Employment status: Options for reform

On any given night, in any given city, our streets now teem with takeaway delivery riders, waiting on well-placed corners or weaving precariously through traffic and dodging pedestrians. This ‘visible’ gig economy of drivers, riders and couriers, is one half of the gig economy. The other half is ‘invisible’ and desk-based – from high-end work such as web design, to lower paid work, such as social media moderation.

What unites this incredibly diverse group of people is that they do not neatly fit into a box called ‘employment’ or ‘self-employment’. Some are treated as self-employed, some as employees, and some are in a little-known middle ground employment status – the ‘limb (b)’ worker.

Our employment status determines important rights and entitlements, from statutory maternity pay and annual leave to protections from unfair dismissal and collective bargaining. Employees have a lot of rights; self-employed people have (almost) none; and limb (b) workers have some, but not all.

In this paper, the Fabian Society’s deputy general secretary, Luke Raikes, investigates how well our current employment status framework is working and discusses options for reform. He situates the debate around single worker status, which would merge  ‘limb (b)’ workers with those with employee status, in the context of the need for general improvements to employment rights and enforcement.