To win shifts, she bids against other nurses. She lowers her hourly rate, again and again, well below a decent wage. ShiftKey provides no paid sick leave or unemployment insurance. Yet Ashley must pay $6 in fees for each shift & foot annual bills for drug tests & vaccines.

As she puts it: “You get treated differently [because] you’re not an employee.” Workers for multibillion dollar companies like Shiftkey deserve something much more robust than the gig companies’ portable benefit shams.