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Independent contractors require lower levels of firm-specific knowledge since independence in contracting is derived from the knowledge self-sufficiency of the contractor. By presenting this arrangement through a contractual perspective and a knowledge-based perspective, this chapter is able to describe the independent contractors' market. The chapter also explains the implications of the growth of individual independent contractors, small and micro-businesses, and networks. The trends presented in this chapter suggest that future small businesses will tend to employ fewer people. The chapter explains how the growth of independent contracting generally depends on the externalization of workers, the increasing number of workers in flexihire arrangements, the increasing demand for the supply of services outside the firm, and other such factors.

This chapter charts the emergence of the predominant forms of home care delivery that unions would have to confront for the rest of the century. The welfare wars that rocked the late 1960s and early 1970s generated not only California’s independent provider system but also solidified the vendor model in New York City, both of which allowed governments to transfer employer responsibility by contracting out the work. The presence of a well-organized and vocal independent living movement distinguished the fight in California during Ronald Reagan’s governorship, resulting in the consumer-directed In-Home Supportive Services. But because individuals could hire family members, IHSS served as a form of income support during a period when new federal welfare rules ideologically and administratively separated AFDC from disability and elder assistance. In contrast, New York moved to contract out and privatize services, funding old community development programs through Medicaid monies, in response to both public employee strikes and the militancy of poor women of color who dominated its Home Attendant Program. At each level of government, neoliberalism and privatization emerged as a continually evolving political tactic, part of the politics of welfare, Medicaid, and elder care.

This chapter contains an analysis of the basic concepts used around the world to set the scope of labour law. It includes three separate discussions. The first part focuses on the employee–independent contractor distinction, making proposals regarding the interpretation of the term ‘employee’ in line with the goals of labour law, based on the existence of subordination and dependency. The second part considers the addition of a third (intermediate) category of ‘dependent contractors’. I argue that such a category is warranted, and should be interpreted (where it already exists) based on the existence of dependency even without subordination. The third part asks who should be considered the legal ‘employer’, especially in cases involving a temporary employment agency or a subcontractor. I argue in favour of a ‘joint employer’ solution in many contexts. Some proposals are also made in all three parts for legislative amendments to prevent employer evasion.

Chapter 3 describes the principle of primacy of reality in Latin America, namely, in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. The principle is also contained in the International Labor Organization’s Recommendation 198. The principle posits that facts must be given preference over what parties, particularly employers, state in legal texts, documents, and agreements. It is particularly important when determining threshold questions in labor law, such as employee and employer status. While employers might deny an employment relationship given a formal agreement to hire workers as independent contractors, the facts might show otherwise. However, the chapter also argues that primacy of reality depends on the principle of protection and in dubio pro operario to resolve questions when the facts are not dispositive given vague or missing rules. The chapter then searches primacy of reality in the United States and finds it in various employment tests, such as the common law control test. It is also finds it in employer tests of joint employer status. However, many of those tests remain vague, requiring supplementation with the U.S. versions of in dubio pro operario, i.e., liberal construction of the statutes that derogate the common law, and with legislative purpose. Primacy of reality makes it even more important for legal operators to be cognizant of labor law principles and, principally, the protective principle.

This chapter charts the origins of the campaign for clean trucks, showing how activism around port expansion at the community level became intertwined with environmental challenges to pollution and labor movement strategies to reform the port trucking industry.

Watson critically engages with the often-repeated argument that “sex work is work like any other form of work.” Advocates of this argument rely upon it as a basis for either decriminalization or legalization. Watson dismantles this claim by showing that where sex is the “service,” occupational health and safety standards applicable to every other form of work cannot be met. Further, the various ways in which persons in prostitution may be thought of as “workers” is explored and arguments are given that relevant legal standards in the context of discrimination laws and employment laws cannot be met in the context of “sex work.” Thus, the burden of argument falls on advocates of decriminalization to legalization to argue for a series of exemptions from generally applicable laws. However, such exemptions are unwarranted, do not achieve their aims, and would require institutionalizing inequality for persons in prostitution.

This book begins with a discussion of the right of firms to the intellectual property produced by their employees, which is a foundation of the modern intellectual property regime, and of the business strategy of innovative firms throughout the economy. Today's corporate employer typically insists on contracts claiming the copyrights and patents to works produced both during and after a term of employment by employees and independent contractors. In addition, under the law of trade secrets, firms control current and former employees' use of a wide range of unpatented information, and employers can buttress the protection offered by trade secret law through a noncompete or nondisclosure agreement preventing the employee from working in certain occupations or from using or disclosing certain knowledge. Through the contract of hiring, workers are deemed to sell not only their physical labor and its products but also their intellectual labor and its products, and sometimes even the products of intellectual labor done after the term of employment.

Cam models are independent contractors, but they are not free agents in an open capitalist market. Instead, cam models work in a global network of pornographic industries, which sex entrepreneurs own and control, and moral entrepreneurs regulate. This chapter examines the relationship between sex entrepreneurs such as cam-site and studio owners, moral entrepreneurs such as politicians, legislators, and other rescue-industry agents, and cam models in structuring the camming industry. Moral entrepreneurs dictate the policies that regulate the camming industry. Sex entrepreneurs exploit cam models—all cam sites take a substantial portion of cam model’s sales and pay relatively low commissions. Various overlapping systems of oppression shape the camming industry and affect the wage outcomes and experiences of cam models. Cam models must work hard—but cam models who are thin, White, cisgender, in their 20s, from the United States, and do not work for studios are privileged by various systems of inequality that they have no control over. Far from a feminist, queer, or socialist utopia, the camming industry, while it sometimes provides decent wages to workers, operates via and reproduces the same inequities that exist in any capitalist workplace.

This chapter analyzes how the mentalities of Hollywood casting directors have shifted as the field has moved from above-the-line executive status to below-the-line independent contractor status in the current production climate. Female labor, particularly, have come to dominate the ways in which casting directors understand the work they do in a field where men were historically prevalent. The chapter argues that with the field's position altered, not only are more women brought into its ranks, but also the work of casting directors was redefined in stereotypically gendered terms that focused on emotional and interpersonal management activities. This change proved essential to the field's sustainability, but also diminished its stature.