I think it's more like "gig workers" were created to try to do an end run around hard won protection for workers.
The idea that someone driving (or waiting for pickups) 40+ hours a week is somehow different is different than somehow different than someone (e.g.) doing tech support for 40+ hours a week is absurd.
It is entirely different, since you can start or stop your work at any time, can choose to only work when the pay is good enough, and are not committed to a single company. I don't think a job where you can start working by just installing and app, and get paid by the job, should be treated as the same as one where you are required to work some amount each week and get paid the same every week.
The number 40 (sometimes 30) has become this arbitrary standard with large binary differences on each side of the fence. This makes it very difficult for people to negotiate time off, less than full time schedules, partial retirement etc.
Laws written in the past often are deeply tied to the assumption of one american lifestyle and dream, which is no longer the reality, and thus is very inefficient for many many people. Laws written to instead capture the concepts and algorithmically scale them would be much more effective. Something like $EMPLOYER must pay N/40ths of the healthcare cost where N is the number of hours worked.
People with 2 jobs could get full healthcare premiums covered.
People who want to scale back to 1/2 time would know what to expect and it wouldnt be a binary decision factor.
That is objectively not true. Most of the "gig economies" were previously done by employees who did not have the kind of benefits you are implying. Taxi drivers almost uniformly do not receive any health insurance benefit at all.
Gig economy was designed to circumvent overburdening regulation and supply restrictions, making the service cheaper, more available and more effective for users. The benefits of this are very obvious in the case of taxis versus uber.
