In the late 2000s, surging unemployment during the financial crash gave rise to the gig economy, later supercharged by the emergence of ride-sharing and food-delivery apps. Almost two decades later, gig work is as big as it’s ever been, and is creeping into one of the country’s most essential and historically stable professions.
The gig economy has diversified to seep into everything from accounting to law and even medicine. Health care, in fact, has grown to become one of the biggest gig work providers, with a plethora of apps now connecting nurses, technicians, and even doctors to temporary work, just like Uber.
Much like Uber convinced policymakers its drivers were contractors instead of employees, health care staffing platforms are pushing for legal recognition that would exempt them from obligations to pay minimum wage or provide workers with some benefits, according to the report published Tuesday by AI Now, a research firm focusing on the public impact of AI.
“Uber’s business model—the ‘gigification’ of labor—and lobbying practices have made their way to healthcare staffing,” the report’s authors wrote.
The report details several ways widely used health care staffing platforms have started chipping away at worker protections in different states.
Another practice the report took issue with was widespread use of algorithm-based management systems on these platforms’ apps, which determine how much a worker is paid for a shift, tracks performance, and uses a points system to connect nurses with jobs. In one example, using Clipboard Health’s app, workers can enter bids on desired wages to work a shift, with the lowest bid winning the contest, according to the report.
“These changes invoke troubling questions about algorithmic collusion and wage suppression,” the authors wrote, leading to a system of “surveillance wages,” in which workers’ personal data and user history becomes the main factor determining pay.
Clipboard Health and Shiftkey did not immediately reply to Fortune’s request for comment.
But the future of those jobs might not be as stable as was once promised. The AI Now report claims hospitals and other health care institutions are gravitating toward gig workers rather than offering full-time roles, in part because employing contracts gives administrations more control over schedules and wage costs.
