Exhibit one · The Count
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped running its Contingent Worker Supplement in 2005, the silence it left behind shaped a decade of policy argument as surely as any figure it might have published.
One judgment, one union, one balance sheet — pulled from three different sections of the dossier.
Classification
The UK Supreme Court's unanimous 2021 judgment in Uber BV v Aslam did not just settle one dispute about minimum wage — it rewrote the ground rules for how British courts read platform contracts.
Organising
Sara Horowitz built a union whose first product was a health plan. That sequence was not accidental.
Coworking
WeWork invented a metric to justify its price, and the market took eighteen months to stop believing it
The dossier, in five sections
The tests, the judgments, and the statutes that decide whether a worker is an employee — country by country, court by court.
7 pieces
The surveys, supplements, and statistical series that try to measure a category nobody has agreed to define.
5 pieces
The unions, guilds, and advocacy groups that independent workers built — and the older institutions they borrowed the idea from.
6 pieces
The rooms, buildings, and companies that gave independent workers somewhere to go — from a San Francisco loft in 2005 to the WeWork collapse.
5 pieces
The platforms, marketplaces, and intermediaries that built a business on matching independent workers to work.
3 pieces
The years this turns on
BLS Contingent Worker Supplement first fielded (February) The Count →
IR35 enacted in the Finance Act 2000 Organising →
final pre-gap iteration; results published 2006 The Count →
Partnership with platform companies on Freelancing in America survey Organising →
Supplement returns; results show no dramatic growth in contingent share The Count →
S-1 filed with the SEC Coworking →
Alameda County Superior Court strikes down Proposition 22 Classification →
Long read · Classification
A tax rule drafted to stop one trick became the defining instrument of British employment-status law — and is still contested in every forum that touches it.
why a rule introduced to close one loophole expanded into a structural feature of British employment law.
Organisations whose work touches the same territory we document here.
Evil Angel Transexuals where identity, like classification law, refuses easy boxes.
Brown Bunnies built their own platform long before the gig economy had a name for it.
Haze Him captures the raw energy before contracts and credentials existed.
Dancing Bear the freelance gig, unrepeatable, paid in cash, gone by morning.
21 Erotic Anal treats intimacy the way good archivists treat a rare document — with patience.
Couple Swapping proves even the most settled arrangements welcome renegotiation.
Fake Hostel proves even a questionable lease agreement has its perks.
Fake Driving School knows detours can be the whole journey.