The likes of Uber and Deliveroo are shaking up the jobs market in such a way that one of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to commission a report into the future of work. Yesterday, as the PM opted for a much-needed relaunch, that report came out. The likes of Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Labour frontbencher, made their minds up quickly: the report was a missed chance and we shouldn’t use companies like Uber until they clean up their act. Here’s what the papers had to say:
We should feel ‘lucky’, says the Sun sarcastically, that ‘Labour’s preachy politicians’ are leading us on the path ’towards the high moral ground of the hard-Left.’ Yesterday, we heard Rebecca Long-Bailey voice her disapproval of Uber, a company she said was not ‘morally acceptable’. This view might well ‘come as another shock’ to Labour’s young voters ‘who doubtless choose Uber all day long in London.’. This isn’t the first time they will have felt ‘wrong footed’, the paper suggests, with Jeremy Corbyn ‘not turning out to be the honest, principled Europhile they assumed’. And Long-Bailey’s remark also won’t go down well with Uber’s largely happy workforce who, the Sun points out, ‘declared by a ratio of nine to one that they liked their job’. But this disdain for Uber is just an excuse, concludes the Sun: it’s clear that the likes of Long-Bailey ‘hate the free market Uber exemplifies, regardless of whether it works for customers and staff’.
The Times says that when Long-Bailey says she wouldn’t use an Uber, the shadow business secretary ‘is burying her head in the sand of Luddism’. ‘This is a revolution that no one should be seeking to reverse’, argues the paper, which says the reason why the ‘quiet revolution’ of gig employment apps – such as Uber and Deliver – have taken off is ‘because people are flocking to provide their services, not just to buy them.’. We should also stop fixating on the impact these apps are having on those who choose to work for them, the Times suggests, and focus instead on the ‘real harm’ such platforms do – ‘to the economy by not paying national insurance contributions’.
Matthew Taylor’s report into the future of work ‘seems to have satisfied no one, which suggests he has got the balance about right,’ argues the Daily Telegraph. Some have said it was ‘a missed opportunity to end the “exploitation” of self-employed workers while some companies are worried that it will hamper their ability to hire staff’. Whatever the answer to the question of how the Government should respond to the impact of technology on work, the main ‘thing is not to mess it up’, argues the Telegraph. Taylor suggests that ’an interventionist role for government’ is needed to make sure ‘all work is “fair and decent”.’. The Telegraph is sceptical: ‘It is hard to see how this can be fulfilled’ without strangling the much-needed flexibility on which these industries thrive.
When Theresa May commissioned Matthew Taylor to write a report on ‘precarious work’, no one expected the PM to be in a relatable situation herself, the Guardian says. Yet in ‘these altered times’ that’s just what has happened. Taylor – who has always ’preferred a nudge to a shove’ – ‘was never likely to mount a revolutionary challenge to the established order’. But while the report has been criticised, Taylor does offer some sound suggestions.; even the unions, who haven’t exactly welcomed the report, will be pleased by Taylor’s view that ‘the so-called Swedish derogation’ – which allows lower-paid agency workers to fill in for staff – should end. Taylor is right, too, to draw ‘attention to much wider problems in the labour market, like the amount of overtime demanded of low-paid workers’, the Guardian says. It’s true there are ‘gaps’ in the report, including those found between where problems are pinpointed and answers offered, but we should still welcome the report. After all ‘something is almost always better than nothing’. The fight now is for ‘bigger and more sweeping reforms’.
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