stlmag.com^ July 2019
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TECHNOLOGY’S CHANGING SO FAST, THE LEGAL SYSTEM
IS RACING TO CATCH UP.
BY JEANNETTE COOPERMAN
- WHIRLING GIGS -
Saint Louis University law professor
Miriam Cherry spent last year at the
United Nations, probing the ethical
challenges of tech-based multinational
crowdwork—in other words, anything
“done by a large group of people on open
call on a tech platform.” If I’d hired some-
body in Mumbai to transcribe the tape
of this interview, it would be considered
crowdwork, which has become a huge
part of the gig economy.
Decades ago, such workers’ coun-
terparts might have been day laborers
sitting around waiting for a big job or
women at home doing piecework. Today,
some argue, its tech platform makes
crowdwork entirely different from those
earlier forms, but Cherry sees many of
the same opportunities for exploitation.
Since the Industrial Revolution, labor
and employment laws have layered in
protections for the worker—but these
protections are all predicated on a steady
job in a physical workplace. What hap-
pens when people are trying to cobble
together a living working long hours
at one or two or three flexible jobs and
they’re injured or need benefits? “A judge
in Italy said these workers are definitely
independent contractors,” says Cherry,
“because the worker gets to decide when
he or she works. The U.K. said, ‘Hey, they
look to us more like employees.’ Belgium
says they are employees.”
Here, the response has generally been
“You’re an independent contractor;
you’re on your own.” And in civil suits
that could’ve resolved this issue for all
of us, companies (among them Uber and
Lyft) have settled out of court instead.
Nor are these employers willing to turn
over HR data—they say it has value to
them; they could sell this information. So
it’s anybody’s guess how the gig economy
is affecting the U.S. unemployment rate
and other economic measures.
One thing’s sure, Cherry says: “Crowd-
work doesn’t map that well onto the old
system.” Gig labor is the new Wild West.- FUNNY MONEY -
First money was gold, then green, then
invisible. Now it’s sometimes cryptocur-
rency—Bitcoin and the like—and the law
must respond. “The big change will not
necessarily be with Bitcoin and other dig-
ital transactions,” says Michael Kahn,
senior counsel at Capes Sokol, “but with
the concept on which it’s all based: block-
chain technology.”
Kahn explains blockchain as “an open
ledger of information that can be used to
record and track any sort of transaction,”
not just cryptocurrencies. “A global net-
work of computers is creating this public
ledger, a database in which every trans-
action can be traced.” The technology’s
brilliant, he says, and its potential uses
are only now becoming apparent. “It’s