The Gig Economy by Bridey Heing

Author:Bridey Heing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing
Published: 2020-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

The Gig Economy Has Given Employers More Control Over Employees’ Income

Larry Elliott

Larry Elliott is the Guardian ’s economics editor. He has also written seven books that focus on economic issues.

Getting on for one million people in Britain wait each day for a text or a phone call to let them know whether an employer has work for them. Twenty years ago few had heard of zero-hour contracts, but the number of workers covered by them has increased more than fourfold since the recession of a decade ago.

During the same period underemployment—people who would work longer hours if they were available—has also increased. So has self-employment, often because someone previously employed is now scratching a living as best they can. In the 1990s, poverty was associated with workless households. Today 60% of those living below the breadline live in a household where at least one person is in work.

Language matters. There was a time when these trends would have been described as casualisation or exploitation. They would have been seen as symbolic of a one-sided labour market in which the deck was stacked in favour of employers. These days, though, it is evidence of “flexibility,” and who could object to that?

The narrative goes as follows. Britain has record levels of employment and the lowest jobless rate since the mid-1970s, and that’s because there are few impediments to the free market in labour. There is a reason the UK has an unemployment rate half that of France: our labour market is “flexible,” the one on the other side of the Channel is “sclerotic.” Employers have the confidence to hire workers because they know they can get rid of them without too much trouble. Many of the people employed on zero-hour contracts like the freedom they provide. Banning them, as the TUC is demanding, would be illiberal and economically harmful.

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