Catherwood LibraryILR School

Following national excitement over proposed labor law reform, the UK government has announced a year-long delay in implementing any changes in the wake of Brexit negotiations. The proposed reforms would help over one million people working in the gig economy for companies like Uber, Deliveroo, and Hermes be recognized as fully employed rather than mislabeled as self-employed by their employers in an effort to pay workers less than minimum wage and avoid the costs of employment. Theresa May has promised these reforms since her 2016 election and her appointment of Labour’s Matthew Taylor as an advisor on employment, but it is theorized that the slowdown in domestic policy creation has resulted from a national prioritization of negotiations surrounding Great Britain’s exit from the European Union. Given the increasing volume of legal actions taken against gig economy employers regarding their employment practices in which many of the companies have managed to dodge liability, the timely implementation of these policies could have effectively led to a significant improvement in over one million individuals’ working conditions and to a resulting decrease in court battles over labor abuses.