How COVID-19 Exposed The Hard Questions About The Gig Economy A food delivery worker in London - Oliver Cole 2020-12-24
Consumers are convinced. Wall Street is buoyant. Demand around the world for app-based services is booming, with entire nations stuck at home during COVID-19 lockdowns and the prospect of goods and services at their door with just a click. As the so-called Gig Economy spreads alongside the pandemic, society has struggled to keep up.
• Online sales in
South Korea have grown by 17% this year, and 42% in food deliveries.
• The freelancer platform PeoplePerHour registered a 300% increase of users in March of this year in the
Aude Cefaliello
The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) represents ‘gig’ workers. At the end of November the High Court of England and Wales ruled, in its favour, that the government of the United Kingdom had failed adequately to transpose two European Union occupational health-and-safety directives into domestic law.
The ‘Framework Directive’ 89/391/EEC, on measures to encourage improvement in workers’ health and safety at work, is the cornerstone of the OSH regime in the EU, providing principles of prevention with which employers are charged. Among them is the obligation to assess risks at the workplace and to adopt general and particular measures, including provision of personal protective equipment as regulated by Directive 89/656/EEC to prevent them.
United Kingdom: COVID-19 - High Court rules that protection from health and safety detriment should be extended to workers lexology.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lexology.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In the landmark case The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, R (on the application of) v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions & Ors, the Court found firmly in favour of a union.