Gig App Jobs…a Boost or Bust to Our Economy?
Capitalism- the ongoing battle of owners to exploit workers and earn all the money they can without personal cost or responsibility. All our efforts in employment relations regulations can hardly keep up with their scheming. Just when we finally started correctly classifying dependent contractors vs independent contractors and holding employers responsible for their safety and work conditions, they snuck online and started a whole new kind of independent contractor scheme… gig jobs. According to Sara Mojtehedzadeh (2019) two of these gig app jobs have infiltrated our economy and are finally being challenged by Canadian workers.
It all sounded like a good idea. Earn some extra money on your terms, just simply sign up with Uber, open the app, and get to work. Got any problems, just simply hop on a plane, come to the Netherlands, and pursue your dispute through our mandatory arbitration there. It’ll only cost you about $14,500! (Mojtehedzadeh, 2019).
Or try out Foodora. You can be an independent contractor, but they’ll decide your hours. They also require you to accept nearly every job they give you, and they’ll track your performance. Not earning enough? Don’t worry, they’ll allow you to work for other companies too. Concerned about safety risks? They got your back, except no they don’t and no they think you shouldn’t be allowed to unionize against them for better conditions.
Honestly, it’s not capitalism that’s the problem, but greedy capitalists that think themselves above everyone else and want more for themselves without working for it. As long as democracy can keep its laws fair and equal, and keep its court systems from corruption, capitalism is a great system to live under. This is why our court systems are fighting against these two online Giants to defend Canadian workers’ rights.
In January last year, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Canadian Uber workers who complained about their unfair arbitration clause. Uber filed an appeal to the Supreme Court and we are now in the waiting period (Mojtehedzadeh, 2019). According to Professor David Doorey (2019) of York University in Toronto, Canadian legislators should have “seen the writing on the wall and proactively banned mandatory arbitration clauses that block workers from the administrative enforcement machinery provided in protective labour standards legislation.” Now we can only wait and hope that the Supreme Court makes the right decision and protects Canadian workers from low-wage, unprotected, exploitative, independent contracting app jobs.
Works cited
Doorey, D. (2019, Nov. 21). Heller v. Supreme Court must guard access to Class Action Lawsuits. Law of Work. Retrieved from http://lawofwork.ca/?p=9733
Mojtehedzadeh, S. (2019, Nov. 6). Heavyweights Uber, Foodora in separate battles that could impact gig economy. The Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/11/06/heavyweights-uber-foodora-in-separate-battles-that-could-impact-gig-economy.html
Melissa Millin 