United Kingdom: after legal scrutiny, MPs take aim at gig economy’s “unintelligible” contracts

The gig economy was faced with the prospect of upheaval yet again on 6 April, as the UK’s Work and Pensions Committee judged that the contracts under which Uber, Deliveroo and Amazon hire the services of freelance workers as “unintelligible”. With a widespread investigation into the sector still ongoing, MPs say that certain clauses contained in the contracts prevent the majority of workers from challenging their status.
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“Quite frankly the Uber contract is gibberish.” It was with this comment on Thursday that Frank Field, president of the Work and Pensions committee, reignited the intense debate surrounding the gig economy. It is an attack that shows once again that momentum is perhaps shifting against the ‘uberised’ economy, which relies on the ad-hoc use of around 1.3 million freelance workers in the UK, via online platforms. The Labour party MP adds: “These companies parade the “flexibility” their model off

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