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Comment by settrans | Hacker News Reader

I find this sanctimonious _I know better than you_ attitude shocking and inappropriately condescending.

Just because these people are earning less than minimum wage, what makes you think you know better than them what's good for them, and that they "don't have a clue"? Why is this "blatantly obvious"? Why are they not rational actors but you are?

Given that so many people are making this choice for themselves, it feels like it's possible that there's demand for below-minimum-wage labor (otherwise, why wouldn't they go and get minimum-wage jobs?).

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I think you might be mistaking making a choice with having a choice. These people don't have another choice.

Many gig workers do gig work around other work and pressures (eg childcare). The work they do isn't what they would choose all other things being equal but the soaring cost of living, the lack of affordable and convenient childcare means people have to do sums that end in them doing a few hours a day in a shitty extra job.

I think many would rather choose a better paid job compatible with modern life. They just don't exist.

That seems like a problem with the alternatives - no one else is giving them the flexibility or the additional hours they need. Make their day jobs pay better and offer more flexibility so they don't need gig work, don't make the gig work they need harder to get.

When you race to the bottom, there aren't alternatives.

Companies cut their costs by pushing more and more jobs to this cheaper (low rights, no progression, no holiday, no health, no benefits) gig work. They quickly out-competed. Everyone is forced to hire on the same terms to stay competitive. Very quickly it's not that "the alternatives" aren't good enough, they just don't exist any more.

Shitty gig work conditions exist because we permit it. If we didn't, employers would hire part time staff like they used to, instead of forcing everybody to be a zero-hours "contractor".

Can you name a company that used to hire part time staff and has since gone to only zero-hours contractors? I find the idea that non-gig jobs don't exist anymore extremely hard to believe.

Whole industries have switched over. Logistics, taxies, food delivery used to be done by employees and they're gig work now.

In the broader "zero-hours" employment contract sense —which has very significant commonalities with gig working— a great many major employers shed their part-time workforces because they can. Employers are dictating employment terms in such a way that people are working full-time hours and are still unable to make ends meet; have no job security, no expectation of progression, no recourse if they're suddenly let go.

In the UK, the companies doing this are countless and the scope if everything from major multinationals down to local shops and services. Part time work used to come with an expectation of hours. Over a year it built to a right to those hours (or pro-rata redundancy), just like any other employee. But now they're just worms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract#Employers

That's just blatantly false. Truck drivers, taxi drivers, and pizza delivery guys are all still hourly employees. The gig work in those industries are things that hourly employees never did.

Zero-hours employment contracts and gig work both fall outside of the traditional employment paradigm, but in very different ways. The major aspect of gig work which is being discussed here, ie that the time spent waiting around for gigs brings the average hourly rate below minimum wage, is not present. Zero-hour contract employees are still required to be paid at least minimum wage for all time that they are required to be present, even if there is no work to do. Further, zero-hour contract employees are required to be on call despite not being scheduled and with few restrictions on when they might be called in, putting them totally at the mercy of the employer scheduling them; conversely the gig worker is never on call and has total freedom over what hours they're willing to work. The whole appeal of gig work is that people don't want to be committed to working some standard block of time regularly, so they can maintain their personal flexibility.

All to say that gig-style work has made stable, convenient work harder to get. It ate shift work.

There is work that needs doing. That hasn't changed. What's been changing is companies are working skirting worker rights rules to get the same work without paying as much.

the problem with below minimum wage labor has never been that there's no demand for it...

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