Regulating Gigs
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Author | Ruth Dukes |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12485 |
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Modern Law Review
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2230.12485
REVIEW ARTICLE
Regulating Gigs
Ruth Dukes∗
J. Prassl,Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the
Gig Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 208 pp, hb £26.49.
Overwhelmed with sheet lightnings of revelations of new things, of absolutely new things.1
At labour law conferences of the past two or three years, the emergence of the
gig economy was the cause of a flurry of excitement. Having spent decades
charting the apparent decline of our discipline–as protective employment laws
were successively weakened or repealed in the name of greater labour market
flexibility and ‘more jobs’–scholars, myself included, were as if rejuvenated by
a sense of the new. Here was a development that had caught the interest of the
general public, and of political and social commentators, as well as academics in
diverse fields, and on which scholars of labour law were in a unique position to
offer expert comment. For what was at the heart of the gig economy but work
and working relations? When an Uber or Lyft driver picked up a passenger
and drove her to her desired destination, he was surely working. When a
student agreed via Cloudcrowd or Clickworker to proofread so many pages
of a manuscript for a specified rate, she quite obviously contracted to work in
exchange for pay. The important questions here, it seemed to us, were precisely
questions of employment law. Were these workers recognised as such in law:
did they fall within the scope of the legal category ‘employee’ and, as such,
did they enjoy the protection of employment laws–minimum wages, holiday
and sick pay, and so on? Did the workers have the right to join or form trade
unions in a bid to secure for themselves better wages and terms and conditions?
Who, or which organisation, was the ‘employer’ in each case–the party, in
other words, which ought to be obliged in law to treat the worker decently?
∗Professor of Labour Law, University of Glasgow. The project leading to this publication is funded
by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme (grant agreement No 757395). I’m grateful to Aude Cefaliello for research
assistance.
1 From ‘No End to Them’ by N. MacCaig: The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman MacCaig
(Edinburgh: Polygon, 2010).
C2019 The Author.The Moder n Law Review C2019 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2020)83(1) MLR 217–228
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