https://www.wired.com/story/company-hires-gig-workers-employees/

Last September, as California legislators considered Assembly Bill 5, a measure designed to limit which workers can be classified as independent contractors, companies like Uber and Lyft bemoaned a potential blow to their bottom lines—bottom lines that were, for the record, already suffering. But one gig economy CEO cheered the bill from the sidelines.

“We're big proponents of AB 5,” says Adam Roston, CEO of BlueCrew, a Chicago-based startup that matches workers with shifts at employers. BlueCrew is, in other words, a temp agency. It hires workers and vets them with background checks and in-person interviews. But from there, tech takes over. Roston candidly compares his business to gig economy apps, offering algorithmic job matching and work-when-you-want flexibility. The main difference: BlueCrew hires workers as W-2 employees, not contractors. “Uber and Lyft were providing something that people wanted and we believed that we could bring it to the W-2 worker environment,” Roston says.