Workers who pay price of our convenience culture
AS a kid in the 70s, my socialist mum used to describe a future where technology would liberate us, bring us a three-day working week and quality time.
My dad, a factory supervisor, laboured long hours but his modest pay at least allowed my mum to stay at home, to be there when we cut our knees and to make us breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Little did she know the choice she had then would be a privilege not afforded to many of her class now and that technology would be a means to turn people into living machines.
On Friday, a new Ken Loach film, Sorry I Missed You, is released and the corrosive impact of zero-hour contracts will be put under scrutiny.
The film – written by Scotland’s own superlative Paul Laverty – is a searing indictment of the free market economy and the poverty traps it lays in the pursuit of profits.
It follows a couple – a “selfemployed” delivery driver and a carer – scrambling through their days on zero-hour contracts, on the leash of debt and exploitation.
Many who watch the film will have lived this experience and will recognise themselves in protagonist Ricky, racing to meet impossible deadlines, peeing into a bottle and pissing against the wind in the search of a decent life for his family.
For the employer, the gig economy is a win-win. Ricky has to buy his own van and if he is sick, he has to find a replacement driver or be fined.
He is monitored, like a tagged prisoner, his movements and deliveries tracked through a hand-held device which beeps if he stays immobile for too long.
Recent figures found that 4.7million people work inside the gig economy, picking up piecemeal or self-employed work.
There are 780,000 people on zero-hour contracts – sometimes paid in partial hours, with no employment rights, sickness pay, holiday entitlement or security.
The “gig economy”, with its name of carefree connotation, is sold as flexible working but the implied choice is in reality often the last resort of the choiceless.
Like Loach and Laverty’s
outstanding work of social realism I, Daniel Blake, this latest film lays bare wounds in the hope the ensuing outrage will lead to change.
I, Daniel Blake didn’t lead to an overhaul of our pernicious benefits system but that doesn’t mean Sorry I Missed You couldn’t be a catalyst for change within.
Unions, such as the GMB, are calling for a devolution of employment rights and for the Scottish Government to protect the right to collective bargaining.
It will be difficult to consolidate such a disparate workforce but if the victims of the gig economy remain divided, exploitative companies will continue to conquer.
The Scottish Government and local councils currently benefiting from fast delivery services should be boycotting such companies unless their workers get a fair deal.
And really, unless it contains a life-saving kidney, we don’t need one-hour delivery when it comes at such a price.
For now, go and watch the film, even just as a reminder that our push-button world of convenience running smoothly on the surface has poor sods paddling like hell underneath.