Working for the Man in the 21st Century: Algorithms, Employment Regulation, and the Market^*

Abstract

The initial jurisprudential response to the gig economy above has included the exploration of two new legal personae: algorithmic persons and dependent contractors. The author uses the word ‘exploration’ here, because neither figure has become an established character on the legal landscape in the United States – yet. Given the sector’s claims of absolute novelty, it may seem that the best way to develop regulations is to identify new positions and actors, define them, and then apply existing regulations and expectations or develop new ones accordingly. This chapter explains why this approach is misguided. First, legal personae have only a tangential relationship with actually existing human beings. Much regulatory energy could be caught up in elaborate definitions and descriptions intended to develop robust regulation, only to find that they create the blueprint for future business models that avert these very frameworks. Second, these legal personae are developed within the existing frameworks of employment law and corporate regulation, which in the United States, are determined by a phantasmagoric understanding of ‘the market’. Unless this basic framework is questioned, one can expect that these new legal personae will fail to protect actual workers and consumers.

Citation

McBride, K. (2022), "Working for the Man in the 21st Century: Algorithms, Employment Regulation, and the Market^*", Sarat, A., Pavlich, G. and Mailey, R. (Ed.) Interrupting the Legal Person (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 87B), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 43-58. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-43372022000087B003