Business Insider: Amazon Flex Workers’ Schedules Aren’t So Flexible After All, New Report Suggests

Amazon’s Flex delivery program bills itself as “a flexible way of earning extra money on your own schedule.”

A new report from a union-backed workers’ rights non-profit suggests that’s not quite the case.

The report, released on Wednesday by the advocacy group National Employment Law Project, points to signs that Amazon Flex workers may not have as much flexibility as Amazon suggests they do.

Flex, which Amazon started in 2015, lets gig workers deliver packages for the company using their own vehicles.

Maya Pinto, senior researcher and policy analyst at NELP, interviewed between September and May eight Amazon Flex drivers in New Jersey who are organizing. The drivers said they sometimes had trouble working as much as they wanted and on the schedules that they preferred.

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One of the report’s conclusions is that Flex drivers are misclassified as independent contractors. It says they should be considered employees since Amazon’s control of their working conditions, such as through metric-based standing, means that they “are not truly in business for themselves like legitimate independent contractors are.”

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Read the full Business Insider story at msn.com.