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Abstract

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French

The COVID-19 pandemic led to renewed discussion of decent work for people at the margins of the labour market. This article explores public policy on platform workers across three liberal market economies, namely the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland, taking the pandemic as a focal point. Liberal market economies are generally difficult environments for unions, and we examine the nature of union political pressure on the state to enhance protections for platform workers and the extent to which policy has changed in each state. We find uneven levels of such union pressure, with the most limited attention afforded by Irish unions. In the United Kingdom, the unions did exert some influence through strategic litigation, creating a policy problem for the government. More progressive policies are evident in Canada, where the government recognises that platform workers’ precarious position has undesirable consequences for the state.

Keywords

Platform work gig economy political pressure public policy COVID-19 pandemic decent work unions social protection

Introduction

Platform work is labour performed through ‘digital intermediaries allowing the purchase and sale of typically labour-intensive services’ (Ilsøe et al., 2021: 203). Before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital labour platforms were accused of contributing ‘to the increasing deconstruction of the employment relationship’ (Drahokoupil and Jepsen, 2017: 104). Platform work generally has been characterised by low and insecure incomes, long and irregular working hours, minimal employer-provided benefits, weak social protection and little union representation (Duggan et al., 2020). The financial precariousness of platform work was exacerbated during the pandemic, as workers were largely unable to fall back on social safety nets amid national lockdowns and economic contraction (Apouey et al., 2020). This was despite the fact that government-issued lists of critical or essential workers during lockdowns included occupations in which platform workers operate, such as food delivery (United Kingdom and Ireland), care work (United Kingdom) and essential transport services (Canada). Progressive social policies can sometimes emerge from economic crises (Farnsworth, 2021), and some suggested that the pandemic had re-shaped public discourse with a stronger focus on employment vulnerability and job quality (Spencer and Huws, 2021). It is therefore worth examining whether one legacy of the pandemic is a public policy focus on creating decent work for platform workers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, trade unions called for more state protection of platform workers. Targeting the state was rational because it regulates the welfare system and shapes what employers do (Godard, 2002). Unions are key actors in the policy-making apparatuses of democratic states, but how they ‘appeal’ to the state to achieve protections for workers depends on whether they are in a position of institutional strength or weakness (Carver and Doellgast, 2021: 375). Trade unions with institutional strength are treated as social partners by government, whereas in circumstances of institutional weakness, unions require grass-roots mobilisation to get the attention of legislators (Carver and Doellgast, 2021).

Liberal market economies are generally difficult environments for unions as they have comparatively weaker employment regulation and weak institutional protections for unions (Carver and Doellgast, 2021; Hall, 2015). Unions’ ability to influence government policies has long been recognised as evidence of union strength (Mitchell, 1996), but given their institutional weakness – especially in liberal market economies – unions’ regulatory role has necessarily become ‘political as much as industrial, with regulatory ambitions to be secured by political campaigning and legislation rather than by collective bargaining’ (Ewing, 2005: 15).

This article focuses on union political actions in three liberal market economies – the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada – with specific reference to platform workers and with the COVID-19 pandemic as a focal point. We examine union demands for protection of platform workers and the nature of their political actions, and then consider state responses, recognising that determining actors’ influence on policy-making is notoriously difficult (Woll, 2007). By undertaking a comparative review, the article contributes to our understanding of the characteristics and outcomes of union political actions and seeks to offer some lessons on how platform worker protections might be advanced in liberal market economies.

The structure of the article is as follows. We begin by explaining the sources of evidence for the study of our three chosen countries. We then situate our study in the literature on the characteristics of liberal market economies, illustrating how they present challenges for unions seeking to improve worker rights. This is followed by our findings, which are presented for each country in two dimensions. The first identifies the sources and nature of union political pressure in liberal market economies to decommodify platform work, with regard to employment status and income supports. The second outlines the policy positions of the state in liberal market economies and underscores the extent to which political pressure has traction. The article concludes with a critical discussion of these issues, drawing attention to the differences in political pressure and responses across the three countries.

Methodology

This article critically reviews union pressures and state responses to platform work in three liberal market economies – the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland – with a particular focus on trade union pressure-building activities and strategies, in addition to policy and regulatory issues and developments in this sphere during the COVID-19 pandemic. All three countries have experienced noteworthy growth in platform work. In Ireland, platform work has a higher presence than in other EU countries, and there is a relatively higher economic dependency on this type of work (Piasna et al., 2022). The proportion of the working population in England and Wales working via online platforms at least once a week increased from almost 6 per cent in 2016 to approximately 15 per cent in 2021 (Spencer and Huws, 2021). In Canada, gig workers – including platform workers and traditional freelance workers (Bajwa et al., 2018) – represented about 8–10 per cent of all workers in 2016 (Jeon et al., 2022).

Our review comprised three key stages: (i) data collection, (ii) data analysis and (iii) synthesis of findings (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010). We included three forms of literature in the review: (a) peer-reviewed articles, (b) grey literature, including government papers and union congress reports and campaign publications, and (c) media publications focusing on relevant developments in our chosen liberal market economies. Although we were concerned primarily with state responses to COVID-19, we also drew on literature from previous years to illustrate the nature and conditions of platform work before the pandemic.

To begin, we gathered relevant literature using specific keywords related to platform work (such as ‘platform work’, ‘platform economy’, ‘gig work’, ‘gig economy’). Given the recent currency of these topics in the context of COVID-19, the incorporation of grey literature and media publications in our review was particularly important. In line with suggestions made by Adams et al. (2017), we focused on grey literature that has significant retrievability and credibility, typically published by governments or reputable independent bodies. We also followed the guidance of Adams et al. (2017) in utilising media publications cautiously, particularly where it was difficult to account for the validity of some arguments and assertions.

Finally, in organising and synthesising our findings, we categorised our literature according to several relevant themes aligning with our objectives. This included identifying various sources of political pressure in relation to platform work across our three liberal market economies, primarily from unions, but also from opposition political parties. We also sought to analyse each state’s regulatory position on platform work, and whether pressures and issues highlighted during the pandemic prompted developments in this sphere.

Union political pressure and liberal market economies

Liberal market economies are associated with liberal welfare states, policies that restrict the power of organised labour, and minimal labour regulation, which leads to greater managerial licence (Hall, 2015; Schmidt, 2007). The United Kingdom has been classed as an exemplar liberal market economy (Schneider and Paunescu, 2012), with an entrenched ideology of industrial relations liberalisation (McLaughlin and Wright, 2018). The Irish state has been described as ‘sympathetic to a free market ideological narrative’ (Inversi et al., 2017), and unions have argued that EU laws have been introduced there in a somewhat conservative fashion (Reidy, 2023), although others point to the marginality of neoliberal ideas in political debate (McLaughlin and Wright, 2018). Canada also has characteristics of a typical liberal market economy (Schneider and Paunescu, 2012), but there is important provincial diversity within the country, resulting in varying approaches to the development of skills, deployment of labour, and relations between institutions (Arnold et al., 2018). At the federal level, Canadian state policy became increasingly neoliberal from the 1980s, but not uniformly across the provinces (Hall, 2015).

Given liberal states’ tendency to be responsive to employer pressures for flexible labour markets (Hall, 2015), and the contestation of state regulation (Dür and De Bièvre, 2007), unions face a challenge in seeking to influence public policy. Interest group influence over official policy-making and policy implementation is shaped by their strategies and the nature and salience of the issues (not to mention public attention) (Dür and De Bièvre, 2007). Unions use a range of strategies to influence political outcomes, and these can vary in their costs and benefits. For example, interest groups might prefer lobbying to litigation where the former involves lower costs (Bouwen and Mccown, 2007). Workers in environments with low unionisation, however, can be deprived of union access to ‘national policy making circles’ (Mitchell, 1996: 420). In some countries, new grass-roots unions rather than established unions have been at the fore in representing platform workers (Cini et al., 2022), but these can lack the national-level political power of traditional unions (Bertolini and Dukes, 2021).

Interest groups can influence policy-making through ‘attention-getting activities’ that speak to legislators’ election concerns (Burstein and Linton, 2002: 387). Burstein and Linton (2002) argue that attention to the new activities of interest groups rather than measures of their resources, such as union density, may provide better information on their policy influence. In hostile political environments, unions can adapt through innovative union political actions and be more inclusive of non-unionised workers (Murray, 2017). Unions have engaged in strategic litigation, most notably against platform organisations on their employment status. Cullinane (2018) points to worker litigation’s general inferiority to voluntarist collective action, but it can be an ‘important tool for labour movements’ where ‘responsive political mechanisms’ are absent (Meakin, 2022: 209).

This article proceeds by reviewing the actions of trade unions seeking to influence public policy on the rights of platform workers. Despite the commonalities between the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland as liberal market economies, their approaches to regulation and union demands can differ. We might expect the British state to be the least receptive to calls for enhanced protections for platform workers, while a more positive regulatory response may be expected in Ireland, although past experience suggests uncertainty regarding the strength of potential regulation. Meanwhile, Ontario, the largest Canadian province in terms of population, has been seen to influence other Canadian regions in terms of legislation, although all provinces have enacted legislation setting their own minimum standards governing the basic terms and conditions of employment.

Nature of union political pressure in liberal market economies

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has three types of employment status: worker, employee and self-employed. Worker and union actions on employment status have tended to take the form of litigation against employers. When platform workers have been successful, they were usually found by courts or tribunals to be ‘workers’ and specifically ‘limb (b)’ workers, who ‘have a more casual employment relationship and are entitled to a basic set of rights’ (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 2021: 2), such as minimum wages and holiday pay, but not unfair dismissal protection or statutory sick pay. There were policy discussions about employment status and platform workers prior to the pandemic. In 2016, then Prime Minister Theresa May commissioned a report into employment regulation and the ‘changing world of work’ in response to mounting publicity and political campaigns by unions and other groups on precarious work and, for example, legal cases against Uber (Bales et al., 2018; BBC, 2016). The ensuing Taylor Review (Taylor et al., 2017) made a series of recommendations, generally regarded as weak, regarding platform workers’ rights. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) criticised its recommendation that the intermediate employment category of ‘worker’ should be renamed ‘dependent contractor’ for workers who were not genuinely self-employed on the grounds that it ‘cav[ed] in to special pleading from app-based companies, who are claiming that they cannot pay the minimum wage like any other employer’. The TUC instead called for all workers to have the same rights as employees (O’Grady, 2017; TUC, 2018).

UK unions necessarily turned their attention during the pandemic to state income support for precarious workers, pointing to the gaps in social protection experienced by those designated as ‘limb (b)’ workers. The TUC campaigned for statutory sick pay for platform workers but much of its focus was on lobbying the government to introduce a wage subsidy scheme for all workers, income support for the self-employed, and statutory sick pay reforms because of its low benefit rates and eligibility barriers (TUC, 2020a, 2020b).

As platform work has grown in the United Kingdom, so too have so-called ‘indie unions’, notably the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB). The union has less access to policy-makers than the TUC (to which it is not affiliated), although it wrote to the Prime Minister during the pandemic calling for the extension of statutory sick pay to limb (b) workers and for regulation to oblige employers to pay workers with no guaranteed hours (zero-hours workers) who could not work because of COVID-19 (Moyer-Lee, 2020). The IWGB primarily sought to influence government policy-making during the pandemic through strategic litigation. In 2020, the union and two Uber drivers initiated judicial review proceedings against the government for acting unlawfully by excluding ‘limb (b)’ workers from access to the government’s job retention scheme and to statutory sick pay, and by not increasing the sick pay rate or removing the lower earnings limit for eligibility. The union argued that these decisions were unlawful under EU and human rights law and did not comply with the public sector equality obligation. The High Court dismissed the judicial review, however, concluding that ‘it was not practicable to extend statutory sick pay to all limb (b) workers in a speedy or sudden manner’ (Ahmed Asiatu and IWGB v HM Treasury, [2020] EWHC 1554 para 98). But the union won a second judicial review case in 2020, when the High Court concluded that the United Kingdom had failed to properly transpose two EU Directives on health and safety (Directive 89/391/EC and Directive 89/656/EC) into domestic law by only applying them to ‘employees’ rather than the wider category of ‘workers’, which includes platform workers (IWGB v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [2020] EWHC 3050). For the IWGB (2020a), the outcome represented a government ‘defeat’.

Canada

Workers operating on digital platforms in Canada are classified largely as independent contractors rather than employees. The unions have gained some traction in Canada’s platform economy, however. Lewchuk (2021) considers how organising platform workers has presented unique challenges for unions because such workers typically fall outside existing Canadian labour legislation. Nonetheless, there are examples of Canadian unions seeking to overcome this obstacle to represent these workers, although pressure has typically been targeted toward platform organisations rather than the state. For example, in 2022, the United Food and Commercial Workers of Canada (UFCW) signed an agreement with Uber that allowed the union to represent Canada’s 100,000 Uber drivers and food-delivery riders in certain disputes with the organisation (Bellon, 2022; Lewchuk, 2021). Similar efforts and pressures have also been seen provincially, particularly in Ontario where Gig Workers United – a community union led by platform workers in partnership with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) – has been active since 2019. Prior to the pandemic, the CUPW (2020) launched a case that riders working for food-delivery platform Foodora had the right to organise by joining a union, despite their employment status. During the pandemic, Foodora abruptly exited the Canadian market, leaving its many workers vulnerable and without access to work. Following intervention by the CUPW and Gig Workers United, hundreds of former Foodora workers won a settlement worth $3.46m (CUPW, 2020; Manzocco, 2020), although the precise details of the settlement were not publicly disclosed.

The sparse benefits and supports afforded to platform workers in Canada during COVID-19 drew significant criticism from both unions and opposition parties. During the federal election campaign in 2021, the Canadian Conservative Party said that those working in the platform economy were ‘left behind’ during the pandemic, having been excluded from pandemic-related employment benefits and supports because they lacked the required insurance hours or payroll contributions (Tunney, 2021). Likewise, the CUPW called on all federal political parties to better protect workers, including platform workers, by improving federal labour laws and extending traditional employment supports to the latter (Simpson, 2020). At the provincial level, the Alberta Federation of Labour highlighted that there had been no meaningful discussion about the lack of support available for platform workers throughout the pandemic, despite significant issues related to low wages, insecurity and a lack of benefits (Dryden, 2022). Still at the provincial level, in Ontario, Gig Workers United criticised government efforts to – seemingly – improve payment conditions and transparency for platform workers, embodied in the passing of Bill 88 in 2022. While welcoming the overall initiative to improve working conditions for platform workers, the union condemned the legislation for enacting a minimum wage entitlement for engaged time only – that is, for the time workers spend on assignment, but not for any time spent waiting for work (Gig Workers United, 2022; Subramaniam, 2022). In particular, the union criticised the lobbying efforts of platform organisations to shape the content of the bill.

Ireland

The Irish employment rights, tax and social protection systems generally categorise people as either employed or self-employed. As platform workers are classified primarily as self-employed or on contracts for services, their employment protections are minimal. Consequently, employer responsibility is often limited, for example, to equality and health and safety in the workplace. For some self-employed occupations, union-employer agreements were struck, such as between Irish Actors’ Equity SIPTU and commercial providers on the terms and conditions for voiceover actors, but the Competition Authority deemed that this contravened competition law. In 2016, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) subsequently lobbied the government to secure collective bargaining rights for freelance workers (musicians, journalists and voiceover actors) who ordinarily were excluded from such rights by competition law, and ultimately submitted a complaint to the European Committee on Social Rights (ECSR) claiming that competition law breached the European Social Charter.

The union movement, however, has been late in representing platform workers, such as delivery couriers or ‘riders’, but it did highlight their precarious position during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ireland’s largest trade union – the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) – argued that gig workers who contracted COVID-19 would be hit hard by Ireland’s ‘anaemic’ social protection system (Wall, 2020). In March 2020, the ICTU General Secretary urged the Irish government to sustain the net incomes of all workers hit by the outbreak either through the social welfare system or by providing temporary payments to ensure that those who needed to self-isolate could afford to do so. In 2021, SIPTU and workers of food-delivery platform Deliveroo met the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to discuss platform workers’ terms and conditions. A month later, SIPTU organised an ‘online political rally’ as part of Rights4Riders Global Day of Action, in which they invited politicians to discuss union concerns in relation to platform workers’ rights, safety, and pay. Most of the politicians who attended, however, were not in government and did not have strong policy-making powers. The Rights4Riders campaign made several demands of government to include fair pay, decent working conditions and greater employer prosecutions for illegal work practices (Rights4Riders, 2021). Likewise, the ICTU (2021) urged the Irish government to outlaw the imposition of ‘bogus’ self-employment on platform workers.

State policy positions and implementation

Having outlined the nature of trade union political pressure on behalf of platform workers in three countries, the next section examines the extent to which this pressure has gained any traction and resulted in new or amended government policy.

United Kingdom

The British Conservative government has dismissed proposals to reform the current three-tier employment status framework because changes could result in ‘cost and uncertainty for business in the short-term’ (HM Government, 2022: 28–29). This means that platform workers who are designated ‘workers’ by tribunals or courts in future legal claims against their employers will continue to have fewer rights than employees. Prior to the pandemic, the government had committed itself to introducing an Employment Bill that, it argued, would provide protections for workers in the platform economy, although this was not borne out by its provisions. In any case, the government delayed the legislation – citing the unpredictable impact of the pandemic – despite pressure from unions and parliamentary committees. The only regulatory change relevant to platform workers since COVID-19 was the introduction of a statutory instrument – the Employment Rights Act 1996 (Protection from Detriment in Health and Safety Cases) (Amendment) Order 2021 – which extended health and safety protections to ‘workers’ (that is, not just employees) as a result of the IWGB’s successful judicial reviews.

During the pandemic, the British government introduced an employer subsidy and employee wage replacement scheme and adjusted the operation of the statutory sick pay scheme in response to TUC lobbying. While the United Kingdom temporarily shifted away from its previous austerity approach and its schemes were considered relatively generous (Ebbinghaus and Lehner, 2022), many insecure workers were simply ineligible and ‘some employers refused to enter insecure workers’ for such schemes (TUC, 2020b: 13). While some platform workers were entitled to the government’s Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS), the IWGB (2020b) argued that it discriminated against many in the platform economy because it excluded people who became self-employed after April 2019 and those who derived less than half of their income from self-employment. The government claimed that platform workers who were self-isolating could apply for Universal Credit – a means-tested benefit for working-age people on low income – but this was considered problematic for women workers in particular because of its low benefit rate and because it was underpinned by the ‘male breadwinner model’ (Close the Gap, 2020: 2).

Canada

During the initial crisis phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the classification assigned to Canadian platform workers meant they qualified only for the COVID-response benefits available to self-employed workers, and no special accommodation was made for people operating via digital platforms. While there were some nuances across provinces, this generally amounted to platform workers being eligible for the Recovery Sickness Benefit of $500 per week for up to six weeks, or in some cases, the Recovery Caregiving Benefit for workers unable to work for at least 50 per cent of the week because of child-care needs or because a household member had become infected with COVID-19 (Government of Canada, 2022). Despite being offered a limited range of response benefits and protections, many platform workers in Canada found themselves categorised as essential or critical service providers throughout the pandemic.

The Canadian federal government and some provinces have begun considering how best to regulate the platform economy through legislation. At the federal level, the Report of the Expert Panel on Modern Federal Labour Standards (ESDC, 2019) led the way as an initial government review to consider recommendations for non-standard workers, including platform workers. Based on the report’s findings, the Canadian Labour Programme – which is responsible for protecting the rights and well-being of both workers and employers in federally regulated workplaces – engaged with stakeholders, including unions, to ‘deepen its understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced by gig workers and the extent to which they are in need of greater labour protections’ (ESDC Consultations, 2021). The goal, ultimately, was to discover how these workers fit, or may be able to fit, in the framework of the Canadian Labour Code, which sets out federal labour law and defines the rights and responsibilities of workers and employers. In doing so, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) – a federal government department with responsibility for the labour market – issued a call in 2021 for consultations on the everyday realities of gig workers, including those working on digital platforms. It is not yet clear when or if legislation may be passed to broaden the Code’s protections to include platform workers, but the government has made it understood that it is within its purview to extend protections to those who work in this domain. Indeed, the Code was amended in January 2021 to prohibit misclassification and hence puts the onus on the employer to establish that a person who files a complaint with the Labour Program is not an employee as understood under the legislation (reversed burden of proof).

There have also been developments at provincial level to develop minimum employment standards for people in the platform economy, particularly against the backdrop of COVID-19. Ontario was the first to pass specific legislation aimed at platform workers, namely, as already mentioned, Bill 88 or the Working for Workers Act, 2022, which was supposed to establish foundational rights and protections for platform workers by guaranteeing a minimum wage, protection of their tips, dispute resolution and protection from reprisals (Legislative Assembly of Ontario, 2022). Bill 88 also enacted the standalone Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act, 2022, which focuses exclusively on platform workers, regardless of whether they are an employee of the platform organisation. This Act provides workers with the right to information on remuneration, work assignments and performance ratings; the right to a recurring pay period; and the right to a minimum wage for each work assignment performed (DeClerq, 2022).

While imperfect, these developments mark notable efforts towards long-term, sustainable change in the platform economy, although it remains to be seen whether the actions taken in Ontario will be reflected nationally. During the pandemic, the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party was in power in Ontario, whose leader positioned the party as having ‘always been for the front-line, hard-working union people’, and claimed that he would ‘break a brick wall down to support them’ (Crawley, 2021). These sentiments seem to represent a shift away from the typical principles of liberal market economies, particularly with regard to support for trade unions. There are also initially promising signs in British Columbia, where the government announced in late 2022 that it is at the early stages of consulting with platform workers and organisations regarding employment standards (Government of Canada, 2022).

Ireland

The Irish government has generally responded when unions have put significant pressure on the state, usually through litigation or alliances with opposition parties (O’Sullivan et al., 2020). On the issue of unions being prohibited by competition law to engage in collective bargaining for self-employed workers, during the Great Recession opposition politicians proposed two pro-worker Bills, but they did not progress because they lacked government support. Subsequently, however, before the outcome of ICTU’s complaint to the ECSR was known, the government introduced legislation proposed by a Labour Party senator while in opposition, namely the Competition (Amendment) Act 2017. This Act allows unions to apply for an exemption from a ban on session musicians, voiceover actors, freelance journalists, and other bogus self-employed/fully dependent self-employed workers, from making collective agreements. The law stipulates, however, that unions must show that there will be no or minimal economic effects on the market in which the workers operate, and to date, no unions have used the legislation for workers outside the three listed occupations (Prendergast, 2022).

In light of the proposed EU Directive to improve working conditions in platform work, two bills were presented by opposition parties. The Labour Party’s Protection of Employment (Platform Workers and Bogus Self-Employment) Bill 2021 sought to provide greater clarity around platform workers’ employment status, while Sinn Féin, Ireland’s largest opposition party at the time, introduced the Organisation of Working Time (Workers’ Rights and Bogus Self-Employment) (Amendment) Bill 2021 to tackle ‘bogus’ self-employment. Neither Bill has progressed beyond the debate stage in Ireland’s Oireachtas (national parliament), however. Acknowledging that labour market developments, including ‘new forms of work such as platform work and the gig economy’, presented challenges for deciding employment status, in 2021 the Irish government published a revised Code of Practice providing guidance on determining employment status (Department of Social Protection, 2021). The government confirmed it had no plans to introduce an employment category specifically for platform workers to confer on them the same rights as employees in more secure employment, arguing that this would ‘inevitably lead to a race to the bottom where hard won employment rights are gradually eroded’ (Gleeson, 2021).

Irish legislation has been amended to transpose the EU Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions (of 2022). While the Directive claims that new rights and protections will be extended to platform workers, this depends on how a worker is defined in national legislation and definitions can be complex and exclusionary (McMahon, 2019). In a landmark decision in 2023, however, the Irish Supreme Court overturned a Court of Appeal ruling by determining that Domino’s Pizza delivery drivers were employees rather than contractors. Crucially, and unlike previous decisions on determining worker status, the Supreme Court held that greater significance should be placed on the degree of control under which the worker performed the work, rather than on mutuality of obligation, a key pillar of the employment relationship (IBEC, 2023). The case did not involve unions and concerned tax issues rather than employment rights, but it may be influential in employment rights cases for platform workers in the future.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, platform workers were entitled to the Pandemic Unemployment Payment provided they were in self-employment immediately before March 2020 (when lockdown commenced), and their income ceased. The government also introduced the COVID-19 Enhanced Illness Benefit (up to a maximum of €350 per week) for workers who had the virus or were required to self-isolate, but the self-employed were eligible only if they worked immediately before getting certification. These conditions were probably difficult to meet for many platform workers on precarious contracts (or ‘supplier agreements’). In the aftermath of the pandemic, Ireland’s then Deputy Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, said the ‘COVID-19 pandemic had caused society to redefine frontline or essential workers’ and that ‘one of the legacies of the pandemic must be better terms and conditions for them’ (Miley, 2021). Since then, the government has introduced a series of measures for ‘better terms, conditions and security’ for employees as part of the pandemic ‘legacy’ (Wall, 2020), including a statutory sick-pay scheme and an additional bank holiday. In practice, however, it remains difficult to see how platform workers may benefit from these legislative changes if they continue to be classified as self-employed.

Conclusion

This article is a response to calls for comparative studies to analyse state action and regulatory strategies towards platform work in liberal market economies (Inversi et al., 2023). It contributes to the literature examining differences and similarities in policy positions in such economies. State pragmatism in Ireland is evident in its introduction of new employment regulations and social protections since the COVID-19 pandemic, triggered by a combination of union campaigns on low-paid work, a realisation within government that the state had to support worker incomes in the absence of employer obligations, and incoming EU Directives. Irish unions, however, have not organised or campaigned strongly on behalf of platform workers so there has been little pressure on the state for platform-specific regulations. Platform workers may benefit from better terms and conditions in the future, perhaps driven by the proposed EU Directive on platform work, although Veale et al. (2023) posit that it will probably encounter fierce lobbying and resistance.

In the United Kingdom, the unions had some success in pushing for new job retention and income replacement protections for workers generally during COVID-19, but these were ‘as much about protecting employers’ as employees (Farnsworth, 2021: 93) and were not targeted at platform workers. The IWGB’s strategic litigation against the government was rational given that platform workers constitute a very small proportion of the electorate and so give the government little incentive to introduce decommodification measures. As the IWGB has found, however, litigation is an uncertain venture, as ‘translating political demands and material grievances into legal claims’ can be challenging (Meakin, 2022: 209). The union’s judicial reviews compensated to some degree for platform workers’ representation gap and the IWGB’s limited access to policy circles, but since COVID-19 the British government has introduced legislation reforming judicial review proceedings which will limit remedies in the future. The government approach to platform workers contrasts with particular arms of the state, such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission and parliamentary committees, which were critical of the limited or absent social protections to platform workers during the pandemic.

Our analysis of Canada presents an unusual and sometimes contradictory liberal market economy. Provincial diversity, characterised by a variety of approaches to the deployment of labour and relations between institutions (Arnold et al., 2018), has resulted in a range of protections and benefits for Canadian platform workers, while also creating challenges for the federal government in policy implementation (Gibb and Walker, 2011). This issue is reflected in the relatively basic and limited protections offered to platform workers at the federal level. It is noteworthy that the struggles of platform workers, as highlighted during the pandemic, have led to renewed engagement at national level. The focus on meaningfully developing the Canadian Labour Code to encompass platform work, although still at a relatively early stage, reflects a somewhat more progressive approach not yet seen in other liberal market economies. These developments align with observations that Canada has moved towards a form of ‘inclusive liberalism’, representing a softer approach to social policy and seeking to bring in those who have been excluded from the benefits of a rapidly globalising economy (Gibb and Walker, 2011).

The sheer number of roles in the Canadian gig economy is perhaps unsurprising, given that as a liberal market economy it leans towards the creation of large numbers of low-skill positions and weaker employment protections (Gibb and Walker, 2011). However, this varies at provincial level. Ontario has seen substantial developments for platform workers since the pandemic. Bill 88 outlines legislation aimed at improving the rights of these workers. Increased union presence and activity has likely been influential in Ontario’s heightened focus on platform workers. However, the Ontario government has also faced criticism from unions and opposition parties. For example, Ontario’s New Democratic Party said the PC Party ‘can kiss up to the unions if they want, but it’s their actions that make a difference’, while the Liberal Party questioned whether the PC Party will substantiate their claims with meaningful action (Crawley, 2021). Similarly, the CUPW and Gig Workers United condemned Bill 88 for creating ‘a dangerous game with devastating consequences’ for workers on a second-class minimum wage, which is stringent regarding various nuances and conditions (CUPW, 2022).

Crouch (2022: 42) argues that COVID-19 provided the opportunity for ‘a reset of political positions’, in which governments can learn lessons from recognising flaws in the labour market. Unions are often required to show governments how labour market flaws are deleterious for workers and society, however. Because trade unions in liberal market economies are in a position of institutional weakness, there is little evidence in our study of unions as powerful actors in policy-making, but they have some access to policy-making and have shown an ability to influence government decisions to some degree. Policy-making requires that a societal problem be identified and put on the government agenda (Knill and Tosun, 2020). In the United Kingdom, strategic litigation by the IWGB created a policy problem for the government which it could not ignore, requiring policy change, albeit limited to health and safety issues. In Ireland, there has been greater policy attention on the social wage for workers generally since the pandemic, but platform workers have not received strong policy attention from either unions or the government. More progressive policies on platform workers are evident in Canada, whose government has recognised that poor employment rights and protections for workers tend to have undesirable consequences for the state. Overall, we find that trade union political pressure on platform worker issues has been uneven, and that they are a necessary but not always sufficient factor in government decisions to enhance employment standards and income support for workers.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Essential or excluded? Union pressures and state responses to platform work in three liberal market economies

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Methodology

Union political pressure and liberal market economies

Nature of union political pressure in liberal market economies

United Kingdom

Canada

Ireland

State policy positions and implementation

United Kingdom

Canada

Ireland

Conclusion

Footnotes

Funding

References