Uber CEO defends treating gig workers as contractors, suggesting gig economy companies should be required to establish funds that give workers cash for benefits
Gig workers want both flexibility and benefits — we support laws that could make that possible. — Mr. Khosrowshahi is the chief executive officer of Uber.
Context & Ripple Effects
This op-ed is the public-relations layer of a campaign Uber began in March 2020, when Khosrowshahi asked the White House for legislation creating a "third way" of worker classification between contractor and employee — a proposal that about 50 labor groups promptly urged Congress to reject in their letter to congressional leaders. By August, the ask has been repackaged as something more palatable: keep contractors as contractors, but require gig platforms to fund cash benefits.
What makes the piece worth tracking is how durable the template proved. Over the following two years Khosrowshahi repeated it across jurisdictions — telling Brussels that Uber was ready to improve social protections if new legislation arrived (ahead of EU recommendations on platform workers), conceding in the UK that flexibility "should not come at the expense of social protections" (as its driver-rights stance evolved), and still opposing outright employment laws like Spain's by early 2022 (while lobbying against copycat statutes).
First-order effects
- Uber gains a negotiating position that concedes benefits without touching its core cost structure: mandated benefit funds preserve the contractor classification that keeps drivers off payroll, insurance, and scheduling obligations.
- Labor groups who rejected the same idea in its "third way" form now face a softer version aimed directly at lawmakers — the proposal is designed to split flexibility advocates from benefits advocates.
Second-order effects
- Rival gig platforms are pulled into the same legislative posture: if benefit funds become law, every contractor-based competitor inherits the cost, so Uber has an incentive to lobby universally rather than absorb the burden alone.
- Regulators in the EU, UK, and Spain become the decisive arena — each jurisdiction's answer to the fund-versus-employment question sets the compliance model Uber must then argue against or adopt elsewhere.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, gig work settles into a legally distinct third category — neither employee nor pure contractor — with portability of benefits handled through platform-mandated funds, and classification fights shifting from whether drivers get protections to who pays and administers them.
- The repeated cross-jurisdiction pitch suggests platform companies are trying to standardize this category globally before any major market legislates full employment status first, making early national laws like Spain's outsized precedents.
The trend: Platform companies are lobbying worldwide for a contractor-plus-benefits middle category — portable benefit funds instead of employment status — with each national regulator's decision setting the precedent others will be pushed to follow.