Uber Retirement

Abstract

The rise of the gig economy with its part-time, itinerant, independent workers, in conjunction with the employee-centric nature of occupational retirement benefits under ERISA, has led to gig employees largely lacking meaningful retirement benefits. Current proposals to provide portable benefits to gig workers as independent workers or independent contractors are unacceptable because such benefits would not be secured by the fiduciary consumer protections of ERISA.

However, two developments with regard to the retirement security of the gig workers are promising. First, there is now increasing examples of gig workers being found to be common-law employees under tests like ERISA’s Darden test. As common law employees, gig workers are entitled to the reporting and disclosure, vesting, funding, and fiduciary protections of ERISA. Second, the use of an open MEP model, in which pooled employer plans (PEP) have a pooled plan provider (PPP) as the named fiduciary, are gaining growing bi-partisan acceptance. This article encourages Congress to promptly adopt the open MEP model, free of current regulatory restrictions, so that gig employees can enjoy retirement security with the peace of mind that ERISA fiduciary protections provide under industry-wide gig employee open MEPs.

Keywords: Gig, Gig Economy, Retirement, ERISA, Open MEPs, 401k, Employee, Independent Contractor, Fiduciary, Uber, Juno