Today's revelations that a host of fast food couriers were sacked should concern anyone interested in workers’ rights.
To be sacked by text message or email is a modern scourge that is distasteful enough. But when workers’ fates may lie in the hands of computer algorithms and GPS trackers, it would suggest the UK is on the edge of an alarming new age.
Increased globalisation and automation have brought great advances in the way products can be delivered to people in their homes. But we should not be welcoming all these reforms into our lives with open arms.
When the same developments lead to workers having no rights to state their case, no right to appeal and no right to even speak to a human being, we should all take note. The new acceptance that many gig economy workers can be regarded as self-employed – and have virtually zero employment rights – is sinister and hugely dangerous.
Uber drivers previously won a hard-fought victory to be recognised as employees. But couriers for companies like Just Eat have not, as yet, been so lucky, leaving them in a weak, almost defenceless situation when they are unfairly and summarily denied access to the apps that allocate them work.
Gig economy workers are being sold down the river by a Tory government happy to prioritise the profits of global companies over the livelihoods of skint workers, mainly plugging a labour gap in the UK. Fast food courier companies should immediately review their procedures to ensure workers are not treated simply as profit-making numbers in a computer process.
And the UK Government should seek to establish a legal framework that ensures no workers can be cast aside on a computer-generated whim.
Brexit bluster
Figures showing post-Brexit projected trade from the UK to the European Union is down 16 per cent are another reminder of how badly this shambolic Tory government lied to the public over leaving Europe. Trade from the bloc to the UK is down even further – 20 per cent. In the lead-up to the referendum in 2016, Remain supporters issued warning after warning that our export market would be hit considerably if we severed ties with our biggest trading partner.
The Tories and their Vote Leave cronies said leaving the EU would open the UK to other larger markets and bring economic prosperity is also down by 20. Over six years later, it is fair to say the “Promised Land” was a mirage.
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