Gig workers will slowly redress the benefits imbalance

Subject

ILO employment-protection recommendations.

Significance

Ever more workers are engaged as self-employed, independent contractors without traditional protections and benefits, including a minimum wage, holiday and sick pay, and protection against dismissal. However, challenges to this status are increasing both at work and through the courts.

Impacts

• The use of self-employed independent contracts for organising work will continue spreading far beyond the gig economy.
• ‘Employed’ workers gained ‘rights’ through social dialogue; similar conversations will now addressing future classification and rights.
• Self-employed workers lack a collective voice, which will lead to new forms of workplace resistance growing in effectiveness.
• New ways of arranging protections may undermine the existing ‘gig economy’ model; some platforms will adapt and flourish; some will fail.