and distribution centers that depend on
independent contractors.
Some workers, Weil said, aren’t even aware that
their employer isn’t actually the company where
they report to work every day. They might realize
it only when they lose their job or are injured at
work and learn that they aren’t protected by the
employment rules and safety protections that
traditional workers are.
“A lot of risk has been shifted on to individual
workers who are much less able to deal with
that risk,” Weil said.
There is no definitive data on how many
Americans are now employed in these
workplace structures. But experts say they’re
increasingly common.
Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor and labor
movements at the City University of New York,
said people most affected by such fissuring
used to be blue collar workers without college
educations. In recent years, the trend has crept
up the income scale into tech jobs and others
that require college degrees.
Deunionization has also taken a toll by eroding
workers’ voices and influence, she said. The
proportion of wage and salary workers who
belong to unions was just 10.5% in 2018, down
from 20.1% in 1983, according to the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics.
“Keeping workers happy is a very low priority,”
Milkman said.
This marks a shift from decades past, she said,
when employers tended to make deeper
commitments. But beginning in the 1970s,
experts said, more public companies began
to regard shareholders as their premier
priority. Their focus has increasingly been to
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