The End Of The American Worker . . .

Most people are unaware how far the American Worker has come in the last 50 years, but the reality of how much we are going to lose with this new “Sharing Economy” will be witnessed by us all. The Sharing Economy which is the business model of companies like Uber, Lyft, and SideCar sounded like a great deal when it first started a few years ago, but if you even take just a brief look at the impact to the American Workforce you will begin to see how the Sharing Economy may very well be the end of the American Worker and possibly the cause of the failure of the US Economy.

The first thing you have to realize is the intent of the Sharing Economy is to reduce the costs of services to the consumer. While everybody would like lower prices for things, what you do not see is that to do this the Sharing Economy plans to disrupt various industries, eliminating good jobs that are capable of supporting families and replace them with jobs that do not pay well at all. Currently workers protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act that have worker rights and have stable jobs are under attack by the Sharing Economy which has every intent to replace these workers with Independent Contractors that have no protections by US Labor Laws. This is going to put America in a crisis situation in the near future as nobody is paying attention to the significant toll we will have to pay moving forward.

Take the biggest player in this Shared Economy, Uber has demonstrated how the Sharing Economy will disrupt the American Workforce and leave workers protection laws failing to protect the American Workers. Uber is a Ride-Hail Company that has during the last five years disrupted the transportation industry and promises to disrupt over 15 million Taxi, Limo, and other Hire For Services transportation. At first Uber hired and paid independent contractors well, very well. Since September of 2014 Uber has taken a different approach and contrary to what the public has been led to believe, now has reduced these jobs to poverty level incomes with many workers unable to realize even a minimum wage. The only areas served in which drivers are being paid a reasonable income are places such as New York City which is regulated by the local transportation authority ensuring a reasonable wage paid.

Much of the confusion regarding the payment to Uber drivers stems from fabrication of information provided by Uber. Most major cities nation-wide regulate Taxi and Limousine services, including California. What this means is even though these drivers provide services for Uber, they have regulations which control the amount of compensation these services are to earn. The unregulated lower level cars known as UberX, which likely has over 500,000 drivers nation-wide are not regulated by a Transportation Authority allowing Uber to take advantage of the drivers providing the services. Uber has demonstrated an almost ridiculous negligence towards the livelihood of these drivers. So far, only one politician has raised concerns about this situation. Hilary Clinton recently made public her concerns for how the Sharing Economy is impacting the protections of the American Worker receiving little support from anyone and it appears as though other politicians are going to fail the American Workers by allowing this situation to continue unchecked into the future.

The United States has held the failure of it’s economy at bay for a number of years, preventing the failure of our economy although we have had some very close calls in the recent past. We need good stable jobs for the future of America. The Sharing Economy reduces these jobs to “part-time low income” jobs that are not adequate for young workers to build their future upon. Presently there are hundreds of companies forming using the same Sharing Economy model as Uber encompassing many of the service industry jobs nation-wide. These are important jobs to the people of America and will likely impact at least 50 million jobs nation-wide in the near future. Just imagine 50 million jobs that support families in America today becoming 100 million part-time low income jobs without benefits or government protections. All of these jobs will be underpaid, provide no benefits, and have no guarantee that you will work tomorrow. This is not the path America should follow. Doing so means that the only one to profit and grow would be Corporate America and the creation of an even larger poverty level for the United States.

If your part of the country is supported by a politician that supports the Sharing Economy, start action to remove him/her from office so you can get someone new that cares for this Country and the  American Worker. This is important, far too important to not become involved and try to either regulate or eliminate the threat the Sharing Economy poses to the American Worker and the future of America.