UBER is about to launch a bold experiment in New York. No, not another flashy app or gazillion-dollar round of fundraising. Instead, the ride-hailing service has told its 35,000 drivers in the city that they can form an Independent Drivers Guild to promote collective dialogue and limited worker protections.

Whisper it quietly but Uber’s executives seem finally to have recognised that the company’s workers need to feel a touch more secure — never mind the fact that the world ‘union’ appears to be still taboo.

It is a small shift in policy that is well overdue, not just at Uber but across the western world. For if you want to understand why so many voters seem angry today — and why political populism is on the rise — one place to start is by looking at what is happening in the grass roots of the ‘gig’ economy.

In the past few years, countries such as America have lost a plethora of middle-class jobs. This partly reflects competition from places such as China — as Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, likes to point out. Another cause is the advance of technology: researchers at the UK’s Oxford Martin business school, for example, estimate that almost half of all US jobs are at risk of being automated in the next two decades.

Behind the scenes Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman, and Eric Swalwell, a Democrat counterpart, are forming a bipartisan congressional group to discuss how to protect workers in a gig economy

But what is equally important — and receives less public attention — is how the nature of work is changing. A couple of decades ago, most Americans assumed that a ‘job’ meant working for a company on a fixed schedule. In bureaucratic terms, ‘employees’ were usually people who filed a W-2 tax return (in contrast, say, to self- employed contractors who file tax form 1099).

Many workers no longer fit that W-2 pattern. Although they work for a company, they have self-employed status and do irregular hours. Uber drivers are a case in point. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The Freelancers Union, for example, estimates that there are nearly 54m people in America – 34pc of all workers — who are freelancing at least part of the time.

A different study from the Pew Research Center put this total nearer to 10pc, using a very narrow definition of self-employment. The Aspen Institute suggests it may be 22pc.

Either way, no one disputes that the number is growing — and that America’s benefits, pensions and union system is utterly ill-equipped to respond.

The problem with the current framework is that it was created in the 20th century on the assumption that most workers were W-2 employees. Consequently, pensions and benefits have historically been linked to companies, not individuals. “It’s a very binary system,” says Mark Warner, a Democratic senator. Workers in the new freelancing economy do not fit into either the W-2 or 1099 box. So freelancers sell their services on demand but with few pensions or benefits and little bargaining power.

Is there a solution? The experiments with guilds might be a small step in a better direction. What is essential, however, are policy reforms that offer freelancers a flexible and portable way to get benefits outside that W-2 framework — and smooth their income through any wild swings. Equally important are more flexible training and licensing systems to enable people in the gig economy to develop their skills.

Thankfully, some politicians recognise this. Last month Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, called for a reform to the ‘outdated employee benefits model’.while Mr Warner is developing proposals for portable pensions and benefits systems. He also wants private sector companies to offer freelancers ways to keep their income relatively consistent .

And, while there seems to be little chance that Congress would actually enact any of these ideas soon, Mr Warner is more optimistic about the situation in cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore and Phoenix, which are considering using local laws to leapfrog the slow pace of change in Washington. “Cities are competing for the gig economy — so it is probably easier to innovate at the city level,” he suggests.

That is encouraging. But what is also needed now is evidence that America’s political leaders understand the problem — and so far Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, and Mr Trump have been lamentably silent. Better hope this changes soon; if not, the sense of insecurity will only grow, along with the mood of political protest.

gillian.tett@ft.com

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, June 27th, 2016