Abstract
There have been innumerable recent conferences, workshops, and convenings on the "future of work." These seances typically focus on issues such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and platform business models like Uber and Lyft. But these topics regarding the future of work affect a relatively small part of the workforce, and speculations on the impacts oftechnology usually prove wildly off the mark. A focus on changes that have an impact on the present workplace and that will continue to do so is far more useful. Millions of workers in the United States have jobs that do not pay enough, provide few-if any-benefits, and lack opportunities for economic advancement. Germane to this Special Section, those jobs also expose workers to a wide variety of significant health and safety risks-often falling outside the boundaries of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act protections. These conditions arise in part because businesses have found myriad ways to maintain control over (and capture economic benefit from) services and products while shedding the messy role of employing workers to others. This change in both the present and future structure of work is what I have termed the "fissured workplace," a phrase that is meant to encompass outsourcing, contracting, and subcontracting; franchising in its many forms; and, most recently, platform business models.1 The fissured workplace model has allowed businesses to shift risks and responsibilities onto workers and incentivize the misclassification of employees as independent contractors.