Jeremias Adams-Prassl

WHAT IF YOUR BOSS WAS AN ALGORITHM? The gig economy promises to revolutionise work as we know it, offering flexibility and independence instead of 9-to-5 drudgery. The potential benefits are enormous: consumers enjoy the convenience and affordability of on-demand work while micro-entrepreneurs turn to online platforms in search of their next gig, task, or ride. IS THIS THE FUTURE OF WORK? This book offers an engaging account of work in the gig economy across the world. Competing narratives abound: on-demand gigs offer entrepreneurial flexibility - or precarious work, strictly controlled by user ratings and algorithmic surveillance. Platforms' sophisticated technology is the product of disruptive innovation - whilst the underlying business model has existed for centuries. HOW CAN WE PROTECT CONSUMERS & WORKERS WITHOUT STIFLING INNOVATION? As courts and governments around the world begin to grapple with the gig economy, Humans as a Service explores the challenges of on-demand work, and explains how we can ensure decent working conditions, protect consumers, and foster innovation. Employment law plays a central role in levelling the playing field: gigs, tasks, and rides are work â and should be regulated as such.

In this report, we provide a detailed study of zero-hours work in the United Kingdom. An initial section defines zero-hours work, emphasising key characteristics as well as overlaps between zero-hours work and other casual work arrangements, and draws parallels both with historic instances of on-demand work and current experiences of ‘if and when’ contracts in the Republic of Ireland. Section two presents the most recent available data on the prevalence and key characteristics of zero- hours workers and employers, explaining the evolution of such work arrangements as well as the technical issues which make measuring the phenomenon through official labour market statistics particularly difficult. Section three complements the empirical evidence with an analysis of the effects of zero-hours work for workers, employers, and society more broadly. Our focus is not limited to the legal situation of those working under such arrangements, but also includes questions of social security entitlements, and wider implications such as business flexibility, cost savings, and productivity growth. As the fourth section explains, a growing awareness of the growth of zero-hours contracts from 2011 onwards brought about a marked increase in public discussion of the phenomenon, leading eventually to (limited) legislative intervention. We explore the positions taken by the social partners, before analysing historical as well as recent legislative responses, and setting out a case study of Parliament’s response to a particularly egregious instance of labour standards violations in warehouses operated by the sports equipment chain Sports Direct. A brief concluding section, finally, turns to a series of policy recommendations and broader considerations, with a view to finding a model in which (some of) the flexibility of zero-hours work arrangements might be preserved, without however continuing to pose a real threat to decent working conditions in the United Kingdom’s labour market.

Discusses worker status in a series of recent cases (Secretary of State for Justice v Windle [2016] EWCA Civ 459; [2016] I.C.R. 721 and Pimlico Plumbers Ltd v Smith [2017] EWCA Civ 51; [2017] I.R.L.R. 323 at the appellate level, as well as Aslam v Uber [2017] I.R.L.R. 4, and Dewhurst v Citysprint UK Ltd (2202512/2016) unreported 5 January 2017 ET).

One of the key assumptions underpinning the rise of ‘crowdsourced work’ – from transport apps including Uber to online platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk – is the assertion put forward by most platforms that crowdworkers are self-employed, independent contractors. As a result, individuals might find themselves without recourse to worker-protective norms, from minimum wage and working time law to health and safety regulations and unfair dismissal protection. But is this account accurate? In this paper, we hope to challenge prevailing assumptions, arguing that in certain scenarios crowdworkers can, and should, be classified as workers within the scope of domestic employment law. The approach proposed, however, is an initially counterintuitive one: we advocate the adoption of a functional concept of the employer as a regulatory solution to crowdwork employment, with platforms, crowdworkers, and service users each shouldering their appropriate share of employer responsibilities.

Zero-Hours Contracts have become one of the most high-profile employment law issues of recent years. In this article, we analyse the legal and empirical evidence of work under Zero-Hours arrangements and suggest that whilst a legal engagement with Zero-Hours Contracts as an unresolved labour market problem is long overdue, the current discourse surrounding these work arrangements is fundamentally flawed: there is no such thing as the Zero-Hours Contract as a singular category; the label serves as no more than a convenient shorthand for masking the explosive growth of precarious work for a highly fragmented workforce. Ongoing attempts at regulating Zero-Hours Contracts thus constitute a significant shift towards the normalisation of all but the most extreme forms of abusive employment arrangements, leaving a rapidly increasing number of workers without recourse to employment protective norms. In concluding, we indicate ways towards a more coherent approach to the de-normalisation and progressive regulation of this large and growing set of casual work arrangements.