Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by topicseed | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

topicseed

Key takeaways...

- A study led by the University of Bristol reveals that 52% of gig workers in the UK earn below the minimum wage.

- The average hourly earnings of gig workers were £8.97, approximately 15% lower than the current UK minimum wage.

- Work-related insecurity and anxiety were experienced by 76% of gig workers surveyed.

- Many gig workers (28%) felt their health and safety were at risk, and 25% experienced pain on the job.

- Gig workers expressed the need for basic rights such as minimum wage rates, holiday and sick pay, and protection against unfair dismissal, as well as the formation of unions and platform councils to represent their interests and influence working conditions.

View on HN

>- The average hourly earnings of gig workers were £8.97, approximately 15% lower than the current UK minimum wage.

UK "real" minimum wage at the time was £9.5, so it's 5.6% lower, but this only applies to people aged 23+!

You could also say that they earned 31.3% more than the minimum wage of £6.83 that applied to 18 to 20 year olds at the time.

Or 2.3% less than the minimumn wage of £9.18 that applied to 21 to 22 year olds at the time.

I'm very surprised that a study done in the UK didn't go deeper on age, especially when they're going to write such lines compared to minimum wage.

Many businesses won't pay anything other than the 23+ rate.

The age based rates should be removed altogether, they're mainly there so that the owners of small businesses can creep on young girls.

Always wondered at the back of my mind how successive UK Governments have managed to get away with squaring age based minimum wages with Article 14 of the ECHR, which is supposed to prevent age based discrimination. Surely someone has tried to bring a case - virtually every other question of law in the UK regarding the ECHR/Human Rights Act has made its way to Strasbourg.

Laws against age based discrimination have basically only ever been used to help those in power: Older people

The ability to pay younger people below the standard minimum wage goes hurt older people (well, everyone over 23c but older people are included in that set of course), because they legally can’t compete on price for those jobs.

But of course, this only hurts the older folks without a lot of financial power.

True, they should have included that. I have the impression though that e.g. delivery jobs used to be considered student jobs instead of a full-time job to make a living from. While most gig workers seem rather young I'd think the age range has shifted upwards.

I don't agree. A job is a job.

It shouldn't be "for students". We would all balk about providing the same service and being paid less because we were "too young" despite providing the same skill and ability.

It's not a matter of getting paid less for the same job, it's a matter of not having the same skills or experience. Employers need some incentive to take a chance on someone with no employment history.

The incentive for taking a chance on an employee should be "I need to hire someone to grow my business so I can make more money".

We should stop worshiping at the alter of "small businesses". We've done it for decades and I'm not convinced it has helped in the slightest. Small business owners have the worst victim complex I have ever seen.

So if there's two candidates, but one of them is a student with no history of employment, and the other is someone with at least a couple years of experience behind their belt, which do you think the business would hire for the same cost?

Let's go back to 2009. Am I hiring for a social media position? Does the experienced person have 2 years of experience in marketing or in social media?

We've all seen this flip before and I think its disingenuous to pretend it doesn't apply here because its "low skill". this leads to us being okay with someone making less than the minimum wage and pushes downward on labor's ability to attempt to make the playing field livable, not level, just livable in a way that we could be proud of as a nation rather than embarrassed of.

Every hire is a chance taken for both sides of the transaction. This argument is tired and can be spun another way: a new employee is a blank slate. The employer will define a working method that cannot be compared and judged based on experience (they have none). The employer may even benefit further from a fresh perspective on working methods.

Let's push it further: can we say the same for very experienced employees? Isn't the employer taking a chance on the employee being willing to learn and adopt a potentially different workflow? Maybe we deduct from the value of a highly experienced employee due to the likelihood of them being stuck in their ways. Oh wait that's ageist now isn't it.. Funny how that double standard works.

But then you're just arguing that we should lower the minimum wage for everyone, because the people with genuinely valuable experience can negotiate higher wages on their own and the people who need someone to take a chance on them for any reason need the ability to offer a discount.

Ah yes, student jobs in towns without students. Makes sense.

The study was an internet survey with no verification and they mixed the data between a wide variety of types of remote gigs, including upwork and fiverr and the further mixed the idea of “waiting for work” which falsely decreased the average wage.

Falsely how?

If you're reading your personal email or watching Netflix until your phone dings, you're not getting paid for it, but why would you expect to be?

Because someone who’s under a contract at Apple will get paid during those times? Even a freelancer like me on a higher demand profession, I get paid by day and sometimes there’s only 4 hours of work.

The lack of empathy of some commenters here is truly shocking.

If you're on a contract that pays for your time, you can't leave and go hang out in the park or get a workout at the gym or go shopping at the mall.

If you're on a contract that pays by the job, you're back on your own time as soon as the work is done. You got paid to give someone a ride, they get out of your car and the contract is over. You can go do whatever you want. But you don't get paid any more until you do more work. That's the nature of it. There are people who voluntarily choose this when alternatives are available, because they value the flexibility etc.

Vast majority of people I've met in Europe working under these conditions do it only out of necessity.

Out of necessity to do gig work, or out of necessity to do some work?

I have to imagine Europe has food service workers and cashiers and cleaning staff and other jobs that nobody really likes to do and that don't pay particularly well, but that aren't hard jobs to get. So if the gig work is actually worse instead of better, why are they choosing it over any of those other things which are still available?

They’re not available, not in all countries

Because liquidity services demand to be compensated or otherwise liquidity won't be provided (= the ability to receive service without an appointment) If you don't compensate them, then you as a customer will have to get an appointment ahead of time so that the worker can plan whether he has work today or not.

That gets solved through pricing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com