I think people would be surprised to know
that the guy delivering your midnight sushi or whatever
is under the minimum wage.
At its worst is when it's very volatile work
where something happens to a provider and they have no protections.
We’ve all done it.
Whether it’s ordering pizza at midnight through Deliveroo
staying at someone’s house on Airbnb
or even just getting an Uber.
But who are the people behind these services?
And what’s the cost of our never-ending need for convenience?
When I jump on my bike in the morning
I feel like I'm going to do
something that makes me alive.
But at the same time, it's so dangerous.
I came here from Italy.
I was looking on Gumtree or Facebook
and it was all around suppertime:
join us, ride the bike, have fun.
So I said, okay I can ride a bike. I'll just go for it
and I tried and it was pretty fun.
These platforms when they work best
is when they empower a person
to make money
or use a skill
in a way that wasn't previously possible.
Hi.
Pick up?
Yeah for Mark?
I was working like 40 hours.
Guys who are training for Tour De France
they train for 45-50 hours
so it's pretty much the same.
Except that France is flat and Sydney is hilly.
My contract was hourly rate plus delivery rate.
So I was getting $14 an hour
plus $5 every delivery.
Davide was one of the first generation of Foodora riders
which means he’s on a pretty sweet deal.
But like all gig economy platforms
Foodora has started rolling back what it pays its workers.
I can make up to $50 an hour.
Because I know where to go, I'm pretty fast.
If you're new, you don't know where to go.
And you don't know how to ride a bike properly.
You don't get any money, because you just waste your time.
It's like, you're working but you're not getting paid.
How these companies get away with paying minimum wage
is that usually the people working for them are not employees
but private contractors.
And this is where it gets messy.
So we've found that
the gig economy is like the wild west industrially.
People are working for no penalty rates
no permanent jobs
no workers' compensation
no dispute resolution procedures.
It's just a hodge podge of conditions
and they are very basic.
What do we want?
Fair wages.
When do we want it?
Now!
Workers around the world have been protesting for better working conditions.
Locally, Unions NSW took the fight to Airtasker.
We wanted them to provide a basic level of coverage for their employees
or the people working on their platform
but also to have minimum rates of pay
installed in their platform.
Airtasker lets anyone put odd jobs up for auction.
It can range from putting up IKEA furniture
to picking up someone else’s dog poo.
Once the task is posted for the suggested price
those who want the job bid for it.
We know that some people will choose between having a job
that's paid under the minimum rate as opposed to having no job.
I don't think that's right.
I don't think the general Australian public would say that's a fair situation.
I think the number one thing that workers want is work.
And so if we ask our Airtasker workers
"Hey, if we took these measures and we increased rates
and we kind of forced it to be this way
but you'll get 10% of the number of jobs."
Then I think they would probably, say no we don't want all of those measures to take place.
I mean these are archaic forms of regulation.
Innovation requires taking a risk.
It requires disrupting norms and mechanism
We really should be innovating around these problems
versus just trying to squash them with red tape and regulation.
But regulation is just what the unions want.
And earlier in the year Unions NSW and Airtasker
reached an agreement they hailed as a “world first."
So we did a couple of things.
The first thing was around educating people on what fair rates are
for various kinds of work.
The second piece was around trust and safety
So letting people know
that you know for certain kinds of jobs
you should do certain kinds of safety measures.
And the third part was around insurance and disputes.
But the agreement isn’t legally binding
and Airtasker didn’t set a minimum hourly wage.
We always hope for more
but given it's a world first
it's an online platform and it hasn't been done anywhere else in the world, am I happy?
Yes.
Can we do better?
Yes.
We don't necessarily want to commoditise human beings down into just the hours that they put in.
I think we want to look at each human being
and kind of like empower them to realise the value of their unique skills.
And if the sound of using your unique skills of picking up someone else’s dog poo for below minimum wage
sounds pretty crap, you’re not the only one.
'Be your own boss' is bullshit.
Like we are not really our own bosses.
We are just people who are not getting paid enough.