Gig workers deserve a place at the table. How this company is ensuring their voices are heard

Gig workers are playing a big role in the success of businesses across all industries. Isn’t it time they have a bigger say in what will make work, work for them?

Moves Financial, which provides financial support and benefits for gig workers, announced the launch of Moves Collective, an invite-only service that will enable gig workers to earn shares in their companies, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Grubhub. As shareholders, these workers will wield greater power to influence management decisions and help shape the future of the gig economy, while potentially earning additional income.

The new service is an extension of Moves Financial’s original mission, which is to promote the fair and equal treatment of gig workers by providing them with similar resources a salaried employee receives, according to CEO and founder Matt Spoke.

“A big part of our strategy is focused on how to elevate the challenges of gig workers in a way that can actually drive to actionable results,” he says. “If we build a system where a worker benefits as these companies succeed, it also gives them the ability to exercise a voice.”

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Moves Collective incentivizes workers to earn stock through work-related tasks. For example, their first rollout rewards Uber drivers who make $5,000 in a 90-day period with $50 in Uber stock. Their earning progress and stock portfolio can be tracked on Moves Financial’s app.

“[Gig workers] will have all these separate challenges that they have to accomplish within a week and if they check all the boxes they get a prize — and the currency that we're using to reward is stock in these companies,” Spoke says. “These are publicly traded stock and they're being deposited into a brokerage account that is opened on behalf of the user.”

As of now, Moves Financial is only offering stock for the big four publicly traded companies — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Grubhub. But should more companies depending on gig work make themselves available, they too will be added to the roster.

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While gig workers have been fighting for basic worker rights for the past several years, allowing them to become company shareholders is mutually beneficial for all sides, Spokes says. Gig workers want more job security and marketplace companies don’t want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to replace employees who would have stayed given the right circumstances.

“Our premise is that we can solve a lot of problems by just putting people on the same side of the economic equation,” Spoke says. “It's not only about earning dollars in stock, but it's also about using the rights associated with that stock ownership. If we could actually create a legitimate career path for gig workers, they could spend 10 to 20 to 30 years doing this type of work.”