Legal Status of the Present-Day Employee in the US: Arbitration, Gig Economy & AI

Abstract

The employer-employee relationship is a derivative of asymmetrical bargaining power. Legislation and unions have historically been the means of lessening such inequitable underpinnings. Most recently, however, such measures have been curtailed and the negotiating gap between the employer and employee is again widening. The aim of this article is to suggest that three developments are converging to cause such a predicament: (1) the suffocation of the employees’ collective voice; (2) the development of the ‘independent contractor’ dependent gig economy; and (3) the swelling use of artificial intelligence in the workplace Arbitration, Class Action, Unions, Protected Concerted Activity, Gig Worker, Gig Economy, Artificial Intelligence, independent contractor.