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Article

11 Jul 2017

Author:
Sarah Butler, Guardian

UK: Gig economy workers on their jobs - 'They do exercise control over us'

Three workers share their experiences of working for courier and care companies with insecure hours, no sick pay and no holiday pay. Mohaan Biswas...[who] has worked for Deliveroo since February last year...was [initially] paid £7 an hour plus £1 per delivery, as well as petrol and about £15 in tips a week. Now he gets £3.75 per delivery...A former van driver for UK Express, a delivery company which works for Parcelforce...[notes that his] weekly earnings varied widely – from a loss of £200 to a profit of £1,200 in his best ever week. His average take-home pay, after paying van hire fees, insurance and petrol, was about £250 a week...As an independent contractor, he did not get sick pay or holiday pay and had to continue to pay van hire fees and insurance even when not working. After months on the job, he recently quit after the company said it wanted drivers to take out their own insurance on top of van hire fees...A care worker, based near Middlesbrough...is employed by a private care company helping mainly elderly clients with their medication and care, including food preparation, bathing and dressing, household chores and moving about, such as helping people out of wheelchairs and into bed. She earns £7.80 an hour but this is only for the hours she works dealing with clients. She does not get paid for travel time between jobs and no travel time is included in her rota...If a client needs more time than necessary, care workers don’t get paid extra...Her pay and weekly rota can be very changeable. [Working under a] zero-hours contract [she] is not guaranteed any working hours a week...She’s now looking for a different job as she’d like to progress in her career, earn more, get a pension and guaranteed hours but continue to work in caring for people.

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