductibles are so high, I haven’t been in two years.
Companies like Maximus that are getting so much government money should have to create good jobs with liveable wages, decent benefits, and the right to unionize—the same conditions that federal workers enjoy. President Joe Biden has taken some important steps, especially to set high standards for construction workers on new big infrastructure and clean energy projects. But more needs to be done to make sure service contract workers like me get a fair reward for our labor—instead of letting so much of public money go to rich executives and shareholders.
While many of us at Maximus who field calls all day make around $17 an hour, our CEO, Bruce Caswell, got a 17% raise last year to $7.3 million. Over the past four years combined, Maximus has awarded Caswell over $27 million and spent over half a billion dollars on stock buybacks and dividends to enrich shareholders.
This September will mark 10 years of working at Maximus for me. My only major raise in that time came when President Biden set the minimum wage for all federal contract workers at $15 dollars in 2022. While we appreciate the pay hike, for a single mother of two the minimum doesn’t cut it, I need a real living wage. Instead, my only raise in the last two years was 22 cents.
Our healthcare benefits aren’t much better. I’m supposed to visit the doctor every three months to treat a chronic health condition, but because our deductibles are so high, I haven’t been in two years.
Because of the issues with pay and healthcare, last year I joined the campaign to unionize Maximus workers with the Communication Workers of America. The process is long, and different locations are moving at different speeds, but we’ve already had some victories.
After we protested our high health costs, Maximus dropped our health insurance deductibles significantly.
We need more help, though. I’ve participated in several protests at my call center demanding $25 an hour and increased benefits from Maximus.
I’ve also gone to Washington, D.C., to call on the Biden administration to follow through on its promise to create “good jobs” with federal money. Last fall I even got to take my daughter with me to speak with lawmakers in Congress.
I’m not going to quit because I don’t feel properly valued or because the benefits are not good. I’m going to stay and fight within the company to make it better, because the ACA is a great program that is helping millions of Americans.
And even though I know that I can be fired at any time—Maximus laid off more than 700 employees in one month last year—I’m standing up for my rights. I’m standing up for a better company and for a better future for my children.
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