I think judges need to be able to kick some thungs back to parliaments, with a demand/request for new legislation clarifying ambiguity.
It should not be so hard to determine what something is legally, considering how many people are affected. There are obvious implications to defining these grey areas using precedence, the goals of the legislation are less important in a courtroom than technical aspects of the law.
On one hand, a lot of these gig companies (especially Uber) could not have scaled as they did using regular employment arrangements. There were undeniable efficiency gains. Many of these benefit employees/contractors too. One big benefit is having far less gatekeeping, which benefits those who tend to be kept out by gatekeepers.
On the other hand, these driving and couriering gigs are (using common sense categories) more like casual part time jobs than "true" contractors. Ie, they are exactly the types of vulnerable workers that a lot of labour laws were written to protect.
Find a legislative solution. There ways to maintain flexibility, but pretend Uber is contracting freely with a peer. Call it something new. Make rules. Do your job.
It should not be so hard to determine what something is legally, considering how many people are affected. There are obvious implications to defining these grey areas using precedence, the goals of the legislation are less important in a courtroom than technical aspects of the law.
On one hand, a lot of these gig companies (especially Uber) could not have scaled as they did using regular employment arrangements. There were undeniable efficiency gains. Many of these benefit employees/contractors too. One big benefit is having far less gatekeeping, which benefits those who tend to be kept out by gatekeepers.
On the other hand, these driving and couriering gigs are (using common sense categories) more like casual part time jobs than "true" contractors. Ie, they are exactly the types of vulnerable workers that a lot of labour laws were written to protect.
Find a legislative solution. There ways to maintain flexibility, but pretend Uber is contracting freely with a peer. Call it something new. Make rules. Do your job.