There’s considerable ongoing concern among labor advocates over start-up culture, often tied to the gig economy and its practice of relying on ‘collective resources’ to cancel the need for significant investments in infrastructure or human capital.
Some of the most successful of the second-generation tech companies have relied on the principle — think Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit, among many others.
Last week, in the midst of the growing COVID-19 outbreak that has slammed countries around the world and prompted governments to quarantine millions of people, Uber made a surprising announcement. A few days earlier, it became clear that an Uber contractor in New York who tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus strain, had been working as a driverOpens a new window while he had the virus but before he was tested and put in isolation.
A few days later, Uber announcedOpens a new window that it was offering 14 days of paid sick leave for drivers who tested positive for the virus. After years of insisting that its drivers are independent contractorsOpens a new window , even going to court in France to insist that drivers aren’t regular employees (spoiler alert: Uber lost its case), the paid sick days announcement seemed to be a break with the company’s standard approach.
It also underscored a greater truth about doing business that some of the more aggressive tech start-ups may still need to learn: Protecting employees in the long-run makes for a more sustainable growth model.
Uber didn’t offer paid sick days because its executives had an epiphany about the inherent value of labor right. Rather, it implemented the policy to protect its business model.
If Uber drivers are suspected of being carriers of the virus and continue to work, exposing passengers who may be more vulnerable to the illness caused by the virus, then people will stop using Uber.
As nascent companies mature, they may start to see other benefits to offering workers benefits such as stability, paid time off and insurance.
Limiting a contagion
Sure, at the moment there’s a very real danger that has arisen from the new coronavirus strain. Because elderly people and people with compromised immune systems are particularly vulnerable, it’s become a broad responsibility to limit the spread as much as possible.
But while the infection rate of other illnesses is not the same, many similar principles are still at work when contractors suffer from an ailment. Beyond presenting a potential risk of contagion, which applies in cases including the flu and the common cold, contractors on the clock while sick often put in lower-quality work.
They also carry sick vibes with them, infecting coworkers if not with an actual sickness, then a general disaffectedness. Work should be preserved as a place of positive productivity, not a dismal pool of illness.
Keeping talent around
Making sure talented contractors or employees have good reasons to stay might seem like a strange priority for companies relying on gig work, but even people who contribute on the side have varying degrees of reliability, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
To make your company succeed in the long term, it must find a way to remain an attractive option to retain talent and attract new contractors. As start-ups mature into full-fledged companies, they will start to learn the value of committed workers.
Forestalling organizing
Unions have recently seen a strong comebackOpens a new window , especially in tech companies where they hadn’t necessarily been expected to crop up before. The need to create unions often comes from dissatisfaction on the part of workersOpens a new window , which can undermine both productivity and companies’ public image.
If there’s an open line of communication with workers, including contractors, and a willingness to extend the kinds of benefits available at mature companies, the need for workers to form unions might not even arise in the first place.