After almost 20 years in which some of the new companies offer all kinds of services at very low prices, which is what is called the “gig economy”, the European Commission finally says that it is going to take care of issuing regulations so that people who work for these companies have the same rights as other workers.
As I said before, they announce the measure almost 20 years late, but better late than never.
These “gig economy” companies (Uber, Deliveroo, etc ...) hire people to perform their services, and make them appear as self-employed workers. In this way companies avoid paying the costs of social security, vacations, illness, etc ... and also in this way reduce their internal costs and can offer very low rates to their customers.
That way, the services they offer are very, very cheap, but it is based on taking advantage of temporary workers without any rights and with very low income for the work they do. In a way I think we have returned to the days of slavery, but in the XXI century.
These new companies use APPs to offer their services and to hire the people who work for them, and they use the gray areas of the labor legislation of the countries to take advantage of the situation and have benefits by offering very low rates.
And the whole secret of these new “gig economy” companies is to “save” on the costs incurred by the people who work for them.
The EU estimates that there are more than 5.5 million people working in this situation, and that with the development of these businesses there will be several million more within 10 years.
In Spain a similar law called "Rider Law" was made months ago and some company like Deliveroo decided to cease its activity, but I think that it is in Europe where these laws should be published so that the same guidelines are followed in all European countries behavior, and companies cannot play around with moving from one country to another.
If we want to have a fair and balanced Society (and I sincerely want it), we must fight against the exploitation of workers, and not allow new technologies to generate today "slaves" without labor rights, so that a few become richer every day.
As I often say, Technology is not to blame for what happens to us, rather it is the people who use that technology to misuse it and take advantage of the weakest.
One of the problems is that our leaders are very slow to react, and by the time they do, dozens of years may have passed, as in that case. And we have a few more examples.
We can only hope that the European standard is quickly known and the abuses of a few will end soon. And Clients have to get used to the fact that "the services" they offer us have a cost that we have to pay.
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