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Comment by thisisit | Hacker News Reader

> The company’s system of charging drivers if they cannot cover their round has been described as appalling by the chairman of the House of Commons’ work and pensions committee, Frank Field.

This sounds stupid. Wasn't the whole point of gig economy to setting personal time, working and getting paid only when the work is done?

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The point of the "gig economy" is to get around regulation by pretending that your employees are contractors. See also, AirBnB (for getting around planning/zoning regulations), Uber (for getting around employment, taxi, etc regulation), etc etc. There exists a whole business sector devoted to trying to bypass regulation.

Wasn't the point of communism that there is no privileged class and the dictator power is given up post-revolution? Theory and promises meet the real world...

> Wasn't the whole point of gig economy to setting personal time, working and getting paid only when the work is done?

That's the gig companies' marketing, not their intention. The intention was to get cheap, disposable labor. In the US and other developed countries, an employee has a lot of rights and an employer has lots of responsibilities, so under-paying and firing employees is pretty difficult to do.

If a business model only works if you under-pay and mistreat workers, someone (e.g. Fedex, Uber, US govt, and even Microsoft) will fin a way around it by misclassifying employees as contractors.

Firing employees is relatively easy in many US states. At a minimum, all the "at will" states. Firing people and not having to play unemployment is difficult, because it requires a legally-relevant cause.

Isn't the whole point of this article to show that that is not how it works out in practice?

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