WIE response to UK government's so-called 'crackdown on illegal working in gig economy'

• New right to work (RTW) regulations leave wide gaps for gig employers to continue to exploit migrant workers

• New RTW regulations facilitate breach of personal data protection regulations

• New RTW regulations contradict existing HMRC advice that those with RTW should have their own contracts with gig employers

• Home Office demonises migrant workers in a bid to tackle ‘rogue employers’ while neglecting a modern slavery victim backlog of 20,000 people  

• Government is tacitly encouraging gig platforms to use substitution to evade employment law

The new regulations on right to work checks deliberately leave wide gaps to allow gig economy employers to continue to ride a coach and horses through them. Uber, for example, only require substitutes to be registered 48 hours after they first work which leaves plenty of room for plausible deniability while the black market trade for domestic modern slavery work conditions anyway continues unabated. Similarly, while Deliveroo do carry out their own right to work checks for substitute worker, they insist that workers substituting must also carry them out.

Deliberate exploitation of vulnerable workers by platform employers has been a feature of Britain's gig economy for many years. Our report on Just Eat revealed that 50 workers were paid by the employer into a single bank account. Payment like this into a single bank account is a recognised red flag for modern slavery. The government's new measures do nothing to protect workers from such exploitation even though there have been many cases of slavery involving people who did have the right to work in the UK. Indeed, the government now has a backlog of 23,000 victims waiting for the Home Office to take action.

In the deployment of substitute working, platforms enable personal data to be shared from the employer to and from substitute workers without data sharing agreements being put in place which means the rights of all data subjects in the chain cannot be assured.

In terms of joined up government, the arrangements are shambolic with HMRC rightly telling workers they should have their own accounts rather than act as a substitute for someone else.

The elephant in the room is why platforms would even want to allow substitution when people with the right to work could sign up directly with the platform. It is also mind boggling as to why the government is content with platforms delegating the right to work and background checks to precarious workers subletting access to their accounts. Yet, the answer is simple, the platforms want to maintain fictious substitution arrangements to defeat employment status claims. The government, in an overzealous effort to demonize migrant workers, seems all too happy to facilitate platforms to bend and break employment law, so long as they support the government’s war on migrant workers.

James Farrar, Director of Worker Info Exchange said:

“It is beyond absurd that Yvette Cooper, in her so called ‘crackdown’ on migrants, is now praising firms like Uber, Just Eat and Deliveroo as partners in the fight against ‘illegal working’. These same firms are the real ‘rogue employers’ who have dodged employment and tax obligations for years. The Home Office currently has a backlog of 23,000 victims of modern slavery waiting for justice, yet the Home Secretary is celebrating firms that are the root cause of much of this misery. Instead of appeasing corporate interests and the far right, the government should stand up for all working people, regardless of where they come from.”