Motion #15
Strengthening Rights for Gig Economy Workers
Motion not debated
Synopsis
A motion to improve and update policy on the rights of platform workers (workers engaged by platforms in the so-called ‘gig economy’) to provide proper legal protections. It covers the classification of workers in law, the regulation of platform employers and enforcement of the same.
Motion
Conference notes:
- Platform workers lack fundamental protections in UK employment law, owing to the overall weakness of workers’ rights and the misclassification of millions of workers as independent contractors.
- Platform employers have used their scale and access to capital to flout legal protections for workers, many of which were designed in an era when app-based work did not exist.
- Existing laws, including the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Trade Union Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, offer loopholes for bosses to exploit.
- Existing regulations are insufficiently enforced by public authorities, leaving workers exposed to mistreatment and without recourse to the law when needed.
- Platform employers are complicit with police forces, licensing authorities and immigration authorities in targeting minoritised workers and especially those with precarious immigration statuses.
Conference believes:
- The advent and expansion of platform employment, without the empowerment of workers, has led to workers being atomised and more vulnerable to exploitation in multiple industries.
- Platform workers deserve total and complete protection from abuse and exploitation, and empowerment to unionise and defend each other.
- Public authorities should be providing protection to workers, leading regulatory enforcement against malpractice, and actively creating space for workers to organise in independent trade unions and take collective action.
- Each worker should have complete, and and equal, access to and use of the law to uphold their rights.
This Conference resolves:
- To reform employment law to close loopholes, bring platform workers under its protection under a single legal status of ‘worker’, with full and equal rights from the first day of employment.
- To increase funding to legal aid to ensure everyone can uphold their employment rights in court if necessary.
- To repeal all anti-union and anti-strike laws since 1979 in line with other recent policy statements, to empower workers to organise and defend themselves collectively
- To create a legal duty for other public authorities, especially licensing authorities, to suspend and ultimately remove operating licences for any company that repeatedly breaks the law in regard to workers’ rights.
- To end the hostile environment and the racialised targeting of platform workers by police forces and immigration authorities.
Amendment #1
After “and especially those with precarious immigration statuses.”, add new bullet points:
After “racialised targeting of platform workers by police forces and immigration authorities.”, add new bullet point:
To ban automated management decision making without explicit consent freely given by workers, to give workers transparent access to their data and meaningful explanations for all automated management decision making that affects workers and their work, to give workers meaningful explanations and appeal mechanisms to a human being for any decision to suspend or terminate employment, and to end ‘dynamic’ pay setting.
Remove “To create a legal duty for other public authorities, especially licensing authorities, to suspend and ultimately remove operating licences for any company that repeatedly breaks the law in regard to workers’ rights.”,
and replace with “To create a legal duty for public authorities, especially licensing authorities, to satisfy themselves that the licensee has obeyed data protection, employment and taxation law before and during the licensing term, and to suspend and remove the licence should the licensee fail to do so.”.
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