The changing industrial landscape for gig economy workers

Australia was a workers’ paradise at the time of Federation and it’s time for some serious industrial relations reform.

The return of Parliament to Canberra last week has brought industrial relations, particularly the conditions and rights of gig economy workers, to the forefront of the political agenda in Australia. The discussions centre around the need for significant changes to existing legislation in order to provide gig economy workers with enhanced job security, improved wages, and safer working environments. These proposed amendments also encompass critical provisions for ensuring equal pay for equal work and the criminalisation of wage theft. Additionally, there is a focus on establishing minimum standards for penalty rates, superannuation, and insurance, as well as regulating the process of deactivation, whereby employees can be removed from gig platforms without justification.

These proposed changes appear to be a reasonable response to the challenges faced by gig economy workers, and it’s difficult to understand why there would be any resistance to these changes. Many of these workers are engaged within platforms operated by massive multinational corporations such as Uber, which have reaped substantial profits while providing low pay and substandard working conditions to their employees. In this context, it becomes imperative to reassess the role of work, emphasising fair compensation for the tasks performed rather than enabling big business players to exploit the labour market.

Nevertheless, the reaction to these proposed reforms has not been universally positive. Employer groups, notably the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have launched an expensive advertising campaign against the idea of equal pay for equal work, arguing – without any logic – that these reforms could harm businesses, as if commerce should be placed at a far greater level than human life.

Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton has criticised the legislation, suggesting that it primarily serves the interests of organised labour and “the unions” (memo to Dutton: the Labor Party was created in 1891 to advocate for the agenda of union) but this is to be expected: his role is to disagree with everything the Labor government proposes, in some forlorn hope that this will somehow improve his electoral appeal.

The concept of “fair pay for fair work” and efforts to improve working conditions for a demographic that has endured subpar conditions for far too long, should be an issue that could garner bipartisan support, if we lived in a normal world and the politics of Australia was populated with sane and reasonable people. However, we don’t live in a normal world: contemporary politics often reflects a deeply divided landscape where finding common ground is increasingly elusive except, of course, when it concerns salary increases for politicians: there will always be bipartisan support for this matter.