[nickdothutton]

The amount of regulation a company has to comply with to hire and retain a "real" (non-uberised) worker in the UK has been increased to a great degree since the mid 90s. Gig work allows these companies to offer work without commitment, while the worker may offers his labour without commitment. There is no limit to the number of platforms/firms he can sign on with. If company x provides too few hours or undesirable terms then he can add company y and company z. Uberization is a predictable outcome where hiring risk is increased and assigned solely to the employer.

[robtherobber]

It seems that you're framing it as if regulation is some random burden that appeared out of nowhere rather than a defence mechanism that emerged because businesses repeatedly abused workers, cut corners, and pushed costs onto everyone else whenever they were allowed to.

Work, technology, supply chains, data, health and safety, and the whole economy are all far more complex than they were in the 90s, of course regulation increased: we had to adjust to respond to the new challenges and everything else. It increased because the damage companies can do increased significantly too (we are literally discussing about existential threats to humanity and life on earth in the last few years), and because we learned again and again what happens when you leave everything to "the market" and trust firms to self-police.

Also, this idea that gig work is some balanced freedom on both sides sounds nice in theory but falls apart in practice. I'd go as far as saying that it's naive. The company/platform keeps the power, sets the terms, and the worker carries the instability and everything that derives from that. "You can sign up to multiple apps" is not a real solution to insecure income, it's just telling people to juggle several unreliable income streams at once and hope enough scraps appear each week. And whereas for businesses "losing" means lower profits or no profits (with the worst case scenario being that they have to shut down), for workers this can mean huge financial insecurity, depression, lack of control, and potential destitution. I'd say the latter is markedly more dramatic.

Put differently, it's not meaningful flexibility for most people, more like risk transfer. The business gets labour on demand without commitment, while the worker still has rent, bills, and food costs arriving on a fixed schedule and with the threat of actual death if they end up homeless in the winter.

And on the "hiring risk" point: why should that risk be shifted onto workers, who have far less power, money, and protection than firms? If a company depends on labour to function, employing people properly is not some unfair punishment - it's part of the cost of doing business in a civilised society. The only reason private enterprise is tolerated at all is that it is supposed to produce a social benefit. If a business model only works by making workers permanently disposable and pushing insecurity onto society, then that is a criticism of the business model, not of regulation. And it's probably not worth keeping the private sector either.

[lotsofpulp]

>It seems that you're framing it as if regulation is some random burden that appeared out of nowhere rather than a defence mechanism that emerged because businesses repeatedly abused workers, cut corners, and pushed costs onto everyone else whenever they were allowed to.

They appeared because voters want low taxes and they want subsidies. It makes no sense to hold businesses (and buyers in general) responsible for a seller's well being. That should be the role of the government, who has the power to tax.

Holding businesses responsible is convenient for government leaders and the well connected, who can get away with corruption and the government leaders who can point fingers at others. And who is really going to have the manpower to audit all those buyers.

But of course, the voters want lower taxes now no matter what, so it is what it is.

[philipallstar]

> And on the "hiring risk" point: why should that risk be shifted onto workers, who have far less power, money, and protection than firms

Firms are just other people. They take on more and more risk. These days in the UK HR departments they often say you can't let someone go even in their probation period. Think how a experimental and risky a hire is, and how easy it is to quit a job that might not be any good vs how hard it is to get rid of an employee who isn't any good.

[tikkabhuna]

Zero our contracts is used far beyond the "Uber"-style gig work where people can choose when they want to work. Often its used in for any sort of minimum wage job where there is a significant imbalance where employers have the power to offer as little/much work as they want and penalise workers who can't/won't take those shifts.

[nickdothutton]

Unfortunately the UK now has an economy which is 83% services vs around 50% in 1970. Services are much more volatile with less certainty than say manufacturing or primary industry. So employment in services is going to be volatile and hard to predict, certainty has declined for all, employers and workers. A given employer only has the power if he is the only, or one of just a few in town. If not then the worker has the opportunity to seek hours somewhere else from someone else, at least if these jobs/gigs are relatively unskilled, which most are.

What I don't agree with, the underpayment of workers enabled by government "subsidies". A barista in London may be offered £21K per year to work all his shifts (I'm looking at a job ad), yet needs double that to live, so government "subsidises" the employer by providing the other "missing" £20K in universal credit, housing benefit, and so on. It's no wonder employers take advantage of this.

Meanwhile the customer thinks his coffee costs him £3, in fact the true cost is a multiple of that because of the ~£20K "subsidy". Meanwhile you can hear the faint sound of laughter, which is the employer, knowing that the taxpayer is picking up half his true wage bill.

[oytis]

> penalise workers who can't/won't take those shifts.

Wouldn't this problem better solved with a normal contract that obliges the worker to take the shifts the employer is interested in?

[scott_w]

0-hour contracts have nothing to do with "Uberised" working arrangements, which are essentially a contracted worker. In a 0-hour contract, the worker does not have the freedom to "offer labour without commitment."

- They have an employment contract, so are an employee, not a self-employed contractor.

- There are limitations on who else they could work for.

- In practice, if they're called up to work last-minute, they can't say "no."

For most 0-hour contracts, like retail, trying to setup your employees as self-employed contractors doesn't work because it's a blatant violation of the law. HMRC will come after you for employer's NI as you have disguised employees.

Uber is a very different model because the way they setup the working arrangements allows them to keep taxi drivers outside the scope of disguised employees.

[nickdothutton]

Non-compete or any kind of limitation on who a zero hours contract person can work for, has been specifically and explicitly illegal since 2016 in the UK. In practice it has been unenforceable since more or less forever. [1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/zero-hours-contra... (last para.)

[varispeed]

> as you have disguised employees.

That's such a classist term. Surely little working class person cannot have its own business, it's disguised employment! It's like micro agency with resource of 1. But somehow we don't say agencies run "disguised employment", because the profits are going to the rich shareholders instead of filthy unwashed pleb.

[TimByte]

I think this is true for a certain category of worker, but it depends heavily on whether the flexibility is actually symmetrical in practice

[nickdothutton]

For largely unskilled service sector jobs, where one might consider the worker relatively interchangeable, it is particularly bad if your government also has an "infinite immigration" policy in practice.[1]

[1] Inward migration to the UK was 1.3M people in the year to June 2023. UK population was about 67/68M at the time.

[jen20]

If this is the reason (I don’t believe it personally) then there should be no problem with an outright ban on non-compete agreements for zero-hour contracts. Somehow I don’t think employers will agree.

[nickdothutton]

Non-compete agreements (or any clause restricting working elsewhere) are generally not enforceable in UK zero-hours contracts. Explicitly since January 2016, and in practice before then.[1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/zero-hours-contra... (Bottom para.)

[Forgeties79]

> Gig work allows these companies to offer work without commitment, while the worker may offers his labour without commitment.

This is basically a cousin to “at-will” hiring rationalization in the US. It’s nonsense in that case, and it’s nonsense with zero hour contracts. There is a little to no benefit to employees. It just puts them in an even more precarious situation. The power dynamics are not fair between them and employers, those kinds of systems are inherently lopsided. Yet proponents keep insisting it levels the playing field. I don’t get it.

It’s basically arguing for the fusion of worst parts of being a hired employee and a freelance contractor. Both have advantages, both have compromises, and these “gig economy” jobs make sure that basically none of the benefits of being a contractor exist.

[lotsofpulp]

“Right to work”, in the US, is about being able to work for an employer without joining the employee union.

“At will” employment is the term you are thinking of.

[bartread]

Yeah, that's not how zero hour contracts work.

In practice zero hour contracts mean that if a company wants you to work you often need to work because if you don't they can simply not give you any more hours in future. I.e., the big difference between a zero hour contract and gig work is that in that the company controls the hours, not you.

And this isn't just because the companies are scummy, but for somewhat sensible operational reasons. Zero hour contracts are common in places like supermarkets because they allow companies to flex their staffing levels with, for example, seasonal demand (although there are other solutions to that problem that are better for employees!). On d day to day basis they might still need more shop floor workers on a busy Saturday than on a quiet Monday, so it means they need to be able to control the scheduling rather than workers controlling the scheduling to ensure they always have appropriate staffing levels. If you gave complete control to workers you'd regularly find you had too many people working at quiet times and too few at busy, and even if you put controls in place to avoid too many workers at a time, you'd never be able to guarantee that you'd have enough at busy times which wouldn't really be an acceptable outcome for anyone.

But going back to your point of misunderstanding: zero contracts are perhaps more like the worst aspects of gig employment married to the worst aspects of non-gig employment, which means that they operate quite differently to gig employment.

[Leynos]

What do you see as unreasonable regulation?

[behringer]

Sounds horrifying and you should feel bad for even writing that.

[CalRobert]

Emergent properties of skewed incentive systems is not the author’s responsibility.