Arizona-based Qwick, an on-demand staffing service that matches gig workers with hospitality jobs, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total funding to $69.1M (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

The Economic Times:
A survey of ~4,000 Indian gig workers on Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, Amazon, and others: 42% say their income is flat, 47% have no insurance, and 51% can’t save money  —  Gig workers in India are young, financially stressed, and largely uninsured, according to a new report.

Varsha Bansal / Rest of World:
How India’s gig workers, tired of algorithms dictating their lives, are using Telegram to exchange cheap hacks on how to game the platforms to their advantage  —  Tired of the obscurity around black box algorithms that dictate their lives, India’s gig workers are coming up with jugaads to game the system.

Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
The Labor Department releases a nonbinding proposal to classify US gig workers as employees and not independent contractors  —  A proposed rule, long awaited by labor activists, would make it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors.

Vibhuti Sharma / DealStreetAsia:
Bengaluru-based BetterPlace, which offers a SaaS for blue-collar workforce management, raised a $40M Series C extension, bringing its total funding to ~$80M  —  BetterPlace, a SaaS platform for workforce management, said on Tuesday that it has raised $40 million as part of an extended Series C round …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
PolyAI, which uses AI to handle call center calls, raised a $40M Series B led by Georgian at a $300M post-money valuation, bringing its total funding to $70M  —  Is it possible to build a voice assistant for the call center that can pick up on indirect questions to figure out the best time to hand calls over to a human?

Jem Aswad / Variety:
US music publishers settle on 15.35% for 2023 to 2027 mechanical streaming rates, avoiding costly legal fights with Amazon, Apple, Google, Pandora, and Spotify  —  The announcement comes as a surprise, as the NMPA has been saying for months that it would push for a 20% rate for the forthcoming period.