On UpVote this week, we’re joined by Matthew Taylor, who last week published his independent review of modern working practices in the UK – looking at, among other things, the hot topic of the tech-fuelled gig economy and its implications for workers.
Should employment law be overhauled to address concerns about people who want to work flexible hours, based on the models created by Deliveroo and Uber? If the answer to that question is yes, do politicians have the appetite to bring in a new law?
Read more: UpVote 11: Matthew Taylor on the gig economy, tech and work
Or, should the government and companies that hire gig workers to carry out the services they offer to consumers through powerful apps do more within the current regulatory framework to protect the rights of people on flexible hours and low pay?
In an — at times — heated exchange, Taylor, who is chief executive of the RSA and formerly served as top political strategy adviser to Tony Blair, explained why his "brilliant" proposal didn’t deserve the criticism it's received.
Here are a few highlights, lightly edited for clarity.
Matthew Taylor on...
Work in the UK: The British labour market is pretty strong and many developed countries would envy it. We've got a lot of people working. We've got historically low unemployment rates. Most people who work flexibly choose to work flexibly. I've had a lot of stick for saying this, but I'm going to carry on, because it's true.
Gig economy worries: As is the very nature of things those people who've had a bad experience have a louder voice than those who've had a good experience. Most people on Uber and Deliveroo say it suits their lifestyle.
Uber and Deliveroo: What makes these platforms different to almost any other employer is the fact that you can work whenever you want. The danger, of course, in such a system, is that we all realise that we should set our alarm for 2:00 am and log on to Deliveroo. Then we can lie in bed and earn our minimum wage doing nothing. In those circumstances, Deliveroo would have to control the number of people working, and then you move to a shift system, which people don't want.
Our brilliant response to this was to say that, if the platform can demonstrate that the average worker working averagely hard earns 1.2 times the minimum wage, if they let people carry on working whenever they want, and if they give accurate real-time data on how much you earn if you log on now, then we said that people who logged on at times of low demand wouldn't be able to claim the minimum wage.
Criticism of his Review: This is the subject of a lot of pain for me, because I think the solution we came up with in order to allow the combination of flexibility and rights was pretty clever.
The problem is it's quite complicated and not many people understand it.
A lot of people thought I was proposing a general exemption to the minimum wage. It's not – it's a very demanding set of conditions. But it does mean that Uber and Deliveroo could call people workers, could pay tax on their workers, but could continue to have this most valuable aspect of their model, which is the fact that people can work whenever they want.
If they had to pay minimum wage whenever people clocked on I think their business would pretty soon go bankrupt.
The fate of the Taylor Review: I'm slightly ambivalent at the moment. I'm very proud of the review, but I have to make a decision. Do I say, "It's there, it's out, it's up to you in government and civil society what you make of it", or do I carry on arguing for it? That's something I'm weighing up at the moment.
Tech and work: We've got to find a way of getting through what's sometimes called the Engels pause, which is that, after the Industrial Revolution, living standards didn't rise for three generations.
We're going to have to find a way of transitioning from where we are now to where we might be, because we can't tell people: "Put up with all this technological dislocation, it won't help you, it won't help your children, but it'll help your grandchildren." That's just not a politically tenable position.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
