South Square Private Law Seminar: 'The Gig Economy: A Contractual Analysis'

Speaker: Dr Marc Moore, University of Cambridge

Both casual and gig-based work arrangements have been subject to unprecedented levels of attention recently. This is mainly due to the widely-reported usage by many well-known corporate employers of controversial ‘zero-hours’ work contracts, and also the recent spate of high-profile tribunal and court decisions on alleged employer exploitation of gig economy workers in cases such as Uber and Deliveroo. While these issues have already been (and no doubt will continue to be) subject to extensive doctrinal analysis by employment lawyers, they remain relatively underexplored from a broader private (and especially corporate) law perspective. Accordingly, this paper will adopt an alternative contractual perspective on flexible work, inspired by insights from private law and the economic analysis of law. Focussing on the implications of casual and gig-based work for the allocation of risk, profit and decision-making rights within the firm, it will present a normative case for worker ownership as the reciprocal counterpart to flexible workers’ crucial risk-bearing function.

This seminar is open to all LLM, MCL and PhD students, Faculty members and Faculty visitors.