‘We are All Entrepreneurs Now’: Options and New Approaches for Adapting Equality Law for the ‘Gig Economy’

Abstract

As the world of work moves to increasingly precarious, temporary and insecure forms of labour, traditional forms of work regulation are becoming less relevant for the ‘gig economy’. Equality law has traditionally been framed as protecting ‘employees’ (and now ‘workers’) against acts of discrimination by ‘employers’. As these categories become increasingly remote from the lived experience of work, the relevance and potential of equality law to secure individual employment rights becomes increasingly limited. Drawing on comparative legal doctrinal analysis of the UK and Australia, this article considers options and new approaches for protecting workers from discrimination in new forms of employment, canvassing ideas such as the extension of equalitylaw to non-traditional workers, collectivized approaches to individual protection, and the use of positive duties to regulate the gig economy. This article questions the basic relevance and structuring of equality law for new forms of work. If equality law is to remain relevant and effective, serious changes are required to how it is conceived, framed and promoted. Merely extending existing ideas of ‘equality law’ to new forms of work will not respond to fundamental shifts in the labour market: there is a need to rethink and retheorize the role and purpose of equality law