FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan glances at SEC Chairman Gary Gensler during a House Financial Services Committee hearing.The Federal Trade Commission voted today to put gig economy companies on notice, promising to protect gig workers from unfair contracts, pay, and hours.announcing that the agency would “use the full portfolio of laws it enforces to prevent unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive and otherwise unlawful practices affecting gig workers.
Specifically, the FTC said it would go after companies that misrepresent a worker’s potential earnings or wrongfully use artificial intelligence to evaluate worker productivity. The agency also plans to investigate the industry for evidence of wage-fixing between companies. “No matter how gig companies choose to classify them, gig workers are consumers entitled to protection under the laws we enforce,” Samuel Levine, FTC director of consumer protection, said in a statement on Thursday. “We are fully committed to coordinating our consumer protection and competition enforcement efforts within the FTC as well as working with other agencies across the government to ensure gig workers are treated fairly.
Over the last two years, groups like the Gig Workers Collective have formed to advocate for delivery drivers for companies like DoorDash. But the groups have struggled to make significant industry changes without the legal protections of a conventional union. Most gig economy regulation has happened at the state level, the most prominent of those rules being AB5,