Gov intervention

Article from Guardian- useful for exams and coursework

Courier wins holiday pay in key tribunal ruling on gig economy.

Judge decries contract and rules CitySprint must award holiday pay to cycle courier wrongly classed as self-employed.

A cycle courier working for the delivery firm CitySprint has won the right to paid holidays and minimum pay in a key ruling on the gig economy .

The central London employment tribunal ruled that CitySprint had unlawfully failed to award holiday pay to Mags Dewhurst and had wrongly classed her as a self-employed freelancer. CitySprint, which has 3,500 self-employed couriers in the UK, could now face further claims.

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Here is my analysis:

Example of Government intervention. In the absence of unions the government (the court in this case) steps up to make a correction. The quality of life could deteriorate without any holidays or minimum wage, which would consequently affect the health of these individuals (increasing NHS cost), and lead to potential increase in crime (when the labour feels helpless to make ends meet). Although cheap labour would be good for the businesses, allowing them to become competitive and bring prices down for consumers. However somebody pays the cost and in this case it would have been the labour. This courier firm has an unfair advantage against other courier firm who pay a fair wage, sick pay, holidays and pension. Royal Mail pays its workers who do the same job a guaranteed income regardless of whether there is work or not. Therefore they will be able to undercut RoyalMail and eventually grow whilst a perfectly fair company goes bust.