Remember When eBay Promised Sellers Healthcare?

Some of you may remember when former eBay CEO Meg Whitman promised to offer sellers access to health insurance ("eBay Merchants to Gain Access to Health Coverage," LA Times, 6/23/2002). Others may remember when Etsy partnered with Stride Health in 2015, which promised to make it "quicker and easier to find the right health insurance."

Now a lawmaker has introduced a bill that would give people who work in the "platform-based economy" access to benefits typically reserved for salaried employees, along with other provisions included in the bill's "Creator Bill of Rights."

On one end of the spectrum in the proposed law is a provision to "Ensure that digital workers can easily carry benefits across gigs and platforms, including establishing portable benefit systems and retirement plan options designed for independent workers."

On the other end of the spectrum is a provision to "Require online platforms to offer clear, transparent, and predictable revenue-sharing terms between platforms and creators for the content and labor that generate value for those platforms."

US Representative Ro Khanna said the "creator economy" provides income for 12% of adults and has emerged as a full-time job for over 10 million Americans. In a press release announcing the bill, Khanna said the digital economy was a rapidly growing industry that supported over 200 million creators globally and said:

"Platform-driven work is frequently characterized by unpredictable income, opaque rules, and sudden algorithm changes that can drastically reduce creators' earnings without notice or recourse."

Check out the California lawmaker's Creator Bill of Rights and share your thoughts. Has anything changed since Whitman raised the issue of making health insurance accessible to eBay sellers in 2002? What do you think about benefits and revenue-sharing provisions for small marketplace sellers and gig workers?

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