Editorial: Stripped down issue of independent contractors

What does a freelance worker have in common with an exotic dancer? Maybe more than than you think.

This isn’t about the work itself. It’s more about how the work is viewed in a strictly business sense.

The law, after all, doesn’t care about what we do per se. The government is generally all about the numbers. Who made how much and what is Uncle Sam’s cut? Answering those questions can head off a lot of deeper looks into how the money is made. Remember, it was not reporting income tax that brought down Al Capone.

But should the government pay more attention to how people get paid? Or more specifically, how they are categorized when it comes to getting paid?

In a new case filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, questions are raised about whether you can call someone an independent contractor if they are treated like an employee.

The case in question involves an exotic dancer, Deanna Betras, 41, who says the owners of the former Filly Corral in South Huntingdon violated state and federal labor laws. She claims she was listed as an independent contractor so that she wasn’t guaranteed minimum wage and overtime.

We aren’t talking about Betras or her case specifically. It has just started its journey through the court system, and who knows where that will take it.

But the issue? That’s timely and affecting more and more people — not because exotic dancing is a growth field, but because the gig economy and freelance work is changing the way a lot of people work and get paid.

A Gallup study for Intuit in 2020 said that self-employment numbers had risen to 44 million people, almost a third of the workforce. Those numbers were through 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic blew up many service jobs and sent many Americans into positions such as delivering food for DoorDash or GrubHub or shuttling groceries for Instacart and Shipt.

There is speculation that many people who lost jobs in 2020 and haven’t jumped at the plethora of job openings in 2021 have done so because of self-employment or freelancing. There is a difference, however, between being hired as a contractor and an employee, and that difference shouldn’t be a loophole.

A contractor should be able to have greater flexibility. They can call their own shots, work for multiple companies and use it as an opportunity to field test an industry or company before making a bigger commitment.

A company can utilize contractors for many of the same reasons. If a job isn’t regular enough for a full- or even part-time employee, opting for a contractor makes sense, for example.

The question with the gig economy is whether some companies — such as Instacart or Uber, which have faced strikes — are taking advantage of the workforce by building a business that can treat someone like an employee when it is beneficial and like an exotic dancer when it’s not.

It’s a tricky position for government. Don’t do anything, and you leave workers unprotected. Do too much — like California has perhaps done — and you risk harming real gig workers, such as musicians and artists. But if Uncle Sam wants to take money from people doing those jobs, it’s not a responsibility that can be shed like a piece of clothing.