This is a HeadGum Podcast. I don't know what to think

I don't know what to say

and that's all right

yeah that's all right

and that's okay

I don't know anything.

Hello everybody.

Hello everybody, welcome to Factually.

I'm Adam Conover, and let's talk about work in America.

When the economy is booming, why do so many workers have trouble making ends meet?

And why is so much of our work precarious? Why is work paying less benefits than it used to? Why are people

not able to stay in jobs as long as they used to be able to? Well, one reason is that over the

last century, plus, the labor movement has managed to put in place worker protections.

These are federally mandated.

If you're an employee of a company, they need to provide you with health care.

You have protection from sexual harassment.

You have protection from all sorts of other bad things right this this took decades to put into place

But companies don't want to pay for those things and what they started doing is misclassifying workers.

They would say, oh no no, no, no, you're not an employee, you're an independent contractor.

You still got to be in here 9 to 5.

He got to come in every day, but now you're a contractor.

I've worked these jobs myself.

...