MONTREAL -- A movement towards forcing companies to consider freelance workers as employees may backfire, a new publication from the Montreal Economic Institute suggests.
The sharing economy created over 60,000 Canadian jobs per year on average between 2005 and 2016. With it has come a movement to regulate that work: a law adopted in California last September aimed to improve conditions for gig workers.
"In practice, it has led to mass layoffs of freelance workers in the media and the film industry,” said Peter St. Onge, senior economist at the MEI. “Despite good intentions, forcing employers to provide benefits to contract workers risks making matters a lot worse.”
The MEI publication claims that the move "could reduce these workers’ incomes and deprive many of them of this first rung on the jobs ladder."
See the publication in full below and hear from Peter St. Onge, who explains more in the interview above.
